Replacing a Sign on a Building - Motion Tracking Questions...

First off, I should mention that I'm using AE CS3.
I have a shot of a basic zoom in on a building with a rectangular sign. The sign isn't shot straight on, so it's at an angle, but you can see all four corners.
I'm trying to replace the sign with a new one, so I figured I would have to motion track the 4 corners of the sign.
I haven't done a track like this before and I was wondering if anyone could help me out with:
1. How should I track this shot?
2. Should I apply the track to a null object?
3. I have the new sign as a pre-comp - how can I get the new sign to scale in accordingly as the camera zooms in on it?
Does anyone know of any tutorials or videos that show how to accomplish this task with CS3's motion tracking capabilities?
Thanks
Foochuck

See my answer on VideoCopilot. And please do not open multiple identical threads on different forums. It only makes it harder for everyone to keep track and get the proper answers.
Mylenium

Similar Messages

Motion tracking Question

I have a shot that is panning and asit pans a television will come onto the screen. My plan is to corner pin an image on to the TV. The problem is there is nothing to pin the image to until my trackers on the TV enter the screen. I just did a quick test and tried keyframing until I get all 4 trackers on but It's not as smooth as I would like it to be.
I read a post here about using the offset track but I didn't really understand what the poster was saying. Could anyone give me any quick "Motion Tracking for dummies" explanation of what I need to be doing? Also- we haven't shot the shot yet so is there a better way to do this setting up four trackers- one on each corner of the TV?

Yeah- I studied up on that. I've actually talked the DP into changing his shots around so the TV is always on screen. I figured I would leave the question opened for future use. Thanks

Motion tracking in PE12

How can I only get text to show during motion tracking? - I don't want the animation which is included!
Best regards...

SG
On what Premiere Elements version?
I am talking specifically about your second option for this Premiere Elements 12 Motion Tracking question....
The other option is to create the title BEFORE you do your set up your Motion Tracking, and then just drag it from the Project Assets panel onto your Track Object.
I see no opportunity to get to Project Assets to get at the title/text without shutting down the Motion Tracking workspace. But, if you insist it can be done, we will give it another look with Premiere Elements 12 on Windows 7 64 bit.
One alternative that does work (that you did not mention) was
a. create a text title
b. save the text as a .prtl file
c. place the saved .prtl file in the path
Local Disc C
Program Files
Adobe
Adobe Premiere Elements 12
Clip Arts
Common
and in the Common Folder place a folder named something like My Text, with My Text Folder containing the .prtl file.
That My Text category and the text file in it will show up in Graphics from which you can drag the text to the screen at the appropriate prompt in Motion Tracking scheme. In this approach, the text becomes a permanent and reusable resource under the Graphics Tab.
ATR

How to get Motion Tracking Mode to work?

How do I get "Motion Tracking Mode" to work? I click the icon and nothing happens, its like greyed out.

scouterbsa
Here is my check list for you to review regarding using Motion Tracking Mode in Premiere Elements 10 on Windows 7 64 bit.
1. You need a video and with enough motion in the object in it to track it. Color contrast between the object and its background can be important to success.
I created a DV AVI 4:3 in which I have a circle moving, and I have used a butterfly Clip Art from Premiere Elements 10 to track to track the circle as it moves in the video. In this example, you see the object only at 0 time.
2. Select/highlight the clip on the Timeline. And then click on the Motion Tracking Mode icon above the Timeline.
You should next see the following Motion Tracking dialog asking for a Yes or No to the question "Run
Auto-Analyzer to track moving objects?" Click No.
3. At this point, you will see a bounding box on screen. That bounding box should be placed using the mouse cursor on the object
that is going to be tracked, in this case, the circle. Resize and position the bounding box accordingly.
4. Once you have the bounding box on the object and resized, click on Track Object at the top right of the monitor.
The screenshot below shows only the before clicking Track Object at the top right of the monitor.
When that action is finished the bound box edges will be an orange yellow color. I have skipped over a screenshot
for the latter.
5. With the orangel yellow bounding box in place, next drag the Clip Art (in this case, Butterfly 02) from the Clip Art display area toward and into the orange yellow bounding box frame. The orange yellow bounding box frame will turn blue. That is the first sign of success.
Hit the Enter key of the computer main keyboard and watch the results. The Butterfly should track the circle's
movement in the clip. The duration of the clip and the continuity of the object's motion in the clip can be other factors.
If you do not succeed, try again with a different video clip (one with more movement and color contrast.
The above is a best case scenario. If it is speech bubbles that you are having problems with as well, we will deal with them next.
Right now it seems like you are having problems getting started rather than having a problem with a specific Clip Art that you are
using to track the object in your video.
We will be watching for your results.
ATR

Beginners Q: Motion tracking - Cannot move trackpoint

Hi all,
this seems to be simple: start motion tracking, move your trackpoint to the correct place that needs to be tracked.
Problem: I see the trackpoint, but cannot move it to its place.
The only way to do that, is to close AE, reopen AE & reopen the project, and continu moving the trackpoint.
This is only possible to do so for a few frames, then the trackpoint is fixed again, and moving is not possible anymore.
This topic seems not to be found on the internet, so I suspect a bug maybe.
Please help, it's driving me nuts...
any help is welcome...
-Edit1-
And as I saw an OpenGL error I'm providing also system info below.
SW:
AE CS6, trial version, no extra's installed. ver. 11.0.0.378
Windows 7 Home Premium, SP1, build 7601, 64bit
Driver pack ver. 8.98-120611a-141402C-ATI
2D driver ver. 8.01.01.1253
OpenGL ver. 6.14.10.11733
Direct3D ver. 9.14.10.0920
Catalyst Control Center Ver: 2012.0611.1251.21046
Used Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing: With & Without.
HW:
16Gb Ram
i7-3770K CPU @3.5MHz, 64Bit
Graph Chipset: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
-Edit2-
The more I mess around with it, the more I see the proof I need to restart AE to continue follow the same actions as in tutors over the net.
VERY often, I cannot move object with the mouse cursor like text objects for instance.
Is there anything I can do??

Hi thx for replying,
If I remember well, the error message was a general OpenGl one.
I did have the error message not that often unfortunately.
Graphic card is updated to latest version.
It's very annoying I cannot drag&drop after a while...

Motion tracking issues

I am doing a rather difficult (for a beginner) sky replacement on a panning shot.
My first issue regards rotation. I've selected position and rotation for my tracking points, but after applying them to my sky layer, it becomes flipped upside down (rotated 190 degrees) and also out of position. Correcting the position is as easy as selecting all the position keyframes and dragging it to the correct starting point, but for rotation this doesn't work (it sets everything to one value). I want the first keyframe to be 0 degrees and for it to follow on from there with the tracking.
Secondly, because the camera pans quite far, I need to change the tracking points midway through as there are no two points I can use that are in the entire shot. Similar to the first problem, I find that when I do this it resets the position of the sky layer, sending it out of place and upside-down. I guess what I'm looking for is a way to apply the motion tracking to the sky layer without losing its initial position or rotation (or any other value for that matter).
Thanks!

Thanks a lot, I do have mocha but have never used it as I'm still in the early learning stage of AE. I'll watch through a couple mocha tutorials though and see where that gets me.
Regarding the matte, I was intending not to use one as there is so much foliage detail it seemed impossible to key the sky out effectively. Instead I was just going to multiply the sky layer and apply a gradient. I've attached screenshots showing the start and end of the shot, before and after I've done my best on it. If you know a better way I can do it, I'd be very grateful.
Cheers.
Source beginning:
Source end:
With sky layer:

Premiere Elements 9 Motion Tracking Auto to Manual

I seem to be having a problem where I can't switch back over to manual motion tracking.
Okay, so I started up the program and one of my clips required motion tracking. So I added it and a box poped up if I wanted it to be auto motion tracking I said yes, to see how it would do. Of course it wasn't to great at tracking the object so I turned it off then back on it went straight to auto without asking I thought "maybe it is the clip?" so I tried it on a different clip straight to auto again no popup. I then thought "Perhaps a new project?" Same result. "Turn the program off and on?" You guessed it same result so how do I turn it to manual motion tracking?
Much Obliged

Sorry that replacing the Asset did not work.
By "loop" I meant when a setting cannot be undone, and regardless of the setting, reverts to a previous setting.
As I have not used Motion Tracking in PrE (I use AE for this type of work), I do not know what the next troubleshooting steps would be. I know that Steve Grisetti and Neale, both have used it, so maybe they will have a next step for you.
Good luck,
Hunt

Moving Groups of Tracking Points after Motion Tracking

I ran the motion tracking on some footage, and watched the tracking closely to keep the square on the person that I am tracking. However, once I applied the tracking data to the null layer, and attached that to the adjustment layer (which has gausian blur enabled) a lot of the tracking points are way off.
The footage starts off fine, but then huge groups of tracking points 1000's of frames in length are off where the live tracking points were by a large margin. Is there a way to mass edit these points to bring them back to their proper place, or is the only solution going frame by frame and point by point to bring them back into their proper position?
This is on a Windows Desktop machine running Windows 7 and After Effects CS4. If you need any other information, just ask.

Pre-compose the tracking data to a solid in a sub-comp and use that as an adjustment layer. You are simply seeing expexted behavior since you are creating a mismatch between adjustment layer dimensions vs. your footage/ comp dimensions and do not compensate for that. You can of course also try to do just that by using expressions like
X=position[0]+offset;
Y=position[1]+offset;
[X,Y]
Where you replace the offset with numerical values. That may not necessarily solve your problem, though, so try the first suggestion.
Mylenium

How do I motion track a facehugger?

Hi guys, girls, anyone else,
I've made video footage of me shaking around like I have a facehugger on me. I also have a facehugger model in maya. I've heard about motion tracker software and I'm happy to incorporate it, so anyway I was wondering if anyone had any quick tips or advice on getting the facehugger composited correctly onto my face. I was thinking about first attaching the facehugger to a model head and then painting it green to remove in AE later. My main reason for thinking this was that (as well as a front shot) i have a side view shot of me being attacked by it, so in the side shot i don't the legs furthest away showing...
I'm a total newbie to after effects so any help would be appreciated
Thanks
Rory

That's not an easy task, especially for someone just starting out. It involves motion tracking, possibly 3D camera tracking, bringing the motion of the camera into Maya and occluding any parts of the mask that would be hidden by your face, then composite the two together. This is not something that can be covered in a single post. This would be more like a 10 page white paper. Basically, you track the face, import the tracking data into Maya, mimic the lighting in the shot in Maya, and then overlay your rendered mask with your footage.
First, you must get very familiar with AE Basics. Go through as much as you can. Then you need to read up and watch tutorials on motion tracking in AE and Mocha. There are lots of Mocha tutorials on the Imagineer site. You need to learn all about how Mocha tracking integrates with AE, how to track, how to mask or do roto. You'll also need to learn a lot about After Effects motion tracking to understand the process . Once you get a handle on that you can start doing some basic compositing. Look at tutorials like this one on Face Replacement or this one on eye replacement. Those should get you started.
Get to the point where you can do something like either one of the last two tutorials and then start poking around the Maya forums to learn how to insert a head in your mask and render only the front side (facing the camera view), add motion tracking data from AE or Mocha, or any of a dozen other tracking programs, to Maya, and then you'll be ready to start working on your actual project. I'd guess 10 to 20 hours minimum of research and experimentation and you will be ready start on your project. If a client came to me with this kind of project I would tell them it would take about two days in post per 10 seconds of footage to pull off a believable shot like the one I think you want to do. VFX of this kind are not and never will be a simple 1 click 1 plug-in solution.

Motion Tracking Jitter Problem

Using CS3, I am basically trying to replace facial features on individuals in some footage that I have. (replacing mouths, eyes, etc) I have been through numerous tutorials on motion tracking and have it down pretty well. I am tracking motion for both position and rotation, and the motion trackers are pretty dead on. However, after I apply the motion tracking and attempt to to pick whip other layers to this (I have tried numerous ways, nulls, directly to the tracked footage layer, etc...) it is very jittery, it follows the motion trackers just fine, but is very jittery...
I have found a few other with this problem, but no solutions were found. The only solution that I found was a suggestion to Average the null with a long expression that I had no idea how it worked. It there a quick fix for this? My whole 3 minute video is relying on motion tracking and parenting layers to the original footage... PLEASE HELP
also, would Mocha be worth getting, would it solve this issue?

Here's a post that links to some resources for face replacement using motion tracking.
If your only problem is that the motion isn't smooth enough, and you want to remove some of the detail in the motion, you can use the Smoother or the smooth expression method.

Motion track track point moving out of picture

I open a door, and inside I want to put an image. When opening the door I want the image inside to reveal as I open the door. I tried to motion track the door opening so I could get the mask to follow the edge of the door. Unfortunately the door moves out of the picture, leaving the motion tracking insufficient. I tried moving the mask manually, but that didn't work at all. The mask couldn't follow the movement of the door. Also the door is white, so I don't have much contrast to point the tracker on.
Any suggestions?

Hi
Without seeing your footage it is hard to comment, but hey I will anyway! Are you trying to completely replace what would be behind the door? i.e. the doorway now looks out onto a completely different scene? I'd go to the end of the shot, where the door is clear and create/add a simple four point mask that fits the doorway. If you have your new image in the layer below, you should now see this through the open doorway. Now reframe the mask points and work backwards through the footage, if you're lucky you might only have to move one edge of the mask as the door closes ( presuming the door has a straight edge!). You might need to go back and fix the top and bottom of the mask depending on the angle the footage was shot at.
Sometimes its quicker and easier to animate these things by hand rather than rely on tracking.
hth
adam

I am trying to use motion tracking to have text follow a section of the background.The text box follows the motion path, but the text just sits there. What am I doing wrong?

I am trying to use motion tracking to have text follow a section of the background.The text box follows the motion path, but the text just sits there. What am I doing wrong?

Motion basically looks at the the source footage and it's timing (in the timing section of the Inspector) when analyzing for tracking. Filters are basically ignored by the tracker. Retiming actions, like time re-mapping, or retiming behaviors that are applied before the tracker should be used by the tracker. Did you change the timing after doing the tracking? If so this would also require you to re-track the shot. Understanding that you found a workaround, describing the effects you applied would help to explain why you ran into problems.
Cheers!

Possible to do the 3d motion tracking text in video with only adobe products?

I am very interested in doing some 3d text in some video with motion tracking, such as you see in the opening shots in the show Fringe.
You will have a scene of maybe a street in the city, the camera is looking forward and moving, you have 3d block text that seems to be just hovering there up off the ground but looks like a real physical 3d object in the shot as the camera moves around.
I have been looking up tutorials for this in After effects on youtube but they always use other non adobe products as well such as boujou or 3ds max, I am wondering if it is possible to make the same shot with only adobe products. If so, what whould I use other than after effects. And lastly, can anyone point me to a good free tutorial using only adobe programs if there is one out there?
I have seen one video of someone adding text to a moving video but it was flat or plastered onto a wall and not the nice block letters that look like a sculpture in the video.
Thanks.

I am wondering if it is possible to make the same shot with only adobe products.
No, you can't and that settles all your other questions. For tutorials, refer to VideoCoPilot's matchmoving and set extension stuff, but even then you will need to at least use some comemrcial third-party plug-ins.
Mylenium

Using Windows 8 64 bit Premiere Elements 12 , motion tracker gives me the folloing error; The media file seems to have an invalid entry in the catalog, please rename it for use.

I'm trying to put a graphic over an object, but I keep getting this error message; The media file seems to have an invalid entry in the catalog, please rename it for use.

Lonesomeless
Thanks for the reply.
I checked the link that I posted back in post 3 of your thread. It is working with at least Firefox and Chrome.
ATR Premiere Elements Troubleshooting: PE12: Motion Tracking/What To Use To Track Object?
What browser are you using?
The blog post contains significant information related to Premiere Elements 12 Motion Tracking. But, if you cannot access it for some reason, then we will need to troubleshoot via communications in the thread.
SG has asked if you are able to create Motion Tracking effect using one of the graphics included with the program. We will watch for your response to him on that question. Please include in your message to him whether you can obtain your file to track the object using Organizer Tab or Project Assets routes as well as Graphics Tab.
The following is an excerpt from the blog post referenced....
SOLUTION
Various tutorials and online comments have pointed to places other than Graphics Tab where objects can be selected and used to track the moving object in the video when the Motion Tracking workspace is opened in the Expert or Quick workspace.
Organizer Tab, Expert or Quick workspace to access Elements Organizer 12. Cascade Windows and drag a video or photo from Elements Organizer into the yellow track box of Motion Tracking workspace.
Project Assets, Expert workspace. Drag text, video, or photos from opened Project Assets into the yellow track box of Motion Tracking workspace.
Graphics Tab, Expert or Quick workspace. Create a png file (graphic) or prtl file (text) and place it in Clip Arts in the Program Files of the program to have a permanent resource. Then from Graphics Tab, drag the newly created graphic or text object into yellow track box of Motion Tracking workspace.
Thanks.
ATR

Motion tracking effect mask not working

I've no trouble with normal motion tracking, adding clip art to it and having the clip art track, etc. But according to the help in PE8, effects masks are also supposed to be able to be used. According to help:
You can also apply Effects Mask in the Motion Tracking mode.
1. Select a clip in the Timeline or Sceneline.
2. Select the clip, and click to enable the Motion Tracking mode.
3. Select any one of the tracked objects (shown by a yellow frame).
4. Select Edit > Effects.
5. Drag the effect you want to apply onto the tracked object on the Monitor panel.
The Effects Mask is applied automatically and the mask moves with the moving object. If you apply multiple effects to the clip, all the effects use the same mask.
I've done that and I get a mask but it does not move with the tracked object. Any hints?

I've no trouble with normal motion tracking, adding clip art to it and having the clip art track, etc. But according to the help in PE8, effects masks are also supposed to be able to be used. According to help:
You can also apply Effects Mask in the Motion Tracking mode.
1. Select a clip in the Timeline or Sceneline.
2. Select the clip, and click to enable the Motion Tracking mode.
3. Select any one of the tracked objects (shown by a yellow frame).
4. Select Edit > Effects.
5. Drag the effect you want to apply onto the tracked object on the Monitor panel.
The Effects Mask is applied automatically and the mask moves with the moving object. If you apply multiple effects to the clip, all the effects use the same mask.
I've done that and I get a mask but it does not move with the tracked object. Any hints?

Replacing a Sign on a Building - Motion Tracking Questions...

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for