After Effects 2022 Camera Tracker point not sticking to clip

[chadiwack]

Hi, I'm trying to use the After Effects camera tracker as normal on a clip. The clip was shot on my iPhone 13pro in 4k at 24fps. (I also tried a stock footage clip and have the same problem)

I import the clip

Right Click> Track Camera

The Camera Tracker goes through the motions and at the end.. a few not many tracker points appear.

However when I scroll through the clip the tracker points float in place they do not stick or adhere to the clip. I've attached a screen shot. There is also a line of tracker points that run along the top of the screen for some reason.

I'm using a MacPro 2019. 192gm Ram. I've used Camera Tracker mutiple times over the last few years and never had this problem. 

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks

[Rick Gerard]

Your cropped screenshot tells us nothing about the shot or your workflow. You can't camera track a scaled or repositioned layer or one with a mask. Failure to get a solution can be caused by lens distortion, not enough fixed geometry in the shot, a simple pan or zoom, and many other things. Camera tracking just will not work on a lot of shots. 

Have you gone through any decent tutorials on Camera tracking? What is your shot doing? What are you trying to accomplish? With a little more information and some embedded screenshots instead of uploaded ones, we might be able to help you out. It would help a lot if we could see the shot.

[chadiwack]

Thank you for your response Rick, this is my first post on these forums, I totally understand what you're saying and I can see how my post didn't have much information.

I filmed a 10 sec clip on my iPhone of my driveway at my house. I walked slowly about 10 steps while doing a simple slow pan.

I was wanting to add a 3D model of some type to my empty driveway... a car or bike or object.

I airdroped it to my MacPro and imported the clip into Ae. It was a 4k clip but I resized it to 1080p for a quicker render and to be less memory heavy.

Yes, I've done many tutorials for many years using Ae camera tracker. I make tv commercials for a living. I've been using Ae since 1999.

However this time, I encountered a new problem in that the tracker marks didn't adhere to the tracked surface (my driveway). The just floated above in the air unattached. 

[chadiwack]

Something else I failed to mention is... for the first time, I changed the pathway for my Memory Cache from my internal HDD to an External Extreme SSD. I have my files on ONE External HDD, My Ae Cache on another SDD. I don't know if this is even relevant to the problem but I thought I should add that info. This was supposed to be a simple track, simply adding a CGI component to a video clip.

[chadiwack]

Here are 2 different screenshots 1 at the beginning of the cip and the 2nd at the end of the clip. You can see the tracker marks are identical on both images, they simple exist and haven't connected with the ground or image. There is also some weird thing where on the upper left of the images you can see a line of tracker markers running in a straight line along the screen. I have tried this on mutiple clips, including stock footage and they all have the same result. Any help or brainstorming would be appreciated. Thank you.

[chadiwack]

[Rick Gerard]

Try selecting Advanced Analysis. Try setting the angle of view to about 70º. The standard iPhone camera is about equivalent to a 35mm full-frame camera.

It looks like you should have enough fixed geometry to get a decent track. I would be happy to test your shot if you care to share it.

[chadiwack]

Good morning Rick, thank you for your very quick response again and that's very generous of you and your time to test my shot. Let me upload it for you. I'll downsize a small chunk from 4k to 1080p. FYI I also just now switched from Ae22 to Ae20 to see if it was a newer generational issue but it seems the problem still remains. I've used the camera trakcer many times and never had this issue until only this week. I'm hitting the "track camera" option not the "track motion" option. I even tried multiple other clips, my office desktop with VERY minimal movement. Other outdoor shots. ALL shot using my iPhone 13pro max. So maybe that codec is causing some problem. Your guess is as good as mine. Thank you again. I hope you can figure something out, It's a little frustrating lol.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

I did not have any problems tracking your shot. I use a free script called Normalize Track to get the origin and ground plane setup at the comp center, but that does not change how the tracking works. The tracking error was very small. 

I sped it up a bit, but here's the workflow. Set an Origin and Ground plane, then use the same Target to add a Solid and Camera. Rotate, Scale, add Grid, and set the layer as a guide layer to test the track. If all looks good, add other solid layers so you can see the tracking. Then start adding your composites. Normalize Track will put the Ground plane at comp center and right side up. That will make it easy for you to add 3D elements. 

I've uploaded the AEP - normalized so you can try adding a 3D object with C4D or Element.

My Quick Tips Playlist

[chadiwack]

Wow fantastic, especially with that Normalize script. Thank you so much. You've been a big help. If this still does not work for me, I'm considering uninstalling Ae22 and simply reinstalling it to see if that fixes anything.

[chadiwack]

Udate Rick, After reinstalling Ae 2022 and uninstalling Ae 19, 20, 21 lol everything now seems to be working in correct order. Thanks for posting your workflow. All these times I've used Camera Tracker and this is the first time I've seen how to do it properly with "good habits" Thank you so much, how have I not been using Normalize. Much respect, thanks for sharing the knowledge. Iron sharpens iron. Chad.

[chadiwack]

Sadly, everything worked great again for a day. Now the tracker is back to it's old tricks. I have no idea what's going on but I just wanted to wish you all the best for your future. I'll be exploring the forums more in the future. Thanks,

[chadiwack]

And again, another update. It would seem this entire tracking problem with the computer has only happened since changing the Memory Cache location in the preferences to an external drive. I noticed when I changed it back to Adobe's original HDD on my Mac that the problem fixed itself, which is probably why yesterday it worked after I reinstalled Ae on my computer again, the fix WASN'T the reinstallation but that the reinstallation had simply reinstated the pathway from my external drive cache back to it's original location. I hope this helps anyone else who may experience this problem.