Automatically track and center a presenter

[jht001]

Can the motion tracking/stabilization in videostudio track and keep centered a speaker/presenter in a video clip?
Example of doing this with the trackx plugin for FCP: https://vimeo.com/124021177

[BrianCee]

my first thought is that it would not be easy - you are wanting to use it "backwards" as it were in keeping a moving object still - it might be possible if you had a fixed point in the background and tracked that with the overlay - not confident in that though

if the motion is only small and the video is not terribly long I would tend to be looking at "custom motion" and using that with keyframes to keep th image in the centre - but it would be a manual process - and could be tedious on a long video



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[jht001]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm using keyframes now and as you say it is a very tedious process! So was hoping for a less labor intensive process.

[Terfyn]

Surely centering any object starts with the camera? Some cameras have face framing. Have you tried Mercalli on the video?

[lata]

Hi

Interesting exercise, have you a short sample we can try.
Upload to a sharing site, DropBox, Google Drive , One Drive Etc. provide a share link on your post.

[jht001]

Surely centering any object starts with the camera? Some cameras have face framing. Have you tried Mercalli on the video?

The camera has face tracking for focus, but not for automatically moving the camera to keep a face centered.
I do try to keep the speaker centered in the camera viewfinder while filming, but its not close enough when you need to crop the clip down to just the speaker's head and sholders.
I looked at Mercalli, but don't see any features that would support centering an object.

[jht001]

Hi

Interesting exercise, have you a short sample we can try.
Upload to a sharing site, DropBox, Google Drive , One Drive Etc. provide a share link on your post.

I don't have the original source video easily accessible at the moment, but this link shows the final effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUPL ... 06Zdqiimz8
look at about at 15:43.
The original video of the speaker was 16:9 HD, the part shown off to right of the slide is cropped out of the original using a series of manually generated keyframes to keep the speaker in view.

[TroyTheTech]

If I may pop in with a Suggestion-slash-Question, would not the Track Motion capability in VS work for this?

I have not played with Track Motion much yet myself, so I am suggesting - and also wondering - if this is what it 'can do'....

[BrianCee]

Not at all sure Troy - as I said in my first post above it seems to be using it 'backwards' in that you need to track a still object with a moving one - and I can't see how you could do that



..

[TroyTheTech]

It 'feels like' the option should be in VS somewhere, but I am not finding it... The concepts of 'centering' or 'keeping in the center of the frame' and Motion Tracking "should" go together - like keeping the frame focused on an athlete running down the field - similar to Stabilization, it seems so 'simple' yet I can't find this anywhere

I found a post at the Corel Learning Centre here: http://learn.corel.com/blog/4-reasons-use-motion-tracking/ (number 2) which I thought was it (following an athlete through a field) but upon further examination it is not that, it is more like 'writing signals on the field', as used in Football games

Perhaps VS really doesn't have such a thing (this 'reverse motion tracking') in an automated function. The manual tracking/centering/framing is the only way to go, I guess. Something for The Suggestion Box?

[jht001]

Thanks for researching this!