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How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Wed Jan 06, 2021 6:28 pm
by G0bble
Hey Folks
I just followed a quick tutorial to draw a red circle around a subject in the Fusion tab. Unfortunately the tutorial did not cover how to hover the red circle and track it as it moves. I know the tracker in Color tab and have used it before to experiment. But how do I get the tracker to hover this red circle I painted using an Ellipse in Fusion and track the subject?
Thanks
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Fri Jan 08, 2021 7:13 pm
by G0bble
I am trying to follow some tutorials on Fusion tracking but I cant even begin because Resolve is showing me only the raw non-graded footage in both left and right pane viewer. I need contrast on the raw/flat footage to be able to track but selecting the little dot buttons on Media-in/out has no effect - it refuses to show the graded footage that has the contrast..
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Fri Jan 08, 2021 7:38 pm
by xunile
The Color Page comes after the Fusion page so you can't see its changes from the Fusion page. You can add a BrightnessContrast node inside the Fusion page before doing your tracking if you need it.
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Sat Jan 09, 2021 4:51 pm
by Mario Kalogjera
Even if you don't see the contrast for tracking, fusion does. It might help for a better placing of the tracker to use an appropriate LUT for your RAW footage in fusion's viewers. They don't affect the flow of final look, just the picture in the viewer.
Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Sun Jan 10, 2021 7:51 am
by G0bble
Ok, So you folks are saying that neither contrast settings or LUT applied in Fusion will apply to the timeline during final render/export? I was wondering if I need to remove those before export .. I am next to zero on Fusion and need to cover a lot of tutorials to get started on this.
Currently exploring other 3rd party software for an easy shortcut rather than have to learn Fusion..

Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Sun Jan 10, 2021 3:31 pm
by xunile
G0bble wrote:Ok, So you folks are saying that neither contrast settings or LUT applied in Fusion will apply to the timeline during final render/export? I was wondering if I need to remove those before export .. I am next to zero on Fusion and need to cover a lot of tutorials to get started on this.
Currently exploring other 3rd party software for an easy shortcut rather than have to learn Fusion..

No. Anything done in Fusion will apply to the final render. You should be able to use the contrast adjustment for your tracking, then you can remove it before your final render.
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Sun Jan 10, 2021 3:42 pm
by Mario Kalogjera
xunile wrote:G0bble wrote:Ok, So you folks are saying that neither contrast settings or LUT applied in Fusion will apply to the timeline during final render/export? I was wondering if I need to remove those before export .. I am next to zero on Fusion and need to cover a lot of tutorials to get started on this.
Currently exploring other 3rd party software for an easy shortcut rather than have to learn Fusion..

No. Anything done in Fusion will apply to the final render. You should be able to use the contrast adjustment for your tracking, then you can remove it before your final render.
That's not true. A viewer LUT only applies to a viewer, not the flow. It doesn't render. Very easy to confirm.
Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Sun Jan 10, 2021 3:56 pm
by xunile
Mario Kalogjera wrote:xunile wrote:G0bble wrote:Ok, So you folks are saying that neither contrast settings or LUT applied in Fusion will apply to the timeline during final render/export? I was wondering if I need to remove those before export .. I am next to zero on Fusion and need to cover a lot of tutorials to get started on this.
Currently exploring other 3rd party software for an easy shortcut rather than have to learn Fusion..

No. Anything done in Fusion will apply to the final render. You should be able to use the contrast adjustment for your tracking, then you can remove it before your final render.
That's not true. A viewer LUT only applies to a viewer, not the flow. It doesn't render. Very easy to confirm.
Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk
I was referring to my post about using a contrast node.
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:00 pm
by G0bble
Ok, I figured out how to use the plain tracker (not planar) in Fusion. But some of the clips are murky footage even with contrast and grades applied so the tracker does not work. For other clips the tracker is doing well. Some of the problems I encountered :
1. No way to delete bad/existing tracking data and rescan the track after finetuning the placement. I have to delete the tracker node and re-add it to start again from scratch each time.
2. No frame-by-frame option to manually adjust the tracker position like in Color tab
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:14 pm
by Sander de Regt
1. This is possible. But you have to go back to where your tracker loses track, reposition and then chose the 'append track' option in the tracker tool. This will seamlessly continue on from where you were.
2. This is not natively possible, you're right, but there have been some attempts to remedy this through scripting. If you install Reactor (an open-source community based add-on for Fusion) you can download something called - I think - Tracker Plus - which is basically an extended version of the default tracker which *will* allow you to step through your track the way you want.
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 2:08 pm
by G0bble
Sander de Regt wrote:1. This is possible. But you have to go back to where your tracker loses track, reposition and then chose the 'append track' option in the tracker tool. This will seamlessly continue on from where you were.
2. This is not natively possible, you're right, but there have been some attempts to remedy this through scripting. If you install Reactor (an open-source community based add-on for Fusion) you can download something called - I think - Tracker Plus - which is basically an extended version of the default tracker which *will* allow you to step through your track the way you want.
Thanks. I'll try that Reactor thingie later. How do I smoothen the tracking when its jerky? I am tracking somebody's hand movement but I want the tracking text to follow in a smooth arc not jerk so much that it is unreadable...
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 7:41 pm
by Sander de Regt
Depending on how fast the movements are you might be better off doing it manually.
You can also - after tracking - reduce the points of the path and smooth the path, this will make the track less accurate, but smoother.
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 7:15 am
by G0bble
Sander de Regt wrote:Depending on how fast the movements are you might be better off doing it manually.
You can also - after tracking - reduce the points of the path and smooth the path, this will make the track less accurate, but smoother.
Ok, so manually delete some points "in the hope" that the outcome will be smoother. I was hoping there was a mathematical function to generate smoothed arc(s) given a margin of error. I managed a bit by changing the parameter to 1 point per 15 frames but it still wasn't perfect.
This is shaky handheld footage while moving about so its a worst case scenario.
Thanks for the tip!
Edit: I just achieved close to perfect results by removing the tracker and simply keyframing a transform node linked to the Red Circle in Fusion. Way easier than I thought!
Re: How to track a subject with a red circle?

Posted:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:49 pm
by Sander de Regt
I was hoping there was a mathematical function to generate smoothed arc(s) given a margin of error.
There are a couple of ways to do this in Fusion, with modifiers or you can bake the animation and then use the reduce points option (in the right-click menu from the path) to smooth out the path. But sometimes just doing it manually will be just as fast if not faster.