The Google Drive clips all need permission to download. Can you set them to Public? You might need to generate a new link.

You could also respond to the request I submitted through Google, but you'd need to do that for every person who wanted to try this and help out.

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Quote: The Google Drive clips all need permission to download. Can you set them to Public? You might need to generate a new link.

They were set to Public. Then I got email notifications that you needed permission. So I went to permissions but the only options were 'Can View,' 'Can Edit,' and 'Can comment.'

There was no permission for Can Download, so I set it to Can View. Don't know what else to do :/



Paul

You want "Can View" which means anyone can access but no one can upload or change those files.

I was able to download the singer, but the other clips still need permission.

What effect do you want on the lead singer, and for how long? For the enitre clip or just the first section up until he talks with the band?

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Quote: You want "Can View" which means anyone can access but no one can upload or change those files.

I was able to download the singer, but the other clips still need permission.

I think I got it right now on the other two.

Quote: What effect do you want on the lead singer, and for how long? For the enitre clip or just the first section up until he talks with the band?

I was trying to blur his face starting when he was at the far end of the runway until he got back to the band.

Thanks,

Paul

You mean like this?:



I used 4 trackers, 3 of which blurred his face

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Here's the project file with all the trackers in place. When you open it, it won't find the main video clip but all you need to do is browse to it when you get the message and then save the project so it remebers where the clip is next time.

Your other clips are public now, so thanks for doing that!

The key is to attach the tracker to something on your subject that's got high contrast and is visible in as much of the clip as possible. I've just learned that there's no reason to stick with one tracker in situations like this. You can even have two overlapping masks if that gets you better coverage.

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Paul -

I'm glad to read that you're not blaming yourself. There's possibly something amiss with your PC or the installation of PDR14.

The other thing worth bearing in mind is that the particular clips you're using each have complexities that make it more difficult for the tracker to do what it has to do.

optodata's reading of "coaching" is spot on. That's exactly what I meant. It's about the opposite of dropping the clip into Motion Tracker, setting the selection box, clicking the Track button then proceding. The coaching is trying to correct the tracker when it goes off course... and the clips you're using are very prone to that. Crowds of people, busy scenes... it's easy for a tracker to get distrackted

I just did some work on the red guy and it was a massive challenge! I'm not kidding - I was able to manually keyframe the thing in PiP Designer in less than half the time it took in MT.

At the other end of the spectrum (ignoring clips where there's virtually no motion at all!), *here's one* where Motion Tracker has no trouble doing what it's supposed to do. Download it and let us know how your motion tracker goes.

Cheers - Tony
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Quote: Paul-I'm glad to read that you're not blaming yourself. There's possibly something amiss with your PC or the installation of PDR14.

The other thing worth bearing in mind is that the particular clips you're using each have complexities that make it more difficult for the tracker to do what it has to do.

I should mention that I easily spent close to an hour getting things to work in my sample, and I agree that keyframing would have been quicker and more reliable. I look at the this as a chance to learn, so I didn't mind investing the time - but if I was trying to simply get the $%^#@ thing to work - I'd be nursing a very sore and (more) barren scalp now, too

At one point during my fighting with one tracker or the other, I ended up with a blue mask box that grew to a large size at the end of a track. No matter how many times I reduced its size, it kept jumping back to the big size just what like the screen capture video showed.

I manage to cure that by deleting that tracker and closing the tool, and I'm thinking the issue might have been caused by doing so many edits that I overflowed some internal buffer. Paul, do you recall if that problem was ever present when you started working with the Motion Tracker or did it only happen after working with it A LOT?

Not much we can do to help with that other than to submit it as a bug report and try to save our work and exit the Motion Tracker then save the project at shorter intervals.

One related anomaly is that if I go back into the Motion Tracker, the trackers are all there but the masks are not visible! They still appear when previewing on the timeline and when producing, but there's going to be more missing hair if you didn't know that and had to recreate them every time you go back to the tool!




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Quote: You mean like this?:

Exactly like that!

What was the small black box that followed him around? I've never seen that in any of my attempts.

And again, if I added another tracker everytime one left the target, I'd have to add one in damn near every frame because the box just stays put when the subject moves :/

Paul

Quote: At one point during my fighting with one tracker or the other, I ended up with a blue mask box that grew to a large size at the end of a track. No matter how many times I reduced its size, it kept jumping back to the big size just what like the screen capture video showed.

I manage to cure that by deleting that tracker and closing the tool, and I'm thinking the issue might have been caused by doing so many edits that I overflowed some internal buffer. Paul, do you recall if that problem was ever present when you started working with the Motion Tracker or did it only happen after working with it A LOT?

When it happened to me it happened immediatley as soon as the blue box appeared (when I clicked 'FX.') As I stated below in my first response to you:

"Okay, I just upped three vids. In the first one
I'm trying to track the lead drummer. There are some new anomalies in
this one: 1) when I enter Motion Tracker, there are already two trackers
there; 2) I position the play head where I want to begin tracking, but
when I click 'Track' the play head jumps to the end of the vid; and 3)
When I do get the box where I want it and select Mosaic, the blue
bounding box won't remain sized or moved. And you'll notice the tracker
won't stay on target. As soon as the guy moves back, the tracker stays
put. Here is that vid: https://youtu.be/hbTIiEJ7qPw"

Quote: One related anomaly is that if I go back into the Motion Tracker, the trackers are all there but the masks are not visible! They still appear when previewing on the timeline and when producing, but there's going to be more missing hair if you didn't know that and had to recreate them every time you go back to the tool!

Yes, I had noticed that and it surely was another source of frustration!

Thanks again (sheese, those keys are wearing out on my keyboard

Paul

Quote: The other thing worth bearing in mind is that the particular clips you're using each have complexities that make it more difficult for the tracker to do what it has to do....Crowds of people, busy scenes... it's easy for a tracker to get distrackted

Even the drummer clip? I applied the tracker to the lead drummer after the group stopped, focusing on his undershirt like you said. But as soon as the drummer moved back about a foot, he moved right out of the box since the box didn't move with him.

Quote: I just did some work on the red guy and it was a massive challenge! I'm not kidding - I was able to manually keyframe the thing in PiP Designer in less than half the time it took in MT.

I didn't know you could apply motion tracking that way. I haven't gotten to PiP or keyframing yet.

Quote: At the other end of the spectrum (ignoring clips where there's virtually no motion at all!), *here's one* where Motion Tracker has no trouble doing what it's supposed to do. Download it and let us know how your motion tracker goes.

Ok, I tried it. Another anomoly occured...after applying the tracker and clicking 'Play,' the skier moved but the tracker didn't (normal for me). But when I went back to the beginning and clicked 'Track,' the tracker DID move with the subject (new for me). But it didn't last long, when the camera zoomed out the box stopped moving.

On another note: do you shoot from quads? That's the exact reason I'm trying to learn video editing

Paul

Quote: Here's the project file with all the trackers in place. When you open it, it won't find the main video clip but all you need to do is browse to it when you get the message and then save the project so it remebers where the clip is next time.

Ok, I tried it; but dang if I couldn't find that clip anywhere. I must have deleted it—something I never do, even when I'm done with a project. It must have been during one of my hair-pulling sessions

I'm very sorry to have wasted your time

Paul

Here's your handbraked file. You could also just point to your produced video when PD asks for the handbraked version. That will work perfectly as long as the the two clips are the same length or the tracking scene starts at the same point on the timeline. Any additional content afterwards is fine.

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Quote: Here's your handbraked file. You could also just point to your produced video when PD asks for the handbraked version. That will work perfectly as long as the the two clips are the same length or the tracking scene starts at the same point on the timeline. Any additional content afterwards is fine.

Ok, got the files. I put the handbraked version back where it was and your PaulHarvey.pds found it. Now MORE oddness! (I didn't think that was possible)

1) It slowed PD to a crawl. For example, it took a few minutes for all the thumbnails to show up on the timeline...and there weren't that many. Then the vid played choppy as hell. Entering the motion tracker room took almost a minute and the vid played even choppier in there.

2) When playing the vid from the timeline, your trackers behaved as normal. When playing it in the Motion Tracker room, they didn't appear at all even though there was a tracker bar next to Tracker 1. It ran the entire length of the clip. There were no other trackers.

3) When I tried to add another box, a big white rectangle appeared in the center of the screen and I couldn't do anything with it.

In all my previous attempts (lost count), none of these had ever happened.

I should note: When trying this, I was working from a fresh hard re-boot.

I'm down to my chest hair now

I really appreciate your time and trouble (I'm tired of typing 'Thanks again.')

Paul

I've had times when it takes PD a long time to open and generate thumbnails. It usually happens when opening an older project and it only happens the first time I open it. Hopefully if you close and reopen PD it will behave normally.

The choppiness was probably related to all the prep work PD was doing. I had set the Preview Quality to HD on my end, but it might be set to Full HD on your end and you could try lowering it.

I wonder if the tracker issues inside the MT tool are related to the prep work as well. Maybe that was all just a bad dream and if you close and reopen PD now everything will be OK. It's worth a shot, isn't it?

In an earlier post you mentioned that you saw a black box following the singer. That was my 3rd tracker (it's actually called Tracker 2 in the MT tool, which you can rename, by the way) and I put it on both to test the tracking and in case you needed anything blurred while he was walking away. There's no mask there so nothing will show up in the finished video but you can delete it if you want.

Let us know how PD behaves now that it's had a chance to settle...

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Quote: I've had times when it takes PD a long time to open and generate thumbnails. It usually happens when opening an older project and it only happens the first time I open it. Hopefully if you close and reopen PD it will behave normally.

The choppiness was probably related to all the prep work PD was doing. I had set the Preview Quality to HD on my end, but it might be set to Full HD on your end and you could try lowering it....I wonder if the tracker issues inside the MT tool are related to the prep work as well. Maybe that was all just a bad dream and if you close and reopen PD now everything will be OK. It's worth a shot, isn't it?

The thumbnail thing (or any of the others mentioned) never happened to me, even after working for hours. And when this happened I had just re-booted and had no other programs running. But you were right: I just re-launched PD and tried again. The choppiness was gone, but numbers 2 and 3 above still happened.

And as before, your Tracker 1 was there but ran the entire length of the clip...nothing like your screen shot above. And when I clicked 'Add a Tracker,' Tracker 1 disappeared and only Tracker 2 was there. Yet when I played the clip on the timeline, your blurs where there. And, as usual, my tracker didn't budge (this time I'd focused on the back of his jacket).

Ok. Chances are that the issues are caused by my creating the trackers in the newer beta version 2221 and you running the 2109 version.

There's very little risk in applying the beta patch now (the early adopters would have found any serious issues) and there's a very good chance that these issues will disappear. I suggest you download and install the patch then see how PD behaves.

In the unlikely event that it causes any new or worse problems, all you'd need to do is uninstall PD, reinstall the original version and then update it to the 2109 patch and you'll be back to where we are right now.

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Quote: Ok. Chances are that the issues are caused by my creating the trackers in the newer beta version 2221 and you running the 2109 version.

There's very little risk in applying the beta patch now (the early adopters would have found any serious issues) and there's a very good chance that these issues will disappear. I suggest you download and install the patch then see how PD behaves.

I can't find it. I tried the link you gave several posts ago but it doesn't go anywhere. So I went to the PD updates page but the only update available was for 2109. So I googled it and the only hits were for PD12. Where is the patch for 14?

Quote: In the unlikely event that it causes any new or worse problems, all you'd need to do is uninstall PD, reinstall the original version and then update it to the 2109 patch and you'll be back to where we are right now.

I've been leery about uninstalling and reinstalling because I read people are having trouble with it. In fact, I still have PD11 installed cuz I'm afraid to uninstall it because of other peoples' problems.

But at this point I'll try anything :/

Thanks,

Paul

Sorry for the trouble! The only place beta patches are available is on this forum, and Dafydd makes the posts "stickies" so they're always at the top of the threads. Here's the one you want: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/46097.page

I wouldn't worry about too much about posts of people having trouble uninstalling/reinstalling. They not all that common and they're often caused by corrupted downloads or serious problems with how Windows is installedon their machines.

If you had no issues installing PD14 the first time, you shouldn't have any problems at all in the unlikely event that you'd need to reinstall it.

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