Creating Particle Tracking / Light Trail

[rschildt]

I am looking for a way in Adobe Premiere Elements 13 to add particle tracking or light trails to elements. Similar to showing the flight of a golfball thru the air. I'd like to have it also add these tracks automatically, without any user intervention. What I need to show is multiple (ie hundreds) of trails / particle tracks over the time of the video to show where these all begin / end, and have them stay on-screen so I can evaluate the group.

Any way to do this? From my (limited) research, it sounds like Adobe AE might be a better solution (which I don't own) with a plug-in (Particle Illusion), but not sure if this can do it automatically without me having to setup each and every one.

Anyone have any ideas on how to do this?

[Peru]

I don't think either will be able to do that automatically.

[Chuck Engels]

There is motion tracking, might be possible somehow. Will have to play around a little and see what can be done

[Steve Grisetti]

I think Chuck is on the right track. Motion Tracking would work if you then attached one of the animated graphics to it.

Though it's going to be a compromise. This isn't the type of effect Premiere Elements does well. After Effects and HitFilm are both very capable of doing it, though, and would be the ideal tools for it.

So I guess it depends on if you just want something that sort of works or if you really want something like that looks good and professional.

And, if you're looking to create "hundreds of trails/particles over time", Premiere Elements' limitations will definitely drive you crazy!

[RJ Johnston]

I've used the Echo effect in version 3.01 to create trails. The effect takes a while to render just for one second's worth. I just tried it in version 11.0 with some full HD video; the effect worked on a rock being thrown into a lake. The positions of the rock at various times are held long enough to create a trail, until the rock hits the water.



After adding the Echo effect to your video, try setting these parameters with these arguments:

Echo Time: -0.033
Number of Echoes: 40
Starting Intensity: 1.00
Decay: 1.00
Echo Operator: Maximum

Because of the amount of time it takes to render, only render about one second, and then check to see if you are getting the desired effect.

The longer you want the trail to persist, the more echoes you need (Number of Echoes).

Any objects in the video that have motion will create an echo.

If you experiement with this effect, you can lock up your computer entering too large values.