inserting road signs into driving footage

[Alexxx]

Hi Michael,

We did a test of this recently and ran into the same issues as you. We had to do some inserts for inner city traffic which was ok because there usually tons of stuff you can use as tracking points to lock onto. Because we travel at low speed <60kmh the motion blur wasn't too bad for the tracker.

However, what you have there seems to be a bit faster. This makes tracking a spot a bit more difficult with that much motion blur. We tried sticking tennis balls on sticks where we want to track the sign to...this worked "okish". If you cannot afford to re-shoot, and you have nothing good to track to then it's going to get a little fiddly.

If I had to do it again I would probably employ a 3D tracker like syntheyes or pftrack maybe and see how it goes placing signs using that. But again, at high speeds with motion blur, the trackers are going to run into trouble.

In the end our deadline got the better of us and we had to manually keyframe the movement to match. Not necessarily every frame. We tried to let AE interpolate as much as possible for smooth movement, but yeah, still had to do the movement and rotation manually. It looked good in the end. Keep in mind, though, once you match motion blur with the real footage, signage with details can become quite unreadable. Video a real sign and you'll see what I'm talking about. When we drive our eyes adjust to the movement and read the sign as it moves, a locked down camera doesn't do this and motion blur will come into play on anything not directly infront of the camera.

So after all that typing, I haven't really given you a rock solid solution, more an indication that what you are up against is not uncommon.

Hope you have luck with and not too many sleepless nights like us. 😉

Alex

http://www.lightdrop.com.au

[Michael Duff]

thanks for the help – this is going to be a dodgey keyframe job….has to be finsished today….oh, as well as two other projects…..grrrrr…..bloody regional tv.

Hey, you are from OZ also…..if you are interested in looking at me reel it is at http://www.duff.tv – the site is messy and under construction, but you can download my reel etc. Maybe our paths will cross in future….Cheers

Michael

Michael Duff –
Southern Cross Ten, Australia

[Alexxx]

Yeah, we had to fake it in the end, too, purely on deadline.

Checked out your reel, nice stuff. Particularly liked the Sturt Mall stuff. You work out that way? (ie. wagga wagga).

Alex

http://www.lightdrop.com.au

[Michael Duff]

I’m based in Canberra but we service Wagga –

looking for post-production work in Sydney if you hear of any 🙂

I’m glad the clips worked for you. I just chucked them up the other day and am yet to build a proper site. I’ve had some reports that the links were broken….

Michael Duff –
Southern Cross Ten, Australia

[Realethan]

You may have tried this but here’s what I’d do:

– Apply your basic far to near position and perspective change to the sign layer’s position and scale properties as if you were stationary, and the sign itself were moving past you.
– Track a point on your video’s horizon near the center of your field of view (but dont apply it to anything)
– apply this line to your sign’s position property(replacing “TheVideoLayer” with your video’s layer name):
value + thisComp.layer(“TheVideoLayer”).motionTracker(“Tracker 1”)(“Track Point 1”).attachPoint
(using the “value +” prefix will allow you to add position keyframes to your sign layer (and tween between them) while its still following your track.)
– scrub across the comp and add or tweak position keyframes. Then adjust your final scale keyframe so the that sign appears to be moving w) the terrain.
– You may want to also play with your motion blur (and depth-of-field) settings, this can be a visual red flag that can blow the illusion pretty quickly.

Ethan

[Michael Munkittrick]

How hard is the video industry in Ausie-ville to get involved in? I’ve owned my own place for almost 8 years now and have simply tired of the race here. I’ve got a few interested buyers, and frankly, I prefer the view over there.

I’ve got two short stints in NZ coming up for separate productions, but I’ve thought about just pitching camp there for a while. The trouble is that I’ve got to be “working” before I leave the ground here in the US. Are there placement firms that find employment for a fee, or is here an office dedicated to job placements in Austrailia?

Michael Munkittrick
Managing Creative Director
Evolve Media Solutions

Forum COWmunity leader for:
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[Alexxx]

Hey Michael,

Yeah it’s a nice place. Scale of production overall is a lot smaller here than in the states or europe purely due to the population size. So we don’t have as many studios as you guys, but we also have a lot less work, as well. It depends a lot whether you simply want to hop on board with an existing firm or start your own again over here. Feel free to drop me a line on alex (at) lightdrop.com.au if you want to chat a bit more.

Alex

http://www.lightdrop.com.au