How to add a "tracker"

[pedzsan]

In the "Tracker" window, there is a pulldown labeled "Current Track" and for me right now it has two choices: "Tracker 1" and "None".

I have a clip with five or six dancers that take turns dancing and I have tracked the first dancer and wanted to start a second track for the second dancer.  In this particular case, I figured out that I don't really need or want to do this because the dancers cross paths and I can just reuse the same "Tracker" for each girl.  But, I would still like to know how to create a second "Tracker".

So far, all the YouTube videos and web pages hasn't address this question.  I predict it is drop dead easy and right in front of my nose.

[Ko.Maruyama]

Hey pedzsan.

What do you want to do with the tracking data?

What features (position/scale/rotation) are you tracking?

You can have multiple trackers applied to a single layer.  

Each of the dancers can have their own tracks. You can modify them later, or link different data to each of them.  You don't need to make new layers of video to hold the tracking data.

You can start tracking at any time along your video clip. The keyframes will show up when the tracking calculation started/ended.

Don't use the same "Tracker" for each girl, unless you need to keep all of the keyframes on the same set of data for some reason.  

Also: CHECK OUT MOCHA AE for even more tracking options (it's free and inside After Effects right now)

[and OMG Adobe peeps: why do we still have CS5 instruction on Helpx?]

[pedzsan]

Thank you.  I got off track from this and never got back to it.  The web site reminded me of your reply.

I'd like to have separate trackers but I don't know how to create a new tracker after I've created the first one.  I will watch the YouTube you posted.

[thepixelsmith · Accepted solution]

In the tracker panel, click the Track Motion button again. This creates a new Tracker. I suggest renaming the Tracker by pressing the Options button on the bottom right of the panel. Basically everytime you click the Track Motion button it creates a new tracker.

Keep in mind each tracker's track point will still be named Track Point 1.

Multiple track points can be added to a tracker to track additional properties beyond just position.