[Brian Lynn]

Try taking a look at SynthEyes as well… Boujou is nice, but expensive. Quick review of the SynthEyes website and short tutorial videos will let you know right away if it can create the tracking information you need.

[Brian Lynn]

What you did makes perfect sense, and I’m sure it worked well, although I think there was easier ways to do that. Would love to see your final project/results if you’ve got a youtube post or anything =) Love watching other’s videos. Youtube is a big problem for me (addiction lol).

But it just goes to show you how flexible After Effects can be… there is typically a lot more ways than one to do any task!

[Brian Lynn]

You COULD use the built in trackers that come with After Effects… but how much do you like your hair?

AE’s trackers are very good at what they do well, but they are very limited. To pull off what you’re trying to do will be a lot easier with a tracker than can understand and create a 3d camera move.

There are great tutorials here on CC all about the “2d point trackers” that come with After Effects. Andrew Kramer has a great tutorial here about making a “demon face” look. He tracks a video to remove the motion through a “reverse tracking” method.

Watch this tutorial, and then watch the tutorials on the website for SynthEyes… All the videos are very good, and will explain better than I ever could the features/abilities, and the limitations of different tracking methods.

There are other tracking software around, some of it VERY expensive, but I agree with Dave: SynthEyes is your most likely source for a solution!

Brian

[Brian Lynn]

You can also repeat edges to hide the motion of the track if scaling is not an option. All depends on how much your stabalized footage moves. There is a great tutorial here on CC for making a “Demon Face”. It starts with some great “reverse tracking” and stabalization methods.

Sounds like you’re trying to stabalize a 3d camera move… There are a couple programs that can help with this. One is SynthEyes… depending on how much repair your footage needs, and how it was shot, it might help you out.

I use a combination of SynthEyes, Mocha Tracking Station, and AE’s point trackers to stabalize an image depending on what is needed. The SynthEyes website has several tutorial videos that will probably be able to help you decide if this tool is for you or not.

Brian

[Brian Lynn]

Hey I found it!

Its a tool that’s part of Zaxwerks Layer Tools package! Too bad the whole package is $150… Depending on how my day with client goes I might just have to invest.

Thanks again for the input Dave =)

[Brian Lynn]

Yeah I had thought about using this method… I had done the tutorial on how to make a ring of Cow logos, evenly spaced in 3d, its here on CC and this is just a more complex version of that tutorial.

The problem is my client wants a few things in specific spots with very specific camera moves… the Null would work, and very well, except I am going to have to tweak this thing over and over (I just know it!) so it would be much faster to be able to just delete layers and then drop them back in again from the camera view and have them already square to camera.

You would think there would be a quick way to do this!!

Thanks for the response Dave, you’re the best =)

Brian

[Brian Lynn]

http://ftp.timeblend.com

user: cowshare
pw: ccow

Hope you have better luck than I! Let me know what you find =)

[Brian Lynn]

I have MPEGStreamClip.

It won’t open the MPEG file.

I am well aware of interframe interpolation issues with editing and working with AE and NLEs… unfortunately I can’t get this MPEG to recode to anything else. Typically I recode to uncompressed QuickTime and work with that if I can but:

I have QuickTime Pro. It won’t open the video file.

I have MPEGStreamClip. It won’t open the video file.

Premier – same thing

AE – same thing

Final Cut – same thing

Compressor – same thing

Some of those programs will re-code the video but if you look at the screen shot I included… you see that “Media Pending” frame in the video window? I get that frame across the entire video. All NLE will show the true lenth of the video but none of them will show any of the frames other than that one. Or, like in the case of Windows Media Encoder all I get is black across the entire video.

Playback of the video in media players works fine, and I don’t see that “Media Pending” frame anywhere in the video if I watch it Frame by Frame.

The only NLE I’ve found that can open the video and show me the true frames is some simple consumer thing by Sonic. But even that program can’t recode the video into something I can use!

I have the video clip and I am totally willing to provide an FTP download to anyone who would like to take a gander at it and see if they have the same issues!!

Thanks for the help already guys!

Brian Lynn

[Brian Lynn]

Check out these tutorials on Set Extensions, and Demon Face warp by Andrew Kramer. By combining the concept of tracking multiple points from Set Extensions, and reverse motion tracking to eliminate camera movement in Demon Face Warp, you should be able to stabalize the image fairly well.

You will likely loose edges and either have to repeat edges to hide black areas, or crop out an area you like from the middle of the stabalized video.

I’ve just started with a new tool called SynthEyes. Its a tracking tool that can interact with AE in someways, but it also includes the ability to stablize shots with many different options. Go to their website as well and watch the video on how SynthEyes stabalizes a shot. The arial helicopter video stabalization is the one that comes to mind. It will include some concepts you might want to think about as well.

SynthEyes itself might be the tool you’re looking for. There is a lot of good info on their site as to what the program is capable of. Check it out, if it works for you it just might be worth the cost for some of the features, like (I forget what its really called…) “auto-crop”. Basically it automatially maximizes the viewable image you can crop to based on where the stabalized image twists in and out of frame, not allowing the frame to hit black ever.

Hope that helps!!

[Brian Lynn]

Thank you both! Great info, and Lars thanks for the real life examples… those are almost exactly what I need to do on this project.

So, it looks like I’m going to get both. I always wanted Mocha Tracking station for corner pins but couldn’t justify the cost for most of what I do. Mocha-AE, well, can’t pass that up lol!

SynthEyes looks very cool, not very happy about having to purchase two different version to work between Laptop and Desktop though (one 32bit, one 64bit) but oh well. Will just have to restrict my SynthEyes projects to the office until I get a new laptop.

Thanks again for the input =)