Tracking issues in X6

[carlosfandango]

I am working on a video (X6) in which I need to track and pixelate a large number of vehicle licence plates from a head mounted camera. The motion tracker in X6 works quite well considering the demands that I am placing on it, but I have run into a problem. If a licence plate goes out of the frame, the tracker follows it ALMOST up to the point where it disappears, but not quite all the way. It stops one frame before the plate goes out of shot. Obviously this means that anyone subsequently stepping through the video frame by frame would be able to identify the plate.

What I need to do is keyframe the track so that the pixelated region remains on the plate, or arrive at some other solution that solves my problem. I would even consider manually tracking a pixelated region onto the plate but the pixelator has such a small window and such a difficult interface that this seems virtually impossible! Any ideas? Driving me crazy!

-CF

[BrianCee]

Hello ,

are you tracking the actual licence plate - the problem with tracking items close by is that as they approach the edge of the screen the physical distance on screen often increases due to perspective, can you see is the blur still onscreen but not covering the plate - maybe just making the blur mask larger by pulling it out a bit (you can make the pixelated area as large as you like) may hide the problem or just moving the relative position of the actual target .

you may have to actually apply to two lots of track motion - applying a second track as the plates get close to the edge.


...

[carlosfandango]

OK, I had tried all of those things but what I had not done was place a new tracker for the solitary frame that gets left at the edge of the screen. This as it turns out works, so it has solved my problem, I probably wouldn't have tried that without your suggestion so thanks! It's a shame that the tracker drops this last frame though, that (to my mind) is a fault... I may not have explained the behaviour very well but if you could see what I'm seeing I'm sure you would agree

[lata]

Hi Carlos

Welcome to the forums

I am sure there will be several solutions but the question of the tracker stopping at the edge of the frame has been raised before, suppose this is a similar problem.

If you were to hide the Mosaic then choose to “Add matched Objects”.
The Overlay option will add a “placeholder” to the overlay track.
You can now move the clip one or two frames should cover that rogue frame.

The Placeholder can be replaced using your own image, maybe one with the word “censored”

With your image in the library, drag to the overlay track, hold the Ctrl key dropping image over the placeholder clip. This should replace the placeholder.


PS I hadn’t seen Brians reply that seems to have cured the problem, the above is just another option you can try.

[carlosfandango]

OK well that is another option to try. I am pretty impressed with the capabilities of the software in general, especially considering the low cost. Much more expensive options have similar issues I will give it a try tomorrow.