• Adobe After Effects

  After Effects tracking…sudden problem

  Posted by Chris Hurn on March 22, 2009 at 2:25 am

  Hi there.

  I recently started using After Effects 7.0 and I’m really enjoying it.

  Anyway, I have been doing a fair bit of tracking lately and everything was working perfect until yesterday…

  In the morning I was working on a shot, basically for a matte test, the shot is a tiny bit shaky for realism. Anyway, I tracked it fine, everything worked great, imported my fake matte painting into AE, parented it to my layer with the tracking data and everything was great.

  But then later on that day I ran into some problems tracking another file, it just didn’t work no matter what I did.

  So to test, I went back and created a new project using the footage from earlier that worked fine – and now it doesn’t work. Basically, what is happening is the tracking data is working fine. I’m tracking two points and they are staying on target. But then when I apply my tracking data to a null object, or an adjustment layer and then parent my painting onto that data, it’s not staying in place.

  I know it’s not the footage that is causing the problem because the exact same clips worked fine yesterday morning. The tracking points are staying on point. But when I apply the tracking data to my adjustment layer, it’s rotating out of place and not syncing with my clip. Same with null object.

  Everything was working fine til yesterday. I tried restarting, I tried reinstalling the whole program, nothing is working. Any ideas?

  Thanks,
  Chris

  Nicola Bertovello replied 12 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Bartek Skorupa

  March 23, 2009 at 7:22 am

  The problem seems weird, but there is a chance you make some small mistake that causes that.
  Maybe you could try to make it once again, step by step. We often forget to remove some things from our comp. If you try making it using my suggestions but really step by step and it doesn’t work – I can’t help. Then you really have some bug.

  So let’s start:

  1. Make a new comp.
  2. Put your footage to be tracked in it.
  3. Put a “null” to that comp.
  4. Track the footage.
  5. If the track is fine, edit target, and apply the tracking data to the “null”.
  6. Put your matte to the comp.
  7. Place it where it should be and then parent it to the “null”

  Check if it works. If it works fine – you have to find the mistake in your main comp. There has to be one. I don’t know: Wrong parenting, expressions, time stretch, some keyframes you were not aware of.
  Try to remove all the keyframes from your footage. Saying all, I mean all. All the tracks, all the effects and so on. Remove the null with the tracking data and add a new one. Remove your matte and add it once again and parent correctly. Something has to work.

  Bartek Skorupa
  Warszawa, Poland
• 

  Chris Hurn

  March 26, 2009 at 5:28 am

  Thank you for replying. I have tried your steps many times and still no luck…I have tried creating several different compositions and starting from scratch…the tracker seems to follow the points well but when I assign the matte/image to the Null object, it just doesn’t stay right, it seems to be doing it’s own thing, it’s shaky…it’s not working at all.

  Something is definitely wrong because I had no tracking problems until last week.
• 

  Sami Bayley

  May 3, 2013 at 4:56 pm

  Has anyone sorted this problem? im having this issue aswell.
• 

  Nicola Bertovello

  June 7, 2013 at 5:08 pm

  hello
  this is nick

  I have the same problem which is driving me crazy
  I made several tracker point videos,
  and suddendly it doesn’t not move the layer which I am trying to follow the video.

  How can we solve this frustrating issue???

  thanks

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