Shaky footage and moving foreground with a flash thown in

	Shaky footage and moving foreground with a flash thown in by Alan Tonn on Oct 18, 2009 at 8:52:58 pm Hello All I have a piece of footage that I am trying to track with Mocha and export that to AE for stabilization of the footage. There are few planes I can use and the one I am using is dark and grainy. the other problems are that eventually the movement of the footage causes that plane to disappear at least partially, there are people walking down an aisle in front of that plane and get a little in the way and lastly there is a lot of movement from all the people in the shot. You may have guessed, this is handheld wedding camera footage. I would really like to at least smooth the motion if not totally stabilize it. The biggest problem comes when the photographer's flash goes off and causes a frame to be really bright. It seems that mocha doesn’t like it and the whole spline twists and ruins the track. Just wondering, would resetting the spline fix the problem? Any and all help appreciated Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: Shaky footage and moving foreground with a flash thown in by Martin Brennand on Oct 19, 2009 at 10:59:31 am Hi Alan, I'd probably need to see the footage to get an accurate idea of what you are trying to achieve (feel free to email me a version of it at martinb[at]imagineersystems[dot]com). Any object that gets in the way of your tracking plane you can just mask out by creating a spline layer on top of the layer you are tracking with. Just make sure they are completely covered by the mask. You do not have to track the masking layer unless it is complex. Usually you can just animate it by hand. As for the single flash frame, your best option is to switch to manual tracking for that one frame: 1) Pause the tracker 1 frame before the flash 2) Set a key on your spline points 3) Move to the next frame 4) Switch to manual tracking 5) Do a manaul adjustment if necessary 6) Move to the next frame 7) Set a new key for the spline 8) Switch back to Large motion tracking Alternatively you can track both backwards and forwards to the flash point then do your manual track from there. Martin Brennand | Product Specialist | Imagineer Systems Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index