AI tools (beta)
AI-assisted telestration that detects a player's exact silhouette with one click.
On this page
AI tools is a second drawing launcher next to regular telestration — same drawing canvas, but the AI does the tracing for you. Click a player and the model finds their exact silhouette instead of you drawing a shape by hand. Open it from the player controls: the sparkles icon in the drawing cluster, between the pencil (regular telestration) and the replay eye. It's only available in Analyze mode.
Everything the AI tools produce is a regular telestration underneath: it saves with the clip, replays during playback, shows up in shares and exports, and can be edited or erased later with the normal Move and Eraser tools. For those shared controls — color swatches, style settings, undo/redo, templates — see Drawing & telestration.
AI tools is in beta and turned on per organization. If you don't see the sparkles button in the drawing cluster, it isn't enabled for your org yet — contact support to ask about it.
Before you start
- A clip needs to be selected. The button is dimmed until you pick one.
- Uploaded video only. AI tools works on videos hosted by cliply, including desktop local files — not on YouTube or Vimeo sources. Embedded YouTube/Vimeo players don't let cliply read the underlying video pixels, so there's nothing for the model to analyze. In that case the button shows disabled with a tooltip explaining why.
- First use downloads the AI model (about 40 MB). The download starts as soon as you open AI tools, and the toolbar shows its progress. It takes a few seconds on a normal connection, then your browser caches it for next time. Detection runs entirely in your browser — your footage is never uploaded to any AI service.
The AI toolbar
Left to right:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Selection mode toggle | Select by click (default) — click the player, the AI finds the silhouette. Select with polygon — manual fallback, see below. |
| Move player (scissors icon) | Detects the player, cuts them out, and fills the original spot with background; a ghost of the cutout follows your cursor until you click again to place it |
| Clone player | Same as Move, but the original player stays in place — useful for showing two options (A/B) for the same play |
| Erase player | Removes a player, referee, or the ball from the frozen frame, filling with background |
| Silhouette spotlight | Darkens the scene and highlights the player's exact silhouette with a glow in the current color |
| Player marker (AI) | Silhouette spotlight plus a numbered ground marker at the player's feet |
| Lift player over the drawing | Puts a copy of the player on top of everything drawn so far, right where they stand. Draw a zone or an arrow first, then lift the players standing on it: the ink reads as painted on the ground behind their feet, broadcast-style |
| Zoom to player | Zooms the stage onto the player you click, with room around them, and saves that framing with the drawing — the replay opens on them. Same zoom the − / + keys nudge |
| Blur player | Pixelates the player, for anonymizing footage — useful in youth sports. Its dropdown widens the reach: everyone but the player you click, or everyone on the frame in one go — the way to share a clip of one kid without the other kids' faces |
| Detect teams (people icon) | One click segments every player in the frame and applies silhouette spotlights automatically, colored by team, detected from jersey colors |
| Play | Previews the full reveal exactly as viewers will see it on replay — fade-in transition, sequential order if enabled, move animations, hold time |
Each player tool (everything except Detect teams and Play) works the same way: pick the tool, then click a player on the paused frame.
Select by click vs. select with polygon
Select by click is the default — click anywhere on a player and the AI detects their silhouette automatically. If the AI grabs the wrong thing, or misses a small or distant player, switch to Select with polygon: click vertices around the player by hand, then close the shape by clicking the first point again or pressing Enter. Backspace removes the last vertex, and Esc cancels the selection.
Refine a silhouette
The model sometimes grabs too much — the stick, a shadow, the player right behind — or misses a leg. You don't have to redo the click. While the cutout ghost is still on your cursor, or right after a click landed (before you draw anything else), ⇧click a spot that should NOT be part of the player to cut it out, or ⌥click (Alt+click) a spot that should be part of them to add it. Each refinement re-runs the detection on the same frame with your extra points, so it takes a fraction of a second. Refine as many times as you need; the moment you draw something else, the last click is final.
Move and clone options
Move player and Clone player share a "Move effect" section in the style popover:
- Ghost — leaves a faint copy of the player at the original spot
- Arrow — draws a dashed arrow from origin to destination automatically (on by default)
- Animation duration — Static, 0.8s, 1.2s, or 2s; anything but Static slides the cutout from origin to destination during replay
Tips
- Click the center of a player's body for the most reliable detection.
- If the AI grabs too much, ⇧click the part that isn't the player; if it misses a part, ⌥click it. For a small or far-away player it can't find at all, switch to polygon selection.
- A move with the arrow on and a 1–2s animation tells a clearer story than a static cutout.
- Blur a player and share the clip when you need to anonymize footage — youth sports being the obvious case.