Motion Tracking problems

[Clayton]

I am still unable to get this to work. I hve inserted, deleted, uninstalled, reinstalled, auto analysed and still with no success. I insert a clip to the timeline and select it. I move the cti to the desired location where the object I want to track is visible. I press the motion tracking button and "sometimes" I get the question if I want to auto analyze the clip. I have said no and I have said yes and let it do its thing. Either way I get to the same screen. No visible box to resize on the clip in the monitor. If I press the "add object" button, I get a box (not yellow), I can resize it and move it where I want. I then click on the "track object" button and it starts to do its tracking, but the fartherest it has ever gone is 24% before it disappears along with the box with handles, and I am right back where I started. I didn't know how to upload screen shots to this post but I did upload a word doc with the shots to my gallery. Please take a look. Has anyone besides Steve gotten this to work in a purchased version of PRE 8. If so please tell me your steps. I have followed the steps outlined in Stev's book and the online help doc.

http://muvipix.com/cpg/albums/userpics/ ... acking.doc

[Steve Grisetti]

Hmm. It does look like your Motion Tracker is aborting before it's finished. You're sure you've got plenty of free, defragmented hard drive space on your C drive, right?

Two questions, meantime:

1) Your clip isn't very long. Looks like it's just a few seconds long. Does that bear actually move over the course of that clip?

2) Remember that the Motion Tracker needs to find a distinct color block to lock onto. And your bear is certainly different enough from the water to be distinct! But I wonder if there's enough color in the bear?

Try framing just the bears ears, eyes and nose, or maybe even that bright spot on his back. You don't have to define a large area. You can position the clip art that the lock to it anywhere you want, once you've created your Motion Track. But make sure the area you're defining is brightly colored and distinct.

In fact, if you can't get this working on this bear clip, you may want to just try it out on a more brightly-lit, colorful object in a very well lit clip. See if it works any better there.

[Steve Grisetti]

Here's one other idea, Clayton. Locate this clip in your Organizer, right-click on it and run the Auto Analyzer. That way it will already be analyzed and Smart Tagged before you even apply the Motion Track to it.

Then, when you do apply the Motion Track, it should skip this analyzing phase and go right to creating its motion track data so that, when you add your clip art, it can build its keyframes.

[Clayton]

Hmm. It does look like your Motion Tracker is aborting before it's finished. You're sure you've got plenty of free, defragmented hard drive space on your C drive, right?

I have 135 gb of defraged C; drive

Two questions, meantime:

1) Your clip isn't very long. Looks like it's just a few seconds long. Does that bear actually move over the course of that clip?

Yes, this was originally an 8 minute clip which I tried first. I cut out a section to play with better

2) Remember that the Motion Tracker needs to find a distinct color block to lock onto. And your bear is certainly different enough from the water to be distinct! But I wonder if there's enough color in the bear?

Try framing just the bears ears, eyes and nose, or maybe even that bright spot on his back. You don't have to define a large area. You can position the clip art that the lock to it anywhere you want, once you've created your Motion Track. But make sure the area you're defining is brightly colored and distinct.

I tried this with no success.

In fact, if you can't get this working on this bear clip, you may want to just try it out on a more brightly-lit, colorful object in a very well lit clip. See if it works any better there.

I have actually tried it on people, seaplanes, ferry boats and the result is always the same

Here's one other idea, Clayton. Locate this clip in your Organizer, right-click on it and run the Auto Analyzer. That way it will already be analyzed and Smart Tagged before you even apply the Motion Track to it.
I did this to the large clip and then again to the smaller clip

Then, when you do apply the Motion Track, it should skip this analyzing phase and go right to creating its motion track data so that, when you add your clip art, it can build its keyframes.

One question still unanswered is do you get the "yellow" box with handles showing immediatly after you click on the yellow motion tracking mode button. Because I never do or do you have to click on the add object button to get the box?

I have put a 14 sec clip (largest it would let me upload) into my gallery. Can you try the motion tracking on it and show me some results?

http://muvipix.com/cpg/albums/userpics/ ... unning.avi

[Steve Grisetti]

Okay, Clayton. You can now feel justified in wanting to pull your hair out!

I downloaded your clip and I could not get the Auto Analyzer to run on it no matter what I did. And, what's worse, I couldn't get it to run on any of my clips! Even the ones I'd previously used to create motion tracks with!

So I moved the files over to my Windows 7 machine. There I was able to run the Auto Analyzer and create something of a motion track on it -- but not on your clip!

Even stranger, when I could get the Motion Tracker to work, it didn't behave. It started making a bunch of little rogue tracking squares that I had to delete.

So there's something odd -- and it's not limited to your machine or mine. Could be a Quicktime thing -- but I'm wondering if this week's Windows Updates may have knocked something off kilter.

But I'll keep looking into it and see what I can find. And know that I feel your frustration.

I mean, it's bad enough Premiere Elements 8 is so shakey on so many machines -- but when the one thing that DID work well suddenly gets busted, that's REALLY frustrating!

[Steve Grisetti]

One question about this video, Clayton. Is it from a miniDV camcorder or converted from another format? Or maybe was it captured by an earlier version of the program -- or even another program?

The reason I ask is that I've run it through G Spot and, although it is showing as a Type 2 AVI, it is listed as AVI v.1.0 rather than, as mine, AVI v2.0.

I've no idea what that means exactly -- hopefully someone on this forum will -- but I wonder if that's why your clip is behaving differently than mine.

[Paul LS]

I gave it a try... put the bear clip on the timeline, I then clicked on the Track Motion icon, it asked if I wanted to "Run auto analyzer to track moving object"... I said no, the box with handles appeared, I then adjusted the box around the bear and hit "Track object"... it tracked it for 25% of the clip and then stopped. I think it lost the object... rather then the object moving across the frame the camera is tracking the object and also there is a lot of camera shake (not surprised being so close to the bear... ). Anyway I added a clip art and ran the clip... you can see as you get towards the 25% mark the tracking object drops off the edge of the frame.

Anyway, I placed another clip on the timeline (a clip with little shake and the object walking across the frame)... it tracked the object with no problem.

I then placed another clip on the timeline... one where the object moves fast across the frame... as in the bear clip... the object was too fast and the camera shaky and it could not track the object and stopped the analyzing after a few percent.

I put another "good" clip on the timeline and it tracked the object fine.

Regarding updates to the computer... I have not done any on this machine for some time.

[Chuck Engels]

If this is similar to motion tracking in After Effects then the size of the box is very important.
In After Effects you can also adjust the motion tracking box if it gets lost and put it back on target and continue.

[Steve Grisetti]

Chuck, I can confirm what Clayton is reporting. The problem is unique to his videos. I can use the feature on my own. It just doesn't work on his.

[Paul LS]

As I reported above, it works for me apart from the limitation of the shaky footage in his video.

[Vidar]

Interesting ... I have had the same problem as Clayton, in nearly all detail. But I would like to add a few experiences. I have 2 PCs: PC1 is pretty strong, with an i7 processor, lots of memory, and until recently with Vista Home Premium 64 bit operational system. PC2 is a laptop, with an Intel Dual Core processor, 2 GB RAM, and with Vista Home Premium 32 bits. Both PCs are well kept, clean and with defragmented disks. On PC1 I experience the same problem as Clayton, but not on PC2! I have tried this for a great number of clips, with the same result. Last week I upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium (64 and 32 bits on the respective machines). And with exactly the same results as before as concerns the motion tracking. It works on PC2 and not on PC1. Can it be that the problem is machine and/or processor dependent?

[Bob]

That's interesting, Vidar.

Did you do an upgrade in place or did you do a clean install of Windows 7 64 bit? If it was an upgrade in place, there could still be conflicts in the registry or with other installed products carried over from the original Vista installation.

[RJ Johnston]

The bear can be tracked 100% in Magix MEP 15 Plus, so it's not that the video has the wrong characteristics.

[Vidar]

That's interesting, Vidar.

Did you do an upgrade in place or did you do a clean install of Windows 7 64 bit? If it was an upgrade in place, there could still be conflicts in the registry or with other installed products carried over from the original Vista installation.

I tried to upgrade in place, but it failed on both PCs. So I had to do a clean install and rescue as much as possible from the windows.old file that was created and my own backups. But I did not reformat the hard disks. How this affects the registry, is far beyond my knowledge. But I have cleaned and defragmented the registry using standard software after the installs.

[Clayton]

One question about this video, Clayton. Is it from a miniDV camcorder or converted from another format? Or maybe was it captured by an earlier version of the program -- or even another program?

The reason I ask is that I've run it through G Spot and, although it is showing as a Type 2 AVI, it is listed as AVI v.1.0 rather than, as mine, AVI v2.0.

I've no idea what that means exactly -- hopefully someone on this forum will -- but I wonder if that's why your clip is behaving differently than mine.

This was shot with a Sony mini-dv camcorder. TRV38 I think, this is the one that bit the dust after the Alaska trip. It was captured by Scenalyzer to my drive I store all my clips on and then imported from files to the project.