[Stuart Elith]

I also like a sharp edge, so that you can really choose a specific point to track.

One shape I’ve seen on tracking markers is a triangle within a circle, which could be the best of both worlds, perhaps?

Like this : https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2203/2505310839_8ffb6c048f.jpg?v=0

[Stuart Elith]

Or you could create a little comp that has the animation and look that you want, and use it as a custom particle with particular. This would probably give you the most customisation both from the particle aspect (since Particular has great controls and options) and also as it would let you do anything you like to get the circles looking good. You may want to render out your particle comp so that it’s not calculating them all as it goes, if things start getting heavy.

[Stuart Elith]

Hmm, i don’t find the same problem, but i have noticed a few times that after working on very big comps (bigger than 2k resolution) it does get a bit chuggy.

One thing that may help is going to Edit > Purge and clearing up the caches… perhaps they are storing some of the render and slowing it down through that? Not sure, but it may help.

[Stuart Elith]

Actually Dave, I may be wrong (and often am!) but I don’t think the technique mentioned in that thread is applicable in this situation.
The issue is that the same plugin is required to have DIFFERENT settings in the two comps, rather than trying to see the SAME change, simply at a different point in time, in the same comp.

So you could make a DUPLICATE of the whole comp and have one version of Keylight set to Source (or whatever Keylight display option you want) and have one with the Screen Matte, but this would mean that when you update the settings, you’d have to update both (or link the values of one to the other with an expression, which would be too fiddly, in my opinion).

Lucia, I had a quick skim through the user guide and couldn’t find anything about having multiple display modes at once… it mentions “switching to Status view” which to me suggests that you swap between them, not implying that you can have both at once. Unfortunately, I really don’t think you can do it, at least not without a workaround.

[Stuart Elith]

The same way you find anything else on the internet… by googling! It is simply called BG renderer, and the first results provide a link and some threads about it.

🙂

[Stuart Elith]

If it looks fine within after Effects, the problem lies elsewhere…
For example, high resolution movies (like High Definition footage) are more processor-intensive to play back, and some codecs or methods of compression are also slow.
I can’t play back uncompressed high definition footage without it stuttering and stopping, but if I compress it differently (when I am rendering from after effects) it will play.

So it may be that your computer is struggling to play it back in real-time. Try bringing your render back into after effects and RAM previewing it… then you can see if it’s playing back fine within AE.

[Stuart Elith]

Also note, however, that if you have multiple cores you can use extra RAM in these (or so i’m led to believe).

See this thread for more info…
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/914619

You will need to look into the multiprocessor settings in AE. I use the great BG Renderer script which allows me to use more processors with additional RAM.

[Stuart Elith]

Your track will affect this as well – when you say the track is ‘spot on’ it’s actually hard to know, because the motion blur affects the position of the object, technically since it’s blurred the object seems to be in multiple places at once.

I have found that sometimes i’ll do a tricky track, and part way through correct the tracker to align with what i think should be the correct spot in a blurry frame, but that later this messes it up when the blur is applied. So once you get the plate to fit overall (by playing with the shutter controls as explained above), you may need to readdress specific parts of your track.

[Stuart Elith]

Are all your other footage boxes showing up? Perhaps you simply have disabled the Toggle Mask and Shape Paths.

The hotkey to switch it on or off is Cmd + Shift + H, or you can see the switch at the bottom of the comp window, next to the timecode.

[Stuart Elith]

Hmm, i don’t think you actually can do this – it would certainly be handy, but having the same plugin/effect output different values to two viewers doesn’t really work in the AE workflow… it would have to be something that was built into keylight, but as far as I know it isn’t.