Why does motion tracker speed up video clip?

[forestraven]

I've only seen one other post related to this and it never received a reply.

I just upgraded to VSP X7 because of the motion tracking feature that my old X4 didn't have.

But I find it quite frustrating to use as the clip, for some bizarre reason speeds up. Tech support suggested I try slowing the video clip down using the speed control and then applying the motion tracker but that had no effect.

Anyone have any idea why the tracker speeds up the clip? What earthly logic is there in that? It makes it very difficult to stop the recording at the right time as the clip speeds right past the ideal point.

I also find the the motion tracker has difficulty dealing effectively with something that isn't moving in a straight line.

Has anyone else had problems dealing with the speed change and has perhaps found a way around it?

Could someone from Corel explain why the video has to speed up? I see no sense in that except to make the feature very difficult to use.

Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

[Ken Berry]

Could someone from Corel explain why the video has to speed up?

I can't help with the main problem as I have never used motion tracker. But just so you don't get your hopes up for a reply from Corel here, this is a user to user forum, and all the Moderators and us Admin types are users just like you. None of us work for Corel, and Corel execs only rarely visit us. You are more likely to get a direct response from Corel on their Facebook Video Studio page.

[BrianCee]

I have never had any problem with motion tracker speeding up any clips I have applied it to

Give us a clue as to how much it speeds up - insert a clip to your timeline and carefully note it's duration - now apply the track motion to any object in there and then go back to the timeline - how long is the clip now.

There is a short demo of track motion in action there :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBTnYlPf5AM

[forestraven]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't sure if Corel people took part in this forum or not.

I have been in touch with their support department but the agent doesn't seem to know anything about the motion tracking and hasn't been of much help. I figured maybe in a forum of users, somebody would have run across the problem and might be able to help.

[forestraven]

Brian, perhaps I'm not explaining myself well. The clip doesn't speed up after I've applied motion tracking. It speeds up in the motion tracking window. When I hit the record button, the clip suddenly changes to fast forward which makes it very difficult to hit the stop record button before the clip has gone well beyond where I need it to track things.

Corel support suggested I slow down the video first and then apply motion tracking but it still speeds up.

I've tried splitting the clip so that I could isolate the section I want to track. I figured, apparently wrongly, that motion tracking would stop at the end of the clip so it wouldn't matter whether I had hit the stop record button in time or not. But motion tracker just continued right on in to the next clip totally ignoring the split.

I still don't see why the motion tracker has to fast forward the clip. The tutorial on Corel's Discovery site, "Introduction to Motion Tracking" never shows the clip speeding up. If the video was doctored for clarity then that should have been made clear by whoever recorded the video. And it should have been shown as to how it actually works and then slowed down for clarity. I'm just frustrated because the very feature for which I bought X7 is turning out to be a royal pill.

I'm all out of ideas at this point.

[BrianCee]

Well again mine certainly does not speed up the video in the track motion setting window - I pressed play and noted the little digital clock under the bottom right of the preview screen and checked it against a stop watch and it was 100% accurate.

I might be getting confused again - when I hit the record button - those red circles in blobs under the centre of the screen my video advances VERY slowly because there's quite a lot of computing going on to track the motion

but if you are trying to get to the position to start tracking accurately then the answer is of course do not use the play button in the track motion window

You have two options - either side of the 'play' icon are two small arrow icons the one on the right side advances one frame at a time - the one on the left goes back one frame at a time - press slowly to give the cursor time to move - rapid clicking will not work - you can't get more accurate than one frame

Option two - the small digital clock under the right corner displays Hours : Minutes : seconds : frames - depending on how much you want to move then click on the appropriate number and it will start flashing - now at the right edge of the clock are up and down arrows - clicking the up arrow will advance the cursor one "whatever you selected" - so if you chose the seconds number each click will advance one second - click any where in the window away from the clock to stop the clock flashing - so again you could use seconds to get close then frames to be exact.

both options also work in the main editing window if you want to make accurate cuts when editing

A third possibility - but not so accurate - if you look to the right hand end of the scrub bar under the preview window in the motion tracker window you will see two small magnifying glasses - click on the '+' one a few times to expand the timeline - now using the mouse left click and hold on the moving cursor and slide left or right to the location you want (or approximate) and then finish with one of the more accurate methods

[forestraven]

I might be getting confused again - when I hit the record button - those red circles in blobs under the centre of the screen my video advances VERY slowly because there's quite a lot of computing going on to track the motion

That's the part I have a problem with. I can get to the part I want to track. That's not an issue. But you say when you hit the record button your video moves VERY slowly. When I press the record button, mine goes into fast forward. And it does it every single time no matter how I try to set it up.

I'm having to use the 32 bit version on my 64 bit Win 8.1 because it, at least, will import my .mov files. That was another issue with this version. I don't know if that makes any difference. But I cannot get that video to slow down even to normal speed never mind moving slowly.

[BrianCee]

Something very strange going on - it should not go fast at that point - but given that it does it should stop at the end of the clip - perhaps you need to remove everything after the clip while you apply track motion so it cannot continue.

[forestraven]

This is making no sense.

The program, logically, should work the way you are describing it, Brian.

But the Corel Customer Service agent I've been dealing with seems to think otherwise. Here is the kind of answer I keep getting from him:

"I guess no one among us here specially me having issues with how the motion tracking works as by default the program works that way and again, the main reason why the preview speed is faster while tracking the motion is that the program detects the movement in key frames and not by frame-by-frame sequence. Doing so would make the tracking of the motion efficient and memory handling better. "

Can you make any sense of that. He insists that fast speed is the way it is supposed to work no matter how many times I tell him that the instruction video doesn't work that way. He says it's been slowed down. I don't think it has. Have you any other contacts who could verify how the motion tracking works for them?

Is it possible that some program glitch causes the program to work one way for some people and the other way for others? I don't know. I'm playing guessing games here.

I will try your suggestion of splitting the clip and isolating it to see if that works. I guess my point with Corel is that I shouldn't have to go round about ways to get things done. I had the same hassle with the .mov files not working. I was told I had to convert them. My last project had 30 such files (my camera can't take anything else). I was not amused at the idea of having to convert so many files before I can get anything done. I have to say that VSP X7 is the first Corel software that I have been disappointed in.

[Ken Berry]

FWIW, I have just conducted my very first Motion Tracker experiment on a .mov clip (which is in fact AVCHD) of a swimming duck. I set the tracker to the duck's head and pressed the red bubbles button. The video started playing exactly as Brian described ... very slowly. In fact I would say roughly at a quarter of its real speed. When it finished the video appeared in the main timeline with the motion tracking in the overlay track. It played back in Project mode at its real speed.

In other words, it would appear that I cannot replicate your problem -- but as I said at the outset, since this was the first time I have used the tool and followed the somewhat simplistic instructions on the motion tracker screen, I have no explanation as to why it should be behaving the way it does for you. Is it only with the one clip, or does it do the same for a variety of clips?

As a footnote, this was done not on my Profile computer but on a new HP all-in-one running Win 8.1 64 bit and X7 64 bit.

[forestraven]

Bizarre!
I've tried Brian's suggestion of trimming the clip to just where I want to apply the motion tracking. That has had its own share of problems and not the way I would prefer to go about it...re-attaching the rest of the clip seamlessly is one issue. And it doesn't change the speed.

I can't understand why Customer Support insists it should be working in fast forward when that is not what you two have experienced and what the demo also refutes.

I am going to try loading the 64 bit version and try a converted .mov (AVCHD) file and see if it accepts it and how it works. Problem is that the 32 bit version and the 64 bit version won't co-exist on my computer. If I load up one, it erases the other. Which means, everything I have set up is undone. Oddly, neither tries to erase my X4 version. I have PSP X6 and both the 32 and 64 bit versions are on my computer at the same time. I don't see why VSP can't do that...and make my life just a little bit easier at this point!

[Ken Berry]

I don't see why VSP can't do that...and make my life just a little bit easier at this point!

This is a source of irritation to a lot more people than you!! It has also been discussed in the past. The likely explanation IMHO is that it has to do with licensing questions, mainly associated with Dolby. Corel has to pay Dolby a licensing fee for each installation of VS. If it allowed dual 32/64 bit installations, it would have to pay twice. So it restrictions installation to one or the other, and thus only has to pay Dolby once.

[forestraven]

I knew there had to be a sensible explanation as to why both won't work at the same time! LOL
I just asked the Customer Support agent who has been less than helpful with this issue for his explanation for this. Do you think I'll get the real answer?

Anyway, here is the kicker. Thanks to the answers you and Brian have kindly given me, I finally figured out what the issue is with the motion tracker.

I have been using the 32 bit version because it imports my .mov files without crashing like the 64 bit version. BUT the motion tracker works in fast forward...totally useless.

After your comments, I decided to install the 64 version (which, of course, erased the 32 bit). I converted a couple of files and tried the motion tracker and....you guessed it....it worked in SLOW MOTION!!

So, conclusion: the 32 bit has a flaw in it causing the motion tracker to malfunction.

Now my choices boil down to:
a) Use the 64 and painstakingly convert all my videos (a substantial number)
b) Use the 32 bit and forget the motion tracking....which is what I upgraded for in the first place.

If both versions co-existed, I'd have the 3rd option of bouncing between the 2 as needed since I probably won't be using the motion tracker in every video production. That would save time on the converting. But alas, not to be.

So my choices really aren't much of a choice.

I thank you, Brian and Ken, for patiently helping me sort this out. Your answers were the key to my solving the mystery of this malfunctioning program. I have owned a number of Corel software over the years but I am truly disappointed in this one.

[Ken Berry]

A quick re-reading of the thread doesn't give me this information, but which version of Quicktime do you have on your computer? The latest version is 7.7.6... and it works on my set-up. But then again, previous versions have worked for me too... With much earlier versions of VS, some users inexplicably had problems with the latest version of QT, but going back to an older version helped them. However, with more recent versions of VS, the latest version of QT seems to work for most people.

[forestraven]

I have 7.7.4
But VSP X7 installs Quick Time as part of the bundle. Does that mean that what it installs is out of date? And I am not sure I understand you. What part of my problem is likely to be solved by updating QT?

I am still on dinosaur dial up. It's pretty much impossible to download anything. I just about had a fit when I found out that I can't get boxed versions of Corel's software anymore. You have no idea what fun it was trying to download nearly 4 G software! (at the internet cafe, of course, but even there that day the WIFI wasn't working very well...took all afternoon)

A lot of software is now written to download itself directly to whatever computer you're using which, of course, is no ruddy use when at an internet cafe. Would you happen to know if QT is one of them or does it allow you to save it to wherever you wish for later installation?