mask tracking - does this work for anyone?

[Emerrow]

I've been using premiere for a long time, and I generally enjoy it. One huge complaint is the mask tracking inside premiere. ie:adding a lumetri color effect, masking out a shape, then tracking that shape across a clip.

Does this feature ever work for anyone? I've been trying it more and more recently and its always slow, and its always inaccurate in its tracking. I guess I'm just curious if that is everyone's experience.

[R Neil Haugen]

I've always found mask tracking in Premiere to be adequate. For general work. Not much problems.

There are things to track, that at times, really need the vastly better capabilities of AfterEffects. It can take a bit of testing to figure out which is what.

So what kind of objects are you masking, with what kind of motion?

[Emerrow]

I'm glad you've had luck! Today I tried tracking a picture frame that was well lit, simple 4 corner mask, and premiere's track was very off by the time it got done analyzing the footage. I will say that After Effects' tracking is really nice! I just wish premiere could use that engine/algorithm/code to track. I know that is something that people speak highly of in competitors like resolve.

[R Neil Haugen]

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.

[Emerrow]

The camera was moving - it was a smooth parallax type shot.

[R Neil Haugen]

If you have movement of both the camera and a subject item, different from each other, then it likely will be needing the better tracker of AfterEffects.

Or ... you can check aescripts.com, as they do have some for-purchase plugins that can help with tracking.

[Emerrow]

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check those out!

[AndrewTheGreat]

Premiere Pro really needs PRO tracking capabilities. Even Capcut does it better. Davinchi does it a way better. Trackiung in Premiere Pro is always inacurate and makes a user go to After Effects for this even for simple tracking... 

[Emerrow]

Definitely unfortunate for premiere when making those comparisons against the competition

[R Neil Haugen]

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.

[AndrewTheGreat]

The problem is not the pricing, app-policies or else. The problem is that dynamic link is unstable - has been since its introduction. I'd pay as much as Adobe thinks I should, if Premiere Pro had all the capabilities a modern video editing software ought to have, or at least the dynamic link was always as stable as launching the Windows Notepad. But it isn't. I always fear when working with this link between the two demanding apps that something won't go as it should. And It always does - once per session I get either an unlinked media on an AE-sequence created in Premiere Pro (which somehow doesn't link back), or I get a crash when using third party plugins or even AE own effects. Often I cannot render and replace the AE sequence in Pr because it just hangs... If it worked - no questions for Adobe! And I'm sure this happens because you launch Pr and Ae at the same time because I've never had any problems in Ae alone, and Premiere Pro works better if there's nothing related to Ae. I've even noticed that whenever I need something that can be done better and faster in AE, I do it in Premiere Pro no matter the time cost, because in Premiere Pro alone it... just works. And can you explain why an After Effects process remains in the Windows processes after you've closed it when using the Dynamic link? Is it necessary? Because while it's in the processes I cannot render anything out from Premiere Pro or render and replace the sequences created thus if I have used a third party plugin. Is it the plugins' fault? Why then it starts working when you manually stop the process or work in AE alone the third party plugins work flawlessly. And back to the agenda - Premiere Pro's tracking is aweful. There's a black door in my footage with a white plate with a number on it - I place a mask on the plate, track it and the mask just flies away as if I was trying to track water (it's just an example, no need to give me advice on that). Why does Ae track such and even more complicated things almost perfectly? Why does Movavi - a software for your wife and kids to edit phone footage - does the tracking better than THE PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE?

So, having got no answer, you go to After effects where you pray that this time it will work without a hitch... The problem of Adobe software is unreliability. Surely every program has bugs but at least in Davinchi, Capcut, Movavi, VSDC, Filmora, Blender (!!!), Hitfilm Express and Final Cut Pro - you have ONE software where you can track inside of it.

[Emerrow]

Ya'know it's funny bc I was going to reply and say that my experience is that premiere has been pretty stable for the most part. But then I realized when you were talking about dynamic link - that I don't use it at al. Haha. If I need to go into after effects, I'll do it the old school way where I export the clip as a .mov file and manually import it into after effects.

[R Neil Haugen]

This highlights one of those areas that .....shall we say, intriguing?.... in differences between even experienced users.

I've a number of Ae wizards among my friends and acquaintances, and for most of them, Dynamic  Link processing is quite stable.

Some have occasional issues. But most of the time, it just works.

I don't use Ae that much, simply because I don't often need it. I used to do a lot more in it. I had a couple DL problems, but was able to get around them.

There are clearly many other, also highly experienced users, with from occasional to nearly constant troubles with DL working.

Maybe Eran Stern, Nick Harauz, David Arbor, or some of the other Ae meisters could help with those problems. They're beyond my knowledge base a good deal.

And yeah, that's going to be a very maddening problem.