To the gods of Motion Tracking.

[Carl Larsen]

The quick answer is that motion tracking is tough…and given enough time around it you tend to get a sense for what features will track well and which ones won’t. Sometimes hand tracking (at least a portion of the shot) is the only answer.

In the mean time, I’d suggest you check out Eran Stern’s tutorial, “a walk in the park” to address some of your out of screen difficulties. I’d also suggest taking a look at Mocha for After Effects if you foresee yourself doing a lot of tracking work – it’s really spoiled me.

Carl Larsen

TelescopeMediaGroup.net

[Cornelius Henke]

Yes, you are actually trying to do what is called “Match Moving” or “Planar Tracking.” Basically you want to track a shot – Make a fake camera that emulates your actual cameras movement (in this case a pan) and parent your footage to the virtual camera allowing you to put anything you want in the scene and have it act like it belongs there.

Mocha comes with CS4 and from what I am told is great. If you don’t have CS4 there is always PFTrack, Boujou, and more. You can buy any of them including older versions of Mocha, but they are not cheap. There is also what is sometimes called “2.5D Motion Tracking” If you buy Mark Christiansen’s book you can learn more about it (I think there is a newer version to this book).

Links below:
Book = https://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Effects-Professional-Studio-Techniques/dp/0321499786/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239285853&sr=8-3

Mocha = https://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mocha/

PFTrack = https://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/products/products.aspx?PID=3

Boujou = https://www.vicon.com/boujou/

SynthEyes = https://www.ssontech.com/

I’ve used PFTrack before and had good results automatically from the Demo, but there doesn’t seem to be much “visual support (tutorials and such)” online. I had to learn how to use it by following their manual while tracking – It took about 4 hours more than it should have. I know matchmovers who use Boujou and live and die for it, but it has always been out of my price range like PFTrack. That’s why Mocha interests me the most and I can’t wait to get a hold of CS4’s Suite.

[Bill Kelly]

You may want to take a look at Andrew Kramer’s set extensions tutorial. He uses several trackers parented to a null.

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/set_extensions/