Motion Tracking Question

FilmMagic

FilmMagic

Active member
Hey guys. Helping a friend do an "HP" parody of the frame commercial. I've done this before just trying to see the level of difficulty. Other than learning how to create masks, there's really only one thing I have a question about. Is there a way to freeze/export what is inside the 'picture frame' without exporting the entire frame and having to crop it in photoshop? It's hard to crop it just right in Photoshop as I'm sure you can obviously understand. Thanks in advance.
 
Well, like you said: motion tracking. track the 4 interior corners of your frame. You should be able to use that data with corner pinning to create a matte. Doing it in Photoshop is definitely the WRONG way to go.
 
I think I would play with the layers. cut the given photos, and put them in a new layer.
or just freeze a frame and mask it and then you don't have to work with pics, just freezed videoclips. and then just mo-track one point of that yellow thing, and add some expression to move it in the middle.
 
dougspice,
I tried a track matte and things started looking up but unfortunately, I didn't know where to go after getting the black matte tracked in the frame. Still learning AE. Grr.

surf,
I exported the entire frame and then used the pen tool to cut out what was inside that frame. I've almost got it, but the only problem is that it's tracking the empty space around what was cut out. So in other words, it tracked what was cut out but it's a tiny picture space all around it and that's all inside the frame. Could you elaborate just a little on motion tracking one of yellow points. I understand the idea but I'm not seeing a possible way to do that.


Thank you both for your help.
 
Thanks Scott. I gave it a shot but I still don't see how to track the points of the mask. Here is what I'm looking at. http://www.blsmagic.com/aess.html Maybe you might spot somthing I'm doing wrong. I tracked the picture frame, then I exported a frame, imported it back in and then cut out what was inside the picture frame using the pen tool. I just didn't see how to track the points on the mask. Plus, if it just tracks the mask, the entire frame would move with it or would it? I thought if I just tracked the mask, it would just be showing different parts of the frame as the masked moved around. I really appreciate all your help as I'm learning AE.
 
in the lower layer you should track on the original video the yellow corner thing. then you have to position the cut picture to the mo-track point with expressions.
 
surf,
I'm still not seeing a way to track the "yellow corner thing" which I guess you're talking about the mask.
I apologize to all. I think I need to take a class on AE so I can stop bothering you guys with my dumb questions. :-P I'll keep messing with this and hopefully I will see how to track the mask. Is there any way to crop a pic on AE? Looked on Help and didn't see anything. Thanks again guys.
 
AE should still come with a corner pin tutorial. Take a look at that or look up corner pin (with tracking) in the help menu.
 
well there are several tutorials about tracking in the help of AE. try those. I am afraid, I am not able to tell it because my AE is German I speak Hungarian, and I cannot translate German to English
 
Thanks guys. I really appreciate all your help. I'm still pretty much a beginner in AE so I'm sure there are plenty of AE terms that I don't know, like probably well over 50%. From now on I'll try to ask normal questions. :) Thanks again.
 
As Scott wrote, all you need for rotation, size, and perspective is the Corner Pin. You are not really "masking" anything, just tracking the four corners of the "picture frame" and then applying an image or video to those points. So, if the points were in a perfect square which was 40 pixels by 30 pixels, AE would automatically shrink your new footage to fit, and would rotate and change the shape/size accordingly as you moved it. You will want to enable motion blur to make it look more accurate.

Read this:

http://www.adobe.com/tips/aft65cornerpin/main.html

That will get you on your way.

Hope that helps

:thumbsup:
 
Thanks Rapier,
That's basically what I was doing. I was just hoping there was a way freeze what was inside the picture frame and motion track/corner pin that without having to export the frame to Photoshop to crop it. Honestly though, that doesn't take me too long and the outcome really isn't that bad. I might post some stuff in the **cough** XL2 forum here so you can see what it looks like. I would be embarrased for you to see what I've done with HP so far. :-P Thanks again.
 
You CAN freeze the picture, but you will have to crop it unless you want the contents of the entire frame in the "picture frame". Just take your video in your comp, render out the frame you want the pic, cut away the portion you want to keep (make sure the dimensions are the same as the "picture frame", and then tell AE to use the motion track data from the corner pin and you're set.
 
Rapier_100a said:
You CAN freeze the picture, but you will have to crop it unless you want the contents of the entire frame in the "picture frame". Just take your video in your comp, render out the frame you want the pic, cut away the portion you want to keep (make sure the dimensions are the same as the "picture frame", and then tell AE to use the motion track data from the corner pin and you're set.
Click to expand...

the crop needs masking
 
surf said:
the crop needs masking
Click to expand...

No, if the frame is exported and cropped in PhotoShop, and reduced to the size of the crop, or even left on a transparant background, no masking is needed.
 
Isn't the masking just used when the picture frames go behind things in the shot such as the guy putting the picture behind his head?
 
FilmMagic said:
Isn't the masking just used when the picture frames go behind things in the shot such as the guy putting the picture behind his head?
Click to expand...


Yes. If that's what surf meant, he was right too. But you wont be masking the frame, only the picture you have applied to it.
 
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