Mocha AE and Sony Vegas

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Smith] “I have installed the trial version of Mocha AE. I do not see the plugins in Sony Vegas 10 pro. How do I get them to show up in Vegas?”

The “AE” in Mocha AE stands for Adobe “After Effects”. This is not a Vegas plug-in. It’s tool for use with After Effects.

What you want to get is the Motion Tracking for Editors bundle which is Mocha AE v2.6.1 and the Boris Continuum Motion Tracker Unit from Boris FX. That will work just fine in Vegas Pro 10 & 11. You use Mocha AE to generate tracking data which you then save to a file and use with Boris Continuum Motion Tracker Unit: Match Move, Corner Pin, Witness Protection, or Wire Remover.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tim Smith]

Thanks alot John,

I have all that set up now. Can you give me some advice on the best way to track text. I have watched a tut about drawing the large box around the spot you want to track and then putting the other area inside(corner pin?). I followed that, but when I got back to vegas the “tracking file” was not matching with the source footage. This is my 1st time attempting this so I’m probably not doing it correctly.

I have some footage of a small waterfall, the camera pans. I want to place some text(from generated media?) in area where the water fall is. I also want to use 3d source alpha so I can use the videos track track motion to alter the text to be inline with the waterfall.

I have been wanting to learn how to do this for a while now, any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Smith] “I have watched a tut about drawing the large box around the spot you want to track and then putting the other area inside(corner pin?). I followed that, but when I got back to vegas the “tracking file” was not matching with the source footage. This is my 1st time attempting this so I’m probably not doing it correctly.”

Is your source footage and Vegas project set to the same width, height, and pixel aspect ratio? If fact, this works best if your pixel aspect ratio is 1.0.

[Tim Smith] “I have some footage of a small waterfall, the camera pans. I want to place some text(from generated media?) in area where the water fall is. I also want to use 3d source alpha so I can use the videos track track motion to alter the text to be inline with the waterfall.”

3D Track Motion is not going to work with Mocha AE. You can only use the Boris plug-ins like Match Move for this because only the BCC plug-ins will interpret the tracking data.

Do you really need a planar tracker for this shot? Have you tried just using BCC Match Move without using Mocha?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tim Smith]

To be honest I don’t know what I need, I’m totally new to this. I thought I needed mocha to get the tracking data?? Your saying I can use the Match Move to accomplish 3d text motion tracking all within Vegas?

How do I do that?

Thanks

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Smith] “Your saying I can use the Match Move to accomplish 3d text motion tracking all within Vegas? How do I do that?”

Follow this tutorial on BCC Match Move from BorisFX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YvYJuHoVp0

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

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[Tim Smith]

Thaks alot John, I’m following your tutorial 🙂 I’m stuck on somthing, I started the process up to dynamic ram preview a small amount(it stopped). Then when I go to last good frame and try to drag the cursor to the end I keep getting the “Move the timeline cursor” message. It just seems messed up, I restarted Vegas once.

[Tim Smith]

Hummmm, I figured out a workaround. Ram preview the clip first without the plugin. Then when I followed your steps it worked great.

[John Rofrano]

Make sure that you are not doing this in the middle of a project. This must be done in a separate project at the beginning of the timeline.

Also make sure that you increase your RAM Preview so that it doesn’t have to stop so often. I have mine set to 1024MB and I have 8GB of RAM in my system. Also make sure you are using a Full resolution (Preview(Full), Good(Full), etc.)

When you track using Shift+B, you’ll see a green bar start to grow from the lower left corner of the preview. When it tells you to move your cursor to the last good frame, you need to move the cursor back to the end of the green bar. Just keep backing up a frame until the message goes away. Then you need to make a new timeline selection from that frame to the end of the event. Then press the Clear Render Cache button and press Shift+B again to resume tracking.

If that doesn’t fix the problem, then you probably need to make your tracking rectangle bigger. Adjust the Target Width and Search Width to be bigger. You’ll get the hang of it after a while.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Smith] ” I figured out a workaround. Ram preview the clip first without the plugin. Then when I followed your steps it worked great.”

That’s great. Well… if you get into trouble later, read my other reply which gives you some tips on how to recover from lost tracking.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Otis Lowe]

I have scoured the internet looking for a solution to the problem(s) I am having. I have seen/read about other instances of this, but no solution has ever been given. Here is the issue; I upgraded and installed Vegas 11 Pro 64 bit onto my Dell Studio XPS because I am in need of the planar tracking in Mocha Pro (which I also purchased). Before dropping almost 6 bills on Boris Continuum Complete 64 bit, I downloaded the trial version (which has almost run out). Below is a screen capture of my clip with all the settings.

As you can see from the image above, the project and render settings are the same and the preview is set to best (I rendered out to AVI). When I open it up in Mocha Pro, it looks like this;

As you can see from the above image, the project settings are the same (or so it seems) HDV 1080 24P (1440 x 1080, 23.976 fps), progressive scan and 1.333 pixel aspect ratio across the board. The only thing I did notice is there is no option in Mocha to differentiate between 1920 x 1080 and 1440 x 1080. There simply is an HD and HDV setting.

Anyway, I use Mocha to track the monitor(s) and it locks on and does its thing as I track forwards and backwards. When done, I save as a BCC Corner Pin text file. Now here is where things go south. Upon re-entering Vegas 11, I add the clip I want to be seen inside the monitor I tracked earlier, select the original source track that was used to render out to AVI, select custom in the compositing mode, select BCC corner pin and load the text file created earlier. What I get is this;

The tracking data is way off. Now I know the frame rate, aspect ratio, etc are very important to making sure the tracking data lines up correctly, but as far as I can tell, all is correct in those fields. Is there a step I am missing? I have watched the few tutorials there are on using Mocha in conjuntion with Boris and Vegas 11 and I have yet to come across anything adressing this issue. I have tried other frame rates, aspect ratios and file formats (even motion JPEG) and the results are all the same. Any advice, pointers or solutions to this issue would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. I have tried simply using BCC corner pin to track this sequence and it never locks on.