Newbie Tracking Question

Hi everyone,
I'm new to video editing and decided on Davinci Resolve. I'm trying to learn tracking and have watched several tutorials on youtube on the matter. The subject I'm tracking moves in a more complex way and is not entirely still. I've been inserting lots of keyframes when using the tracker, but when all is said and done the adjustments at all these individual keyframes do not seem to be having any effect. Whether I'm using a freeform tracker or one of the power windows, the position of the "window" that I've created doesn't sync to the places where I've moved it and often doesn't even move where I designated it to. There's something fundamental I'm missing here. I'd appreciate any help I can get on this. Thanks.

I'm running Davinci Resolve Studio 14.0.0.078. I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit, have 32GB of RAM, Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz, and an 8GB AMD RX580.

I'm going to guess you are doing something that I do all the time: forget to switch back and forth between frame and clip tracking.

The tracking options are very powerful and sometimes confusing, it helps to go back and read through the manual to sort things out.

Thanks. You know, I actually managed to do a basic tracking with a power window using frame option not too long after posting this. If I were to go all out and perform a frame by frame track with a custom shape, is the shape going to save all of its changes? This would include not only moving the connection dots but possibly deleting and adding them as the subject moves. I really want to narrow this down as I'm looking at hours upon hours of work unless there's other options I'm not aware of. I'm attempting to do a faded overlay look using a piece of stick footage and don't need the background. Unfortunately, it's no simple background. The background is a line of trees in the woods with leaves on the ground, so I'm looking at some painstakingly detailed work.