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Inspiring
November 8, 2017
Question

Simple tracking and smoothing tracking data

  • November 8, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 5356 views

I have a drone shot where the center drifts a little here and there.  I have an obvious track point, but surrounded by water so warp stabilise is out.  When I track I get pixel jitter - the gross track is pretty good, but the jittering makes it useless.

I'm an AE noob, but I was doing tracking in discreet logic effect 20 years ago and it was more robust than AE.  Is there a simple way to do this?

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    1 reply

    Mylenium
    Legend
    November 9, 2017

    Without seeing your footage nobody can advise and then there's also the same as with your other post - no system info, no technical details. What appears as an "obvious track point" may not at all qualify as it in a technical sense or require different procedures.

    Mylenium

    Community Expert
    November 9, 2017

    It's also important to realize that After Effects does not have a point tracker, AE tracks areas of detail and for most footage, especially footage from prosumer or consumer cameras, the tracking area is too small. If you don't have about 1000 pixels that basically contain a pretty stable set of detail AE's tracker can't do its job. As Mulenium said, we have to see the footage to give you any real meaningful advice on how to fix your tracking problem.

    You also mentioned Warp Stabilize, but that's a completely different animal and will not give you the same kind of results. If you have some areas of detail, like water, in a shot that needs to be warp stabilized you pre-compose the footage moving all attributes, then create a mask in the pre-comp that hides the water, then warp stabilize the pre-comp and not the original footage. After it is warp stabilized you turn off the mask in the pre-comp and render a Digital Intermediate. I've used that technique many times, but here again, we have to see the footage to know whether or not that would be a good approach.