mask tracking - does this work for anyone?

Well, there's a reason that Resolve has the better tracking. Remember, it started as a $250,000 per seat licensed app for pro colorists, right? BlackMagic bought it out, and at first dropped the price to around $10,000/seat as I recall.

A friend in a major suite "on the street" in LA was in a post-house that had bought four licenses about 3 months or so prior to the above. That's a cool million dropped for four rooms with "Davinci Resolve" ... and they were a bit more than ticked. And asked BlackMagic if there was some shall we say, accomodation, that could be reached ... nah, "you just had bad timing".

Resolve has since been turned into a total loss-leader, used to shill for BlackMagic's hardware. That was why they added both Fairlight and Fusion. Fusion, as a compositing app, also needs high-end tracking. Again, making that "app" into an attractive loss-leader.

Which is how BM pays the entire bill and all their staff. They don't make a dime on Resolve. So they've kept the thing going to sell hardware. 

I've got enough BM hardware, that I've got a couple extra licenses in a drawer, btw. I'm on the R19 beta, creating tutorials on using parts of it's new tools for pro colorisists. So I'm rather experienced in using the app. Far more of the folks I work with use Resolve than Premiere.

As to Premiere, when jumping to Ae for high-end masking is so easy, the devs simply don't see the need for the work to rebuild Pr's masking with it. I can understand, like I can understand a number of the logic chains used for other things.

I don't agree with them, but I do understand why they haven't brought that over.

Was the camera moving, not just panning? As in hand-held, maybe? I know if  there is camera movement going on, tracking in Premiere can be pretty iffy.