• Adobe After Effects

  Difficult planar/camera track

  Posted by Josef Brett on February 14, 2017 at 9:08 am

  I have a shot that I took on a slider of two phones. The shot moves from the back phone to the front and I would like to add things to the screens.

  I’m having real trouble getting the track of this to work however – I think because the depth of field is very narrow, but I’m not sure.

  I’ve tried AE’s in-built trackers as well as the 3D camera track. I’ve also tried Mocha and FayIn, tho i am the first to admit I am not an expert with these trackers.

  My attempt at tracking is here: https://youtu.be/vWpfcd7c6CA
  As you can see the track of the back phone in particular is quite loose and drifts a lot.

  The original footage is here if anyone would like to play with it:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5WP9Ydm_dNAbzhzVlNkTExNT0U/view?usp=sharing
  The project is done now, so this is just to help me learn if we do anything similar in the future.

  Any advice on the actual track would be greatly appreciated, but also any info on what I did wrong when filming it. Should it have been a deep focus shot that I faked the blur on in post?

  Thanks in advance

  Josef Brett replied 9 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Blaise Douros

  February 15, 2017 at 12:55 am

  It’s hard to make a recommendation without knowing what technique you used in the final shot. However, I would tend to say that the 3D camera tracker might have done the job here, with the caveat that you’d need to get into the advanced settings and specify your lens FOV, use the more detailed tracking settings, that sort of thing.

  Shallow focus is tough for VFX work, so I would tend to say a narrower aperture would have been helpful here. You don’t need to go full deep-focus-at-f/22, but a little less blur overall would probably help. Tracking a blurry surface is damn near impossible, since there are no sharp details for the tracker to grab onto.
• 

  Josef Brett

  February 15, 2017 at 9:20 am

  THanks for the info. Yeah, I think in future that I need to look for the less artsy shot and do some fake DoF effects in post.

  To answer your question, the final shot is a mixture of 3D camera track (detailing the settings of FoV etc) and plain old motion tracking with some manual adjustments. Oh well, the client was happy enough with the results, but I would like to do better next time.

  CHeers
• 

  Richard Garabedain

  February 15, 2017 at 9:31 pm

  looks fine to me actually..you just need to blur the back image more so it blends in with the footage. that will cover up any drifting that concerns you
• 

  Josef Brett

  February 16, 2017 at 10:36 am

  Thanks. Maybe I looked at it too much.

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