Crop/Zoom on moving subject with shaky camera

[InCrypt_]

My raw video footage is from a Phantom 3 drone at 90 foot watching an RC airplane take off. My wife was driving the drone camera, and was new to the controls, so there were some unwanted camera movements, such as unwanted tilts instead of pans. But she managed to keep the subject in frame - mostly. No problem, I figured, because the Phantom was intentionally configured to record in 4k so that I could crop to 1/4 scale and still maintain 1080 HD.

Problem is, I'm using Corel VideoStudio and can't seem to make it do what I need. I see all the potential, but can't get it to sync up. I can get a good chunk of the unwanted camera movements out of the footage by using the Mercalli filter. However this does not follow the subject as it moves around the frame. Specifically, a top down view of an RC Aircraft taking off in a parking lot. Mercalli wants to keep to the lines of the parking grid in frame, instead of following the airplane.
So, I figured I'd use the TrackMoting filter to define the subject for the Mercalli tool. I can get the TrackMotion filter to correctly identify and follow the aircraft, but I cannot figure out how to get Mercalli to use the tracking data it produces. Thus, short of having to create an infinite number of key-frames in the "Video Pan and Zoom" filter I'm at a loss on how to get this to work.

[asik1]

Hi,
You should do Marcaly first at rockstady camera and don't tick the border. Than, once the shot steady with blacks on the sides, zoom or crop to where relevant.

[InCrypt_]

Thanks for the quick response asik1!

I did just that when first playing with Mercalli, and though the initial 6 seconds of the modified 23 second clip are good, the subject (In this case the RC Aircraft) quickly rolls off the screen, and the remaining 17 seconds are looking at an empty parking space. the camera footage is rock steady, but the subject has moved off frame.
This is why I was looking for a way to leverage the "TrackMotion" data, or something like it, to inform the Mercalli tool what the subject is, and by extension influence what the tool tries to hold steady in a dynamic frame.

[RobertOZ]

Mercalli does not have the ability to track a specific area of a video clip
You could try splitting the clip into sections, then apply the filter to each section, also try the different Virtual Stabi-Cam options, try different Zoom Compensation settings and with the Keep Camera Dynamic, try both options, on-off

I have Mercalli 4 SAL+ which does give me the ability to select a specific range in a clip and apply different settings without the need to split the clip