• Adobe After Effects

  Track motion – best ways to be accurate?

  Posted by David Del on October 12, 2007 at 1:29 am

  I have a scene and there isn’t much contrast in it. So I precomposed the layer and desaturated it. Next I posterized the layer, turned it down to 2 so that it was a straight black and white with lots of contrast. The problem I am now having is that when I go to motion track, it doesn’t show me the posterize footage, but instead reverts to the footage without any effects on it. So, is there a better way to track motion? I have tried running from the center forward and back, but without good contrast or markers, it is hard to get a great track. Any suggestions would be helpful.

  David Del replied 18 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Curious Turtle

  October 12, 2007 at 6:01 am

  Precompose that layer, then apply the motion tracker to it.

  If you apply the track to a null you can reuse that info easily on several layers/effects.

  If you want to get a bit more serious about tracking then you should have a look at third-party tracking solutions.

  For the budget conscious/SD only there’s PF Hoe from The Pixel Farm.

  There’s also Syntheyes or (and I’m very excited about this one)Mocha AE coming in about a week.

  Good luck,
  Ben

  Curious Turtle Professional Video
  Training | Editing |Support

  http://www.curiousturtle.com
• 

  David Del

  October 12, 2007 at 10:42 am

  I have already pre-composed the layer – I just need a way to find spots or areas to track, which is proving very difficult.
  Another thing I am finding very frustrating is that once I track something and apply the tracking info to a null, it seems to shift the entire pre-composed layer. Not sure why.
• 

  Tyler Paul

  October 12, 2007 at 12:01 pm

  If the footage is resorting back to it’s original state than I’m thinking you must have your effects ON the precomposed layer and not IN the precomposed layer. I can’t imagine what else it could be. I imagine you probably precomposed and left all attributes.

  Try editing the target of the tracker to the null again. It shouldn’t effect your footage at all and something may have just gone wrong.

  If you do succeed in getting the tracking to work, here’s a script I came across to do tracker averaging

  https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=136

  You do two tracks and then run the script to average them out and supposedly make a more accurate track. Haven’t had anything to test it on but it may help.
• 

  David Del

  October 12, 2007 at 5:13 pm

  Thanks for that. I will try again today.
• 

  David Del

  October 12, 2007 at 5:59 pm

  Nope, I have pre-composed the layer with and without attributes – I put on a tint and turn up the contrast and as soon as I put the motion tracker on the footage, all of the effects are gone…

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