Issue with perspective corner pin tracking

Where the points start is not really that important. The important thing when using AE's Motion Tracking is to select enough detail with the inner box to get a good track. The more highly compressed your footage, the more motion blur or general softness you have in the shot the bigger the inner box needs to be. With consumer grade cameras and especially video from smartphones the default detail area is not big enough. I find that it usually has to be about twice as big for non-pro footage. You also have to make sure that the Search Area, the outside box, is big enough to account for any and all camera or object movement in the shot between frames. The bigger the search area and detail area are the longer it will take to track, but a slow track is much better than a bad track that takes you hours to fix.

Also, if you need to adjust the search area or detail area during the track make sure that you hold down the Ctrl/Cmnd key when you make the adjustments and make sure that the attach point, the little cross in the middle does not move.

Another hint, if you are trying to repair a track and you have show all keyframes or even show multiple keyframes selected it can be really difficult to see what is going on. When I have a Motion Track I need to repair I open up preferences and set show keyframes to 2 or 3 or even turn keyframes off. You want to watch the attach point, the little + in the middle. That is not what you are tracking, that is where the center of the position for that tracker will be. Sometimes the track will jump quite a bit between frames. You can often fix this by stopping the track and moving back a frame or two and then tracking again one frame at a time.

If you have any problems getting a good track then try corner pin tracking in Mocha AE. With about 90% of the shots I track I get a better result in less time using Mocha AE.

One more point, and I make this often. Be sure and vet your trainer. There are a huge number of tutorials on the web by amateurs that don't know what they are doing. They can give bad advice and teach inefficient workflows that will foul up your projects and waste your time. Make sure they know what they are talking about. If the tutorial you are watching did not start off by suggesting that you change to the Motion Tracking workspace I would worry about the experience level of the person doing the tutorial. Check them out.