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Known Participant
August 27, 2017
Question

Up To Date Motion Tracking Tutorial For Premiere Elements 15

  • August 27, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 1284 views

Hi,

Could someone please link to an up to date tutorial for motion tracking in Premiere Elements 15?

All the tutorials and help files I can find reference items in the interface that no longer exist or have been moved somewhere.   As example, see this page...

Adobe Premiere Elements Help | Apply motion tracking in video clips

It references the Action Bar, without explaining what or where the action bar is.   Once I figure out where the Action Bar is, I see there is no Graphics button there as referenced in the help file.   Game over.

A Google search brings up lots of stuff, but it all seems to be for older versions.

Many thanks!

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    3 replies

    Legend
    August 28, 2017

    This is a user to user forum, Felasco. Occasionally one of the techs drops by -- but for the most part they leave it up to use Adobe Community Pros.

    You might be able to reach Adobe via chat from here:

    contact Help

    FelascoAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 28, 2017

    If they're not here, they don't want to talk with their customers.  That's pretty normal I guess.

    Ok, it's their problem, let's leave them to solve it.  You know, if someone can't figure out how to use an Adobe product then there's not much chance they're going to buy more of them.

    Legend
    August 28, 2017

    Actually Adobe uses several tutorials from my lynda.com class in its how-to tips and on eLive. But, yeah, if you can convince Adobe, I'm all for them paying me!

    FelascoAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 28, 2017

    I'm very new to this forum, especially compared to you.  Does Adobe participate on their own forum?  I really don't know.

    If they are here, please help me identify Adobe employee forum members, and I'll make the case as best I can.  

    If they are not here on the forum, that would seem to tell us that Adobe is not too interested in talking with it's customers, so convincing them of anything seems unlikely. 

    Legend
    August 27, 2017

    I show you how to do it in version 15 in my course on lynda.com.

    Following people in your video with Motion Tracker

    FelascoAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 28, 2017

    Thanks for the tip Steve.  I am aware that you sell Premiere instruction, and from what I've seen in the free samples, it looks like you do a good job of it.  So kudos for that, and of course I wish you the best of luck in your business.

    However, if it turns out that I have to buy instruction from you to get this working to me that equals Adobe failing to do it's job.  I'd rather not come to that conclusion just yet.   To me, I already paid Adobe, so it's their job to either design the interface so that not much instruction is required, or provide the needed instruction.

    I just spent an hour trying to create the simplest tracking test, and it failed every time.  Again, the interface references items that simply don't exist in PE 15, which confuses the process considerably.  It says, grab your graphic from the Action Bar, but there is nothing in action bar except redo, undo, and organizer.  The video tutorial you link to does the same thing except worse, so I expect it was made using an earlier version of PE.

    Sometimes dragging from organizer works, sometimes not.  When it does work, image is wrong size (understandable) and can't be resized (not acceptable).

    Yesterday I was able to get it to work once.  The tracking was really sloppy.  However, it did automate the process of creating a bunch of keyframes, and that was indeed helpful.  Once I went in to the timeline and edited every third keyframe or so, the end product turned out acceptably well.

    Verdict:  Tracking is a very cool and promising feature, which is not currently implemented or explained very well.  I can see they've made a good faith effort to make it intuitive, but they're definitely not there yet.   They should test this stuff on newbies before they release it, and they would immediately see the problem.

    BTW, I've been designing software for 20 years.  I'm not just pulling these opinions out of my you know where.

    Legend
    August 28, 2017

    I use a lot of tutorials when I do everything from tuning up my car to installing shelves in my bathroom to doing special effects in After Effects. But I've never thought to blame the producers of the product for failing me because of that.

    But it's an interesting opinion nonetheless.

    And for the record, that's lynda.com selling my course. Not me.