Motion Detect

Detects movement and changes between frames and reports a motion level that scripts can react to. Useful for security and surveillance triggers, automating cuts when the talent moves into frame, driving heat-map graphics that show where action is happening, suppressing recording when the scene is static, or starting and stopping downstream effects based on activity in the picture. Comes with several visualisation modes (motion-only, threshold mask, alpha, overlay, colour difference) and an optional detection mode that exposes a MotionDetected flag and current MotionLevel.

Motion Detect - Settings

Detection Settings

Detection Settings — how aggressively motion is detected and how the difference is measured.

Property	Description
`Sensitivity`	Overall sensitivity to motion. [min=1, max=20, default=5]. Higher values amplify small frame-to-frame differences so subtler movements register. Increase if the operator misses real motion; decrease if it picks up camera noise or sensor grain.
`Threshold`	Cutoff level used by the threshold-mask visualisation. [min=0, max=100, default=10]. Only motion above this level appears as white in Threshold Mask mode. Lower means more permissive.
`Method`	How motion strength is measured. [default=Luminance]. Luminance reacts to brightness changes only and is least noisy. Max Channel takes the strongest of the red/green/blue differences — good for catching coloured movement on a similarly-bright background. RGB Magnitude is the most colour-sensitive and the most reactive overall.

Temporal

Temporal — how long motion lingers in the visualisation.

Property	Description
`Decay`	How long motion persists in the visualisation, as a percentage. [min=0, max=100, default=0]. 0 shows only the current frame's motion. Higher values fade older motion out slowly, producing trails or a heat-map look.

Output

Output — how the detected motion is shown on the output image.

Property	Description
`Output`	Visualisation mode for the output image. [default=Motion Only]. Motion Only shows greyscale motion strength. Threshold Mask shows a hard black/white mask using `Threshold`. Motion as Alpha keeps the original picture but ties opacity to motion. Overlay tints moving areas with the configured overlay colour. Color Difference shows the direction of change.

Overlay Settings

Overlay Settings — colour and opacity used in Overlay output mode.

Property	Description
`Overlay Red`	(advanced) Red component of the overlay tint. [min=0, max=255, default=0]. Only used when `Output` is set to Overlay.
`Overlay Green`	(advanced) Green component of the overlay tint. [min=0, max=255, default=255]. Only used when `Output` is set to Overlay.
`Overlay Blue`	(advanced) Blue component of the overlay tint. [min=0, max=255, default=0]. Only used when `Output` is set to Overlay.
`Overlay Opacity`	(advanced) Strength of the overlay tint. [min=0, max=100, default=80]. 0 hides the overlay entirely; 100 paints moving regions with full overlay colour.

Motion Detection

Motion Detection — turn on the trigger logic that drives MotionDetected and MotionLevel.

Property	Description
`Enable detection`	Turn the detection trigger on or off. [default=false]. When on, `MotionDetected` and `MotionLevel` update each frame so scripts can react. When off, both stay at zero/false.
`Detection threshold`	Motion level (0–100) required for `MotionDetected` to become true. [min=1, max=100, default=20]. Lower for more sensitive triggers (good in low-action settings); higher to ignore minor activity.
`Detection grid`	How densely the image is sampled when checking for motion. [default=Normal (16x16)]. Fast (8x8) is cheapest and may miss small movements. Normal balances cost and coverage. Accurate (32x32) and Precise (64x64) catch finer motion at the cost of extra processing.
`Skip frames`	Frames skipped between detection checks. [min=0, max=30, default=0]. 0 checks every frame and is the most responsive. Higher values reduce processing cost when motion only needs to be sampled occasionally (for example, monitoring an empty room).
`Motion detected`	True when current motion exceeds `DetectionThreshold` (read-only). The main trigger flag for scripts. Stays false when `EnableDetection` is off.
`Motion level`	Current motion intensity, 0–100 (read-only). The strongest motion strength found in the current frame. Use this for proportional reactions, for example fading a graphic in based on activity level.

Commands

Commands — actions that can be triggered by scripts or the UI.

Property	Description
`Clear History`	Clear the motion history/heat-map so the next frame starts fresh. Useful after a cut, a camera move, or any time accumulated trails are no longer wanted.
`Reset`	Reset all settings to their defaults (sensitivity, thresholds, output mode, overlay colour, detection options).

Status

Status — diagnostic message about the operator state.

Property	Description
`Message`	Diagnostic message from the operator (read-only). Reports info, warnings and errors such as detection failures or output-mode changes from keyboard shortcuts.

Inherits from: AbstractOperator, AbstractAudioMetering.