Patchmaker Motion Tracking Software

skorson · Post by **skorson** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:26 am

All,

Has anyone any experience with patchmaker? (http://www.patchmaker.net/enu/home.php)

I am not affiliated with them in any way. I have tried their demo tool for image stabilization - with some powerful results. The tool is a bit expensive - $260 list with a machine-locked install.

Can anyone describe similar tools of the same caliber (e.g. being able to select items in a scene for tracking and stabilization?) to compare? Unless I am mistaken, this is quite a different animal than the Ulead, Depan, SteadyHand and Deshake anti-shake filters.

The work-flow was a bit annoying until you get used to it - working with a series of BMP files instead of AVIs. Once I figured out the steps, the results were impressive. Even with the 1 second (30 frames) limitation, with patience I was able to make a 10s stabilized segment from some very shaky 20x hand-held zoom with the demo.

Just fishing for thoughts. I know, better footage is the best approach. However, once at the editing console you work with what you have...

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:34 am

You're telling me it's expensive. For $399 you can get a fully featured 3D tracker that's good enough for Hollywood.

This is only 2D, which means it will run into problems with any shot where there's a perspective change from either the camera or the object it's tracking.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:22 pm

Just thinking out loud here --- couldn't you do more or less the same thing with a pan and zoom filter or even a cropping filter.
Simply "Follow the action" with key frames?

Perhaps not as good as a purpose built piece of software but a darned sight cheaper.

skorson · Post by **skorson** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:12 pm

Follow the action with keyframes has not worked with me. I have had some success in video-paint, but this is tedius. patchmaker demo, with its 1s limitation is still faster in terms of putting together a series of 1s edits.

I would like to find out how to write my own filters. What I really want is a filter where I can select various key-frames and mark spots manually in each frame. Then have the filter line up those selections to another specified point. 2D only, and I'll manually do the hard part - select the common points - and let the computer simply tween between the key-frames.

In this way, I could select a few key-frames and click on a common background item and then automatically align.

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:18 pm

sjj1805 wrote:Just thinking out loud here --- couldn't you do more or less the same thing with a pan and zoom filter or even a cropping filter.
Simply "Follow the action" with key frames?

Perhaps not as good as a purpose built piece of software but a darned sight cheaper.

The biggest hurdle is the lack of keyframes. Tracking software will produce position data for each frame. MSP has a limit on available keyframes for each clip.

rwernyei · Post by **rwernyei** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:11 pm

I was aware of the 16 keyframe limitation for Moving Paths in MSP but as for filters like Crop and Pan&Zoom, you have as many keyframes as are frames in your clip. Am I missing something?

skorson · Post by **skorson** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:44 pm

Anyone know if the video-paint software has the equivlent of the pan/zoom filter? E.g. so I could select a few frames and manually adjust, and allow the software to 'tween between them?

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:57 pm

rwernyei wrote:I was aware of the 16 keyframe limitation for Moving Paths in MSP but as for filters like Crop and Pan&Zoom, you have as many keyframes as are frames in your clip. Am I missing something?

Nope - I made the mistake of thinking they would behave consistently. I just tried a P&Z and got 300 keyframes in there.