Mask Tracking

Good Morning!
I'm working on a direct link project from Premiere Pro with multiple clips from an interview we shot. Initially, I made a master clip of the first time the interview subject appeared on screen, created a mask on her face, and tracked it throughout that clip. I had no issues with that one. The next time she appeared, I went to track the mask on the new clip and got the message, "MASK TRACKING FAILED. Footage for mask tracking could not be found. Please make sure there's footage under the mask you wish to track." My first thought was that maybe you can't use a mask tracking as a master clip, so I went back to the first clip, changed all of the color grading from master clip to just clip, and once again had no issues tracking the first mask. I then went back to the second clip, thinking it would now track and got the same message (MASK TRACKING FAILED. Footage for mask tracking could not be found. Please make sure there's footage under the mask you wish to track.)
Any ideas as to why this is happening?

Occasionally one gets ... odd ... responses, that do just go away with re-starting the program. Typically one of the first things to do with the Adobe DVA's if you do get an odd response from the program that sticks around is to re-start while holding shift and alt keys down, as it bypasses a couple of the background files and starts afresh. Glad you're working away.
In general, are the tracking masks working well for you? And how detailed are your masks, simple feathered ovals or multi-point ones?
Neil

Similar Messages

Is there a way to use Premiere Pro CC's new mask tracking with a red circle around someone?

I know how to do the face blurring, but just wondering if there is a way to put a red circle around someone or something and track it using the new mask tracking on Premiere Pro CC?
Many thanks in advance!

Yes this is the fix. I was getting frustrated over this issue. I use Dreamweaver across two minitors and the palette locations were resetting back to the main monitior where the app was. This unchecking and a quick log out and back in fixes the issue. Thank you!

New mask tracker is not working

I am trying to use the new mask tracking feature in Premiere Pro CC 2014 and it does not work. I am using native AVCHD footage from a Canon C100. Editing on a mid-2012 Macbook Pro with Retina and OSX 10.9.3. The project has GPU enabled.
I drop a Gaussian Blur effect on a track and set a mask to blur someone's face. So far so good. However, when I click to track the mask forward, it steps exactly one from forward then stops. It does not lock the computer, just seems to stall. The dialogue box is still up showing that it's working but does not show any progress.
I suspect this is a bug. Anyone else having issues?

I did a remote session with Adobe yesterday. I was able to show him the problem with the complex mask around the person that I was using, but we did a simple oval around one persons face and it created all the key frames. He suggested that only simple oval or rectangle masks are supported and that I open a feature request for a more complex mask. I realized I wasn't going to get any further help or research from this person and filed a feature request that PR should track any mask I'm allowed to create. I used around 75 added points to the rectangle mask to cover a person from the waist up who was not very animated. Still seems like a bug and I hope we can get an Adobe employee to test it out and acknowledge that it's a pretty big issue with their new feature and get a fix soon.

Bottom layers not showing when mask tracking.

So, I'm trying to do mask tracking, but I can't see the results of my masks because the bottom layers (the original footage) won't show underneath the mask. I watched multiple YouTube video, and all their videos showed when they clicked the little eye button. Mine doesn't do anything. I click/toggle the eye buttons, and nothing disappears nor re-appears. I just want to see how the mask looks on the video.
If I click on the bottom layer, I can watch it alone..... but I can't watch all my layers together. The top layer just has the transparent boxes (or I can toggle to black). How do I get all my layers to show at the same time?
p.s. I am on the trial version of AE CC. I just got it yesterday. I have an adobe creative account with Photoshop & Lightroom.
Above photo shows the top layer. Issue is that I can't get the other layers to show beneath this, I just see a bunch of transparency boxes.....

Hi Breanna,
The Composition tab is right next to the Layer tab. At the top of the composition area. Click the tab highlighted by the red box. (too late, looks like you found it!).
BTW, I know you from San Francisco Renegades and Facebook (come on and do the Chinese New Year Parade!). Looks like you are doing some cool stuff. Congrats on getting into After Effects. It's a lot of fun.
Cheers,
Kevin

Mask Tracker -- So close and yet so far?

Arghhh! The mask tracker was one of my most-desired features, and I was over-the-moon to discover that they'd done it beautifully and simply! No more going to Mocha and using mocha-import just for relatively simple masking tasks! This should save hours on some complicated tasks!
And then I discovered that it was adding keyframes to the "Mask Shape" parameter... which for most of my uses renders it basically unusable.
The problem is quite simply that I WANT to still be able to keyframe the shape of the mask! Mocha's approach of having a separate set of tracking data and shape keyframes layered on TOP of that is the right approach.
For the mask tracker I was expecting either a version of AE's tracker "Tracking Data" paramater that drove the mask, or something more elegant like a new set of "Mask Transform" properties that get applied upstream of the shape parameter.
Does anyone have any workarounds for this in the meantime? I love the idea, but need to still have flexibility in keyframing mask shape! Any hope of getting this fixed in a future update?

> something more elegant like a new set of "Mask Transform" properties that get applied upstream of the shape parameter
That is the plan. Just a matter of priorities as to when it happens. Thus the link that Todd posted just above

New "rigid mask tracker" feature question

I watched the short video on the new rigid mask tracking feature. He used the effect on a car headlight and there was very little motion in the shot.
I'm wondering if this feature will be helpful to me -- I've been working on a clip using tracking and rotoscoping. It is a person - running and jumping up and down. Here is the clip:
So - if anyone knows if this new feature (much anticipated) will be able to help me with this clip - I'll wait for the update. If not, I'll keep refining/perfecting what I've already done.
Thanks in advance for any input!
Kim

Sorry about that.... not sure why I would've changed that setting..
I was just trying to find out if the feature will be effective on an object that is moving a lot - and in different directions, etc..
Here it is:

Adobe's Color Finesse vs FCP's Color -mask tracking capability

I just came back from the HD expo in NYC and one of the speakers/presenters there was a colorist. He showed a commercial that he had colored using FCP's Color Application. I came home to check out Adobe's Color Finesse for comparison and noticed that it did not have some of the features of FCP's Color, i.e. the ability to create a mask for the purpose of doing secondary color correction and to be able to track that mask to the object being corrected. Is there a way to do this within Color Finesse or outside of Finesse even. If not, what would be a Color Correction Application that you could recommend that is as robust or better than FCP's Color.
Thank You

One of the advantages of Color Finesse being a plug-in inside of After Effects is that you get to combine all of After Effects' features with Color Finesse's color correction capabilities.
You can create whatever masks you want as an AE mask, and track those masks using AE'a built-in motion tracker, or use Mocha. Or you can hand animate the motion.
When creating masks and tracking them, it's easiest to adjust the color correction parameters using Color Finesse's Simplified UI in the Effects Control Window, rather than the CF Full UI, although that is still available, of course. You may need to twirl open the Simplified UI in the ECW to see the controls. And you may want to twirl closed some of the slider groups so that you see only the controls you want to use.
Bob Currier
Synthetic Aperture

Can I use mask tracking to blur my background?

There is a help video " How to blur a moving face" at How to blur a moving face with masking and tracking | Adobe Premiere Pro CC tutorials I need to do the opposite. I want the background of a "talking head" video to be blurred and the speaker to be in focus. Is this possible with Premiere?

You don't actually need two video layers, because you can just apply a masked blur to a clip, then *invert* the mask so that everything *outside* the mask is blurred, and everything inside the mask is unaffected. Here are the steps in detail:
1) apply the Blur filter (whichever one you want) to the clip.
2) In the Effects Controls pane, turn the disclosure triangle for the Blur filter and click one of the mask buttons (the oval is probably best for this situation). Drag and resize the mask so it covers the person's face. Feather it as needed (probably not very much in this situation, or you'll get a weird halo-like effect).
3) Back in the Effects Controls pane, under the the Blur filter controls, you'll now see a new option: "Mask (1)". Open those controls and check off "Inverted," so that when you apply the blur, it will apply to the area *outside* the mask, instead of the inside.
4) Turn the Blurriness up until you get the look you want.
5) (You can do this earlier, if you want) - but you have to track the mask so it moves with the person who's moving. To do this, start at the first frame of video. Make sure the mask fits well over the person at that frame. Then click the "Track selected mask forward" button (it looks like a regular triangular play button). It'll step through all the frames and adjust the mask on each frame. If it loses the person, just stop on that frame, adjust the mask, and track forward from there.

How to modify the new mask/track feature after you've left the clip?

After you've created an ellipse or polygon mask with the new filter feature, positioned it where you want it in the Program panel, then gone on to other editing, how do you later come back and grab that mask to move it's position?
Clicking on it in the Program panel just grabs the entire image, not just the mask. Highlightingt the mask in the Effect Controls panel doesn't seem to work either.
Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Highlightingt the mask in the Effect Controls panel doesn't seem to work either.
That is the way to select the mask.
Restart computer, restart Premiere while holding down shift+alt until welcome screen.
See if that will help.

Premiere Pro Effect Mask Tracking problem

I love this new feature, when you just choose the elpise o square and blur out the licence plate for example
but how to apply multiple masks and how to delete the mask for example when you do not need it, if the subject you want to mask out moves..
now the mask is travelling around when the subject is out of frame and blurs other stuff that is not needed
i hope you understand what I want to know
so first
1. how to delete the mask at specific frame
2. how to change opacity of the mask to 0% after keyframe ( I created keyframe, changed the opacity to 0% but this then works for the whole clip not only after the keyframe)

I tried to play with opacity inside the mask, and setting ot to 100 % and to 0% but it changes all the clips
So you are saying I should try the opacity settings that is above the blur opacity?
Yes for now I am dragging the last keyframe outside but it is just time consuming....
It took me like 2 hours to clean up easy car licence plate blur
I will play with opacity later and report how it goes

Masking & Tracking Ellipse, Pen, and 4-Point Polygon (square) tools missing from the Effect Controls panel

I am trying to mask a small area of some of the shots I am using for a small teaser. The three tools that are supposed to present themselves on the effects tab when I select an effect such as "Brightness and Contrast" are not there. Does anyone know another way to use these tools, or how to add them to the effects tab?

What version of PPro are you running?
Its only available on recent versions. Not sure 1st but CC2014.1 onward maybe .

Speedgrade crashes shortly after starting mask tracking on a clip.

Title says it all. No error message, just the usual Windows 7 message "Speedgrade has stopped working". Fortunately, Speedgrade autosaves the progress, so I can start tracking from where it has crashed...but it gets through about 15 keyframes and dies.
I also find it crashes sometimes playing back on the timeline. Say I accidentally scrub footage fast, the program gets confused, and will crash. Most of the time it gives me no error message, but once it did give me a Microsoft C++ pop-up. I would copy the message, but it hasn't come up again. I'm going to say in general, I find the size of the timeline annoying, because I mostly do this while I am scrolling vertically to see different tracks. I wish it could be expanded vertically.
I have updated the program and my Windows 7 is fully updated. My ATI Catalyst graphics are fully updated. I am using a computer with an AMD Athlon II Dual Core processor. I turn off all extra processes when I am using Speedgrade. The computer also doesn't appear to be overloaded when it is tracking.
Edit: Here's an error that did come up finally.

Hi,
Thanks for posting the error message. Which version of SpeedGrade is installed ? I'd like to take a look at some log files. Sent you a PM with instructions.
Thanks

Add Tracking Mask to PSD or .PNG Layer in AE CC

Guys, I'm pulling my hair out. Anyway you could give me a quick tip on how to apply a tracking mask to a PSD or .PNG layered on top of a movie file in AE CC? Man i'm going crazy trying to figure this out. Thank you very much in advance.
I see here: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-after-effects-cc/rigid-mask-tracker-in-afte... how to apply tracking mask to an adjustment layer, but the .PSD layer or .PNG layer mask doesn't offer the "right click > tracking mask" option.
Please, what am I over looking? I have an AE comp with a PSD file or PNG file which has some bricks for a building, and I need the mask to track as the movie ever so slightly moves.
Please help me. Thank you.

Nope, that's not how it's done. It's a little more compolicated than that:
Duplicate the car layer. Put it above the bricks.
Make a mask around the car. Do it just before the car gets in front of the bricks. Be very careful when masking. Click the stopwach icon on the mask path property.
Go forward in time until the car is just past the bricks. Double click on the mask path you made earlier: a box forms around it. Drag it back over the car and tweak mask vertices as necessary.
RAM Preview and adjust the mask path as necessary.
There you go.

How to create a moving mask?

Hi,
I'm new to after effect, hope can get some guidances here.
I shot this time lapse sequence of Clark Quay, with camera panning technique, have encounter some issues to editing in after effect,
The panning is not smooth, as I need to adjust the exposure on the camera during the sequence. I presume can use wrap stabilizer to smooth it out, but I also need to blur out some of the building neon signage (Riverside point, Novotel and CQ Clark Quay).
My question is; since the daylight is changing, so are the brightness of signage changing too, and it moves too, how do I create masks to blur the selected areas, and they moving along across the screen?
Thank you so much.

The jerks in your time lapse are not going to be smoothed out by Warp Stabilizer. You will have to do some manual realignment of those frames to smooth the shot. The flicker in the lighting can be controlled by Digital Anarchy's De Flicker plug-in. If you want to selectively correct the color in certain parts of the shot you'll need to do figure out how to create some procedural mattes. Red Giant's Colorista II is very good at this.
Flicker Free
Colorista II
Both have tutorials.
You might also want to check out this great video from my friend Stu Maschwitz that shows you how to use Mask Tracking and Effect Tracking in AE CC 14.
Effect Masking - Mask Tracking

Moving image inside of a mask

Hi,
I would like to have in my iBook an image which is masked and which can be moved inside of the mask.
Does anyone has an idea how this can be done?
Thanks

Background on track 1.
Front image track 2.
Mask track 3.
Animate track 2 how you want it to behave, make sure it stays within the mask.
If you cannot see the front image properly lower the opacity of the mask temporarily a bit. Just to show through.
Now nest track 2 and add Track Matte effect to this nested sequence.
Set Track Matte effect to track 3.

Mask Tracking

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for