SOLVED! Locked on absolute object tracking in VPX. Super easy.

K-Wood wrote on 9/22/2022, 9:08 AM

PROBLEM - Say you have an object that jumps around the video frame (person jogging, dog or child running around) and you want to have the camera follow them like a super steady cam or drone.

You could manually reframe the video with keyframes on every single frame. It will take ages and still be jittery. Or...

You can use an upside down version of the same video, as a tracking source, to absolutely stabilize movement of whatever you decide to track. But because of a bug in VPX, you can't just rotate the track 180 degrees and use it as a source. Instead, you have to export the track, rotated, first. Like this...

SOLUTION (from within your current project) -

1. create a new movie within the active project (by clicking on the "+" tab above the timeline).

2. paste/drag/load the clip you want to have tracked, onto the new tab.

3. in that new tab, rotate the clip 180% (rotate right, twice).

4. export that rotated clip at the lowest acceptable resolution.

5. go back to the original movies tab.

6. import the rotated clip into the original timeline, and place it above the un-rotated, original clip.

7. 'switch off the image' in the lower track.

8. select the lower of the two clips (the original, un-rotated clip)

9. right click - select "Attach to picture position in the video...".

10. click through the next two popup windows.

11. draw the square around the object that you want to be absolutely steady (in the rotated (upside down) clip).

12. wait till it calculates the tracking for you. Then 'switch on the image' in the lower track. Then 'switch off the image' in the upper track.

13. go to Effects - Size/Position - to make the video frame large enough, to remove black space around the clip, as it now jumps around to keep the tracked object steady within the clip.

14. at this point, you can even delete the rotated clip from the timeline and the magic of absolute tracking will remain.

15. don't use 'Zoom' in Size/Position. It'll break the tracking.

16. don't try to rotate the clip and not render it. I've tried every combination I can think up. It won't work. There's a bug in VPX, since 2017, whereby tracking info created from a rotated clip will always be applied to the target, as if the source is not rotated. Which in this case, means that the wobbly video just ends up being exactly twice as wobbly!

Will post a tutorial when I get the time. But the above will work. And the effect is perfect.

MAGIX Video Pro X Version 18.0.1.95 (UDP3)
proDAD Mercalli V5 Suite
NewBlue Filters 5 Ultimate

Acer Nitro 5
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11300H @ 3.10GHz 3.11 GHz
Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (driver version 27.20.100.9664)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (driver version 27.21.14.6179)
32 GB Installed RAM
Windows 11 Pro 21H2 (OS build 22000.1098)

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 9/22/2022, 9:40 AM

@K-Wood

Good one 👍👍👍

I was working on a different method, however your is more elegant.

The original method for doing this was to attach an object to the video required to be stabilised (original video) then copy and paste the keyframes from the attached object to the original and use the option to invert them.

This method is no longer available as you cannot get to the keyframes to invert them.

Your work around is great, does the same as the old method via a different route.

When you get the tutorial done let me or another Moderator know, so we can check it and release it.

John EB
Forum Moderator

browj2 wrote on 9/22/2022, 10:11 AM

@K-Wood

Brilliant!

Former user wrote on 9/22/2022, 4:09 PM

@K-Wood I like that, I tried it on another's post about a bird,

The Attach picture couldn't track the bird or the post it was on very well, I tried a dozen times, there's some sudden movements & a bit of motion blur with that, I tried sharpening, changing contrast etc' on the rotated one but in the end i applied V Video stabilization 1st, then used this method,

This is the file i used if anyone wants to try it, it's a 3840x2160 screen capture so i reduced it to 1920x1080 for trials in VPX, I also removed the 'Shaky video' text before. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVJWoSWd5WN0WZB_gx2o1eLMDoPUHC0T/view?usp=sharing

Several hrs later i settled on this 1920 version of V stabilization + your method

Like i say i like that, it was an interesting experiment,

AAProds wrote on 9/22/2022, 9:46 PM

Comparison using Gid's bird in MMS 2023. I used the Mercalli 5 plugin.

It is a shame that Section doesn't work on trimming the black sides away from the K-Wood method. While I can crop them away on the timeline, they re-appear in the export. Using those tumblers for accurate zooming is just a pain.

Given the results and the relative effort involved, I'd be going for the current Mercalli 6 Standalone deal (if you don't have the Mercalli 5 plugin) and stabilise outside of Magix, then import the file for further editing. Mercalli was also much faster than K-Wood's method.

johnebaker wrote on 9/23/2022, 3:22 AM

I too get varying results depending on the amount of shake in the source video,.

The bird video clip has too much rapid movement in random directions for the method to work well. Using other video files of aircraft the method works very well as the 'shake' movement is smoother

John EB

Former user wrote on 9/23/2022, 1:04 PM

I get a very similar result in the standalone Mercalli v6 as @AAProds v5 version,

This is Adobe After Effects - Warp Stabilizer, nothing added to it before analysis, just that dodgy UHD clip i shared in the comment above, there's a bit of drift just after half way, similar point to where the others posted on here jump up a bit,