[Christopher R. green]

Oh yes, we do hate the way the tracker gives up at the edges, don’t we?

Overkill for some applications, but by far the best software for the money is PFHoe, PFTrack’s little brother.

Ignore the funny name, learn the quirks, see the glory of perfect camera tracking algorithms.
Got my award for favorite software of ’05, and so far ’06 has no challengers.

cons:
no numeric entry to (for example) keep scale values consistant;
some interface problems (watch out for the disappearing scale handles);
severe adjustments for scale are necessary before exporting for ae;

And that’s my quick 2-cent review.

[Christopher R. green]

Hi Bob.
Let me first apologize for being in a hurry and not doing my usual thorough checking before I answer.
That said, maybe I can get you there. It’s been a while since I used this plugin, but I used it a couple of times, and found the results to be pretty amazing. The interface for the plugin is, as you have suggested, puzzling, though.
There are global fluctuations of luminance in an image and local fluctuations. The plugin is meant to correct the former. If there are too many local fluctuations (the UFO in the example below), you probably will have a real tough time.

Let’s see if memory serves.

Try using the levels option first: in order of complexity, brightness is the simplest, then levels, then curves (which, as I recall, was just too complicated to work for my application).
You need to place the black and white marks where the image is darkest and lightest, respectively, but fluctuations of values in these areas should be correctable, that is, global fluctuations. For example, let’s say you have a bright sky and you put the white sampler mark in the sky. That’s fine, but if a bird or cloud or UFO flies behind that sample mark, the plugin will try to compensate by changing the levels globally. You can see why this will yield bad results. To stick with this example, if I really want the mark to sample those bright sky areas, I’d have to animate (keyframe) the white point sample mark for those UFO frames, moving it to get out of the way of the UFO so that it samples the bright sky only.
Also, use a big sample size. This, if I remember correctly, was pretty important. I think I used sample sizes of at least 10 pixels, probably more like thirty. Of course, this depends on the image. The default sample size is 3, which was always way too specific.

Good luck …

CG

[Christopher R. green]

Thanks! I hope you find this stuff useful. I had to correct a silly bug this morning, so make sure you have the latest (1.5) version.

-cg

[Christopher R. green]

Treading on OT territory, I guess …

My roommate and I did a couple of tests with AE and FCP, and came to the conclusion that FCP does not correctly interpret movies as anamorphic — even if that movie was exported from FCP. The ‘Anamorphhic’ property flag has to be set ‘by hand’ after being imported, even if all preferences are set to 16:9 anamorphic.
Strangely, it seems that earlier versions of FCP (like pre-v3 or something) could correctly automatically recognize anamorphic movies. This page:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/understanding_16_9.html

seems to show evidence of this.

mlondon, maybe an answer to this would be an automation solution. Email me by way of https://www.crgreen.com and maybe I can whip up a solution for you. I’ll need to ask you some questions about the way you’re working (I have a few possibilities in my head, each of which depend on a number of factors) and don’t want to do that here, since this really is an FCP issue.

[Christopher R. green]

Well, thanks!
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions …

CRG

[Christopher R. green]

In the interim, you could save the doc as a text file and try my new script:

https://www.crgreen.com/aescripts/

gosh … any excuse for a plug …

[Christopher R. green]

[Colin Braley] “That script with the vertabra was strange but a cool idea nonetheless.”

You forgot “utterly useless”!

Some day it will come in handy, I’m sure of it …

Thanks for the feedback!

[Christopher R. green]

Problem solved.

[Christopher R. green]

Apologies to anyone using Safari and getting a blank page (!)

I am currently working to resolve the problem …

[Christopher R. green]

Not to mention the fact that it’s a pop-up menu. I’m curious about this, too. Must be a Windows thang.