Tracking motion so I can insert text on a video that was shot on a slider

[Matt Stoltz]

Hey Mike

What did you use to track this–If you didnt use Mocha or Mocha AE – I would definitely look into that. Its easy to figure out and a life and time saver

Matt

[Mike Simckowitz]

I don’t know much about after effects only learned few things from video copilot. not too sure about moca. I used after effects had my video later then made seperate text layer for each letter, then created a null object tracked the rotation position and scale of video layer then applied that to null object, then used the pick whip and parented the text layers to the null. I think my problem is in the tracking points… I really need to kno how to setup the motion track. also what is moca all about?

[Matt Stoltz]

Mocha can do all you did in probably one step-No kidding

watch this video -its an overview –dont let it scare ya -its actually not hard learning it -watch these 2 videos and you will see

https://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/mocha-ae-v2.5/view

https://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/mochav2_quickstart_tutorial.m4v/view

[Mike Simckowitz]

hey Matt I don’t like guys but I could kiss you right now! mocha is beyond awesome I will post the video

[Matt Stoltz]

haha no worries Mike –watch a couple into videos on mocha and what you wanna do you will find is pretty easy. If you have AE –you should already have Mocha AE in your applications folder on your main hard drive –Every version of AE now comes with Mocha AE –if you dont have it-you need ot make sure everything is updated.

I am using Mocha right now if you couldnt see from my thread-Something that is giving me a few issues but is so simple-UGGGH ha

Have fun

Matt

[Mike Simckowitz]

I spoke too soon… complications importing into ae even with the preset I dl from ae presets… fml. I wanna hire someone to do it but unfortunately I can only pay with peanuts….

[Matt Stoltz]

Lost me there –what do you mean AE Preset? You should be able to open your clip in Mocha -draw around an object to track and export the tracking data from Mocha as “transform” and then have your footage in AE in one layer and your text on another layer and paste the tracking data on the text layer and you should see that your text will follow the movement of the video.

after you figure that out -then you can put your text where you want it on your video

Make sure you paste your data and move your text on the first frame-becuase your tracking data should start on frame 1

Matt

[Mike Simckowitz]

yeah i was on my iphone but anyway i realized I have mocha already installed it seems kinda simple and cool it tracked the data but now my problem is getting the tracking data into ae and having it work properly. I downloaded a script from aepresents.com mochaimport but now i am going to try to figure out how to just copy and paste like you said…

[Christopher R. green]

More often than not I use a 3D camera tracker for this sort of thing. Just because the results are so dang good, and the process is much less ‘tweaky’.
PFHoe Pro can do this very (I mean very) quickly, and give you a perfect track (esp. when used in conjunction with my 3D track preflight script).

If you have absolutely no budget at all, and you’re on Windows, you can maybe use Voodoo tracker.

But you do have to be good at working in the planar 3D world (w/camera) in AE, and you have to be good at perspective (and it doesn’t hurt to know lenses pretty well).

-cg

[Mike Simckowitz]

thanks for the info. I literally kno a fraction about ae that you know. I only learn stuff from video copilot and reading on creative cow. I have it worked it now I just tracked it using mocha and parented the text to a null that I imported the tracking data too. it kinda works normal people won’t see it and it’s only a wedding video…. my problem is a combination of lack of ae knowledge plus I shot it really super wide angle which I feel effects the tracking… honestly thanks you guys for responding. anyone kno what someone would charge to create a clip like this if I provide the video file and choose a font?