Track points are completely off

[TimmyTomson]

Hello,

I am having a big (huge actually) problem with the tracking points.
Everything they can be used for (Warp stabilizer, Track camera, ...) goes wrong because the tracking points don't work.

They are always on the same location, as you can see in the pictures I attached,  and don't track anything.

I tried deleting some etc. but nothing works.
The weirdest thing is that Warp stabilizer does work in Premiere Pro. Sometimes it also works in After Effects after trying and trying again without changing anything (Einstein is wrong with his definition of insanity)!

Can anybody help me? It's really frustrating...
Thanks in advance!

I use:

AE2020 17.1.1

PR2020 14.3.0

MacOS Catalina 10.15.5

[Rick Gerard]

Describe the shots. Both of them look like camera pans which give no depth info. 

Have you gone through any of the tutorials on Camera Tracking in AE? What is your experience level with AE?

[TimmyTomson]

Hello,

The shots are indeed camera pans!

They come as footage for tutorials concerning... camera tracking, warp stabilisation, etc.

In the tutorial the instructor uses the footage of the elephant to apply the warp stabilizer so I know for a fact that it should work.

The footage of the bus was just to show that the track points are always on the same location for any kind of footage I use.

And as I said: it does work in PR everytime and sometimes, after a lot of wasted time, in AE as well. Howerver camera tracking is no option in PR.

My experience level in AE is very basic, but I'm learning.

[Rick Gerard]

What tutorial? There are a lot of tutorials, especially on Warp Stabilizing and Camera Tracking that are pretty awful. 

If your version is up to date, there are no reported bugs in Warp Stabilizer or Camera Tracker. If you need to do camera tracking on a shot that also needs warp stabilizing the right workflow is to camera track, add your virtual layers, pre-compose, then warp stabilize the pre-comp so that the warping matches for the entire shot. Warp stabilizing first will throw off the accuracy of the camera track even if you pre-compose, which you must do before you camera track anyway.

Neither of those shots is at all suitable for Camera Tracking. If you need to add something to that kind of scene motion tracking or corner pin tracking with AE or Mocha AE is the most efficient workflow by far.

Point us to the tutorial so we know what you are looking at and what kind of advice you are getting and we can probably help. If you are working on a specific project give us a complete description of your design goals and show us the shot that is giving you problems.

In the meantime, spend some time with the User Guide. There are a couple of tutorials in there that use camera tracking and they won't lead you down a dead-end alley.

[TimmyTomson]

I follow the Lynda.com (now Linkedin learning) tutorial "After Effects Apprentice".
It is paid so I can't show the specific lesson but you can see a preview here: https://www.lynda.com/After-Effects-tutorials/Welcome/79648/118544-4.html

Perhaps important to show is the difference between his and my attempt for a camera tracking on the same footage, in the pictures in this post you can see his tracking points and mine.

And mine are, again, on the same place as with any other footage.

The most stupid part is that sometimes (after hours of trying) it does work, while in Premiere Pro it works flawlesly (warp stabilizer in that case). I also have another laptop with AE and there it does all work on that footage! This laptop is old, however, so not ideal for the job but it was just used to compare.

This really is annoying... What could it be?

[Rick Gerard]

What format is the footage? What are your camera tracking settings? The format/Codec has a lot to do with how well things work. What version of AE are you using?