Fusion stabilize

I have a clip that is 2 min and 30 sec long. When I try and use Planar Tracking it stops after just a few seconds. Is it a timelimit or what? I just want to sabilize the clip but it seems I can't at the moment. Grateful for any help!

I have a clip that is 2 min and 30 sec long. When I try and use Planar Tracking it stops after just a few seconds. Is it a timelimit or what? I just want to sabilize the clip but it seems I can't at the moment. Grateful for any help!

There's no time limit, no. It can get quite slow if you have long footage (eg tens of thousands of frames, much longer than your 2.5 minutes) as it has to save all the keyframes at the end. But I wouldn't expect problems with only 210 seconds of footage, even at a high framerate.

The Planar Tracker stopping usually means it can no longer get a track. I think if you open the Console you'll get a message printed when it stops tracking.

Show some screenshots of what you're tracking and how you have it set up and maybe we can spot something.

It's a clip exported from another software. I add the whole clip and make a new timeline. Then I get into fusion and add the PanarTracker, Setting it with defaults except changing the motion type to Translation. Then I set from the beginning, clicking set and start the tracking. Then it just stops tracking after a few seconds. What console? How do I open it?

It's a clip exported from another software. I add the whole clip and make a new timeline. Then I get into fusion and add the PanarTracker, Setting it with defaults except changing the motion type to Translation. Then I set from the beginning, clicking set and start the tracking. Then it just stops tracking after a few seconds. What console? How do I open it?

Workspace -> Console.

Hard to give any more advice without seeing any screenshots of the footage you're tracking, where you put your tracking area, etc.

Here's from the consolse:

PlanarTracker1: Track Failed - too few point correspondences - 0 detected, 1 required
MediaOut1 cannot get Parameter for Input at time 110
MediaOut1 failed at time 110
BEGIN Process_TrackAdaptive time = 111.000000
ERROR: Render failed at Fri 5:55PM! Last frame rendered: 111.0!

Did it help?

Yeah, so it lost the track. Find a different tracking area, enlarge the area, etc. More details on getting a good track are in the manual, eg Resolve v17 p1495 - 1505; p1538 - 1543; p2375 - 2386.

Here is a screenshot:

I'm trying to stabilize a 8mm film. I'm using the sprockets on the left side to get it smooth vertically. If I enlarge the area it works but the result is nuts. Tried different areas but the only one that gives a good result is the sprockets on the left side but then it stops just after a few frames.

Maybe try making the area wider, to cover that whole left side area with the white shapes? Presuming those are consistent throughout the footage.

Try to cover as much area as you can, not including anything that doesn't move co-planar with the area you want to track.

You can also try changing "Point" to "Hybrid point/area" to see if that helps at all.

The planar tracker is the wrong tool for the job. The standard Tracker will probably handle it just fine. If needed, you might put a thin vertical stripe down the left side of the frame to give the tracker an intersection point to latch onto so it doesn't wobble in the X axis.

This screenshot's a little confusing since it still has your tracking spline in it, but here I've put a black bar across the sprocket holes and set up a point track to follow the intersection.

Untitled.png (360.7 KiB) Viewed 1065 times

Didn't work chanhing it to hybrid but I think I understand the problem now. I need to make the sprockets bigger. So I will digitize the film again and see how it works. Thanks a lot for your input. I'll send you imaginary flowers through the internet!

One thing to remember is that there's a good chance that even when stabilizing the footage it won't end up being stable, because the original footage never was. When reading about optical compositing back in the 1990s they explained why ILM worked with vistavision plates instead of regular 35mm and why 35 mm was better for comping than 16mm (sprockets on both sides instead of one) so 8mm will have been shakier when it was shot to begin with.