Certain aspects involve video inpainting in which content is propagated from a user-provided reference frame to other video frames depicting a scene. For example, a computing system accesses a set of video frames with annotations identifying a target region to be modified. The computing system determines a motion of the target region's boundary across the set of video frames, and also interpolates pixel motion within the target region across the set of video frames. The computing system also inserts, responsive to user input, a reference frame into the set of video frames. The reference frame can include reference color data from a user-specified modification to the target region. The computing system can use the reference color data and the interpolated motion to update color data in the target region across set of video frames.