Masking Nightmare

Hello,
I am trying to make the inside of a door frame black on a tracking shot. I am doing this by masking out the inside of the door with keeping the outside. The shot is starting from within the Frame(where it is black) and the tracking to position itself so the whole door frame is in the shot(outside the door frame is still visible, not black). I am currently doing this in the color page in Davinci resolve 17 with a polygon mask.
The only issue is that it is a 15 or so second clip recorded at 24 frames per second. So that mean I am editing 400+ frames by hand with a key framed mask. After spending countless time doing that I realized that it was not perfect. But that’s when I found out I can not adjust all the key frames softness at once (that is the means I found to blend over the imperfections) which is very frustrating to think there is no other way. After looking for my problem on YouTube videos and forums I have found that I have a very unique situation. So before I embark on going through and adjusting each frames softness value by hand I am hoping there is a better way...I mean common there’s gotta be a better way.
I am very much a beginner at fusion but I am willing to learn if that’s what it takes. Any help on my situation would be appreciated.

-Zac


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Can you post a few screenshots showing your issue?

As you can hopefully see with these three screen shots is that this tracking shot, containing 400 or so frames has been, by hand masked to the best of my abilities. I have to do a similar shot at the end of the film so any help on making this more of an easy job would be nice.

The shots are not in sequential order. So the frame that is closest to the door is the beginning of the shot where it moves on a gimble backwards to line up with the frame that says "This is the end of the shot with the power window turned off to help see what is going on." then is set on a tripod.

Thanks,
Zac

I also forgot to mention that I have a solid color generator displaying black layered underneath the shot if this helps describe the situation any better.

Have you tried using the Power Window to track the door frame from the time it first fully come into view until the end of your dolly? This might remove your need to keyframe the Power Window itself for the bulk of the shot, then you can go in and tweak the softness where you want.

Thank you Xunile for your reply,
I have tried that however the program is unable to grasp what I want it to track. Since the mask changes so much in size and in shape(going from the mask taking up most the frame with the shape resembling more of a trapezoid, to having the whole door in the shot where the mask resembles a rectangle) it just cannot use the tracking tool because it creates masks like the one that I have linked below.
I have also tried starting the tracking tool when more of the door is in frame but that did not seem to help much.

I know this is a very niche problem because I can not find any YouTube videos or existing issues on this forum that will remotely help me. That is why I have resorted to the smart people on this forum! Any more of y'alls knowledge would be helpful.

-Zac

P.S. The screen shot is from the "similar shot" that I mentioned in an earlier post. It needs the same principals.

This isn’t niche problem at all, tracking is the bread and butter of comp. I’d track the corners of the frame and do a cornerpin of mask in Fusion.

Start at the last frame. Draw a poly mask (the mask with a pen point) around the area to be masked. Track. Replace.

Or in Fusion, simply track the 4 corners and replace. Simple stuff with a rectangle that is in frame most of the shot.

Hello,
First of all thank you to everyone who responded. Second off and the unfortunate news is that none of the advice ended up helping a whole lot. The thing that sucks is that even after more time researching it and using the planar tracker to "Track and Replace". The tracker ended up not wanting to follow the door at all shown in the photo below. I even messed around with the settings and used Translation, Rotation, and scale which I hear works better sometimes. I also trided it with perspective turned on rendering a worse result with the tracker moving even after the camera is set.
I am reaching out again just to see if there is anyone out there that knows how to do something similar or how to do it where the tracker frame stays within the door. Which is a bit perplexing because the door and its background are fairly different in brightness. (Luma) I've also tried changing the Track Channel to no avail.
-Zac

I am reaching out again just to see if there is anyone out there that knows how to do something similar or how to do it where the tracker frame stays within the door. Which is a bit perplexing because the door and its background are fairly different in brightness. (Luma) I've also tried changing the Track Channel to no avail.

Even as long as I've been using Resolve, there are points where I say, "welp, this is far beyond my meagre knowledge and I'm gonna have to ask for help."

I think this is more a visual effects problem than a Resolve problem per se. If it were me, I'd send the shot out to a decent VFX artist and tell them what I want, and either have them roto the shot and send me the external mask, or actually hand them a color-corrected shot and let them do the entire composite.

What you want absolute can be done in Fusion, but it's not fast, simple, or easy -- it's inevitably going to involve hand-rotoscope in 3-dimensional space, and that's a big challenge. I've done some tricky shots, but if I can see that "something" is going on, I don't hesitate to send the shot out to somebody a lot more competent than I am, assuming I have a client who's willing to pay for it.

There are affordable VFX artists out there, and 400 frames is not a gigantic deal. I'm guessing this is 3-4 hours of work, but I'd have to actually see the shot to know for sure.

This isn’t niche problem at all, tracking is the bread and butter of comp. I’d track the corners of the frame and do a cornerpin of mask in Fusion.

+1

With your Planar track, did you use the Planar transform?

I am currently doing this in the color page

this is clearly a task for Fusion or other comping software.

a beginner at fusion but I am willing to learn

This is the way to go. There are plenty tutorials out there, but it will require some time to learn the basics, even though Fusion is simple compared to other comping software. Fusion in Resolve is too slow and unstable for complex tasks, but will be fine for this.

I’d track the corners of the frame and do a cornerpin of mask in Fusion

+1 for the point tracking. Planar tracks work on surfaces, but you have a frame and no surface.