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Can I use the tracking stabilizer to fix deck error?
Chapter 1… I searched the posts and looked at all the tracking tutorials on here tonight but couldn’t find the solution. I’ve used ae for compositing and mographs for 2+ years but have never needed the tracking feature, nor have I messed with the scripting stuff (due to dissillusionment with programming in general) opting instead to manually do everything because I’m a control freak. Anyway, a guy I’ve freelanced for in the past called me up and while recording a shoot, his deck (apparently a problem with the heads) caused the tape to jump around so the image “bounces up and down on the screen” (his words – not mine; I’m going over to see it tomorrow – so I can’t describe it in better detail yet.) From what I understand it should be just talking head type of stuff – he just wants it stabilized before the client sees it. I was hoping I could just track a pixel or group of pixels in a scene and just lock it into position so it doesn’t “bounce,” but can’t figure it out in my tests tonight. Any suggestions for this or a link to an in depth online tutorial? The sky thing was helpful in getting started – but I’m only dealing with one layer. Should I use a null layer as a reference point or something? Sorry, its been a couple of years since I had access to “total training.” Thanks in advance (especially if you make it to the end of this monterously long post!) I apologize for my seemingly utter noobishness.
~Brant
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3 Replies
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It’s quite easy to do, but there are some things that could make the tracking look bad. For example, if the footage has a noticeable motion blur, the stabilized image will result in being still, but randomly blured.
Anyway, the process of tracking looks easy in that project and yes, it can be done. If you want to stabilize de position, open the Motion Tracker palette, activate the layer, chose stabilize motion and put the tracker you’ll see in the comp window in a place that remais still during the whole shot. Try to chose a place for the box where there’s a noticeable object (with contrast and such) and make the bigger box around it big enough to that the object in the smaller box, when the camera moves, still is entirely in the place of the bigger box.
Now press play in the tracker palette and follow the process of tracking carefully. At some points, the tracker will probably get mad and go to a place of the screen that have nothing to do with the part of the image it should be following. In that case, stop the tracking, go some frames back where it was in place and press play again. Don’t press the backwards play in those cases.
After that, just clic on apply, if you had chosen the stabilize motion control, it will directly put the keyframes in the anchor point property. As a control freak you say you are, you’ll have no problem in playing it again and again to look for places where the control didn’t work well enough and animate those keyframes manually.
Good luck!
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I just wanted to say thanks for the great advice – thats exactly what I needed!
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Thanks to you for understanding my terrible English!
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