How can I take Motion Tracked video from AE to another program?

[David Del]

Sorry, here is some more info. I have a person holding a picture frame in a scene. Unfortunately, she moves the frame around, through no fault of her own. The frame is cut out as a mask (so I can see behind it). I have done this in Vegas. I put a picture behind the frame so it shows through. But, since the person moves around alot, the mask stays put and looks kind of funny. I need a way of getting the mask to move around the same way the person does. If I can do it in AE and then bring the footage back to Vegas, that would be great.

[David Del]

Ok, I hate replying to myself, but I don’t know how to edit my posts :
I have created a mask in AE for a video file – now I want to just have motion tracking on the mask and export it as an alpha channel…is this possible? How would I do that?

[Barend Onneweer]

Well, you’d need to corner-pin track the frame. Since you can’t directly connect the tracking points to mask vertices, you’d apply the tracking data to a solid layer on top of the footage.

Then you set the solid layer (that now fills your frame exactly) blend mode to ‘silhouette alpha’ (or ‘stencil alpha’, I forget which is which’) so that it cuts a hole.

Now you haven’t explained what you want to do within the frame, if you need something in the frame that moves with it, you could just apply the tracking data directly to the layer you want to place within the frame.

But there’s no way to export tracking data out of AE to Vegas, so you want to finish the shot, render it out to a file and import that completed file into your edit in Vegas.

Bar3nd

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[David Del]

Thanks so much for comprehensive tutorial!
I hope I can follow it. I have a picture in picture deal where at the end of each scene, I zoom into the picture and it overtakes the entire screen. I wasn’t sure if I could do that in AE because I am more apt at Vegas – any hints?

[David Del]

Ok, I am trying what you asked : here is where I am stuck,

“

[Barend Onneweer]

You run the tracker on the video with the girl holding the frame.

You apply the tracking data to the still that you want to place within the frame.

You may also want to look up the corner pin tracker in the Help files.

Bar3nd

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[David Del]

Yes, thank you got it. Unfortunately – the motion tracking data was too much, even when the person didn’t seem to move, the picture moved, so I am going to have to figure out how to minimize that…