Point tracker (color page)

For quite a few years now I've been using the point tracker in the stabilization of the color page to do impressive stabilization of the model aircraft footage I shoot.

Generally this tracker has been pretty good -- albeit it is easier to work when tracking one frame at a time than when tracking to the end of a clip (because small changes in the tracker can be spotted and fixed more readily).

Today I upgraded from version 15.3 to 18.4 and WTF?

The color-page point tracker is now horrible. It barely tracks and every few frames it'll move by 8-12 pixels which makes the resultant stabilized footage useless.

This tracking is the cornerstone of my videos (my point of distinction) so if I can't find a way around this I'll have to go back to 15.3.

Don't say "use the Fusion page" because we're talking about some shots that are quite long and the Fusion tracker isn't actually as easy or straight-forward as the one on the color page.

I'll play some more but this is a real deal-breaker and a massive disappointment if I can't find a way to make it work as well as it did in Resolve 15.

Any suggestions?

Nope... played around... this color-page tracker is next to useless when compared to the same function in 15.3.

The fusion tracker is also just not really cutting it because the view of the object being tracked changes quite markedly as it flies past, overhead, turns and climbs or dives. This generally requires regular re-positioning of the tracking point and that is a PITA with the fusion version.

GUTTED!!!

I guess I'll be going back to 15

On further investigation it appears as if the problem is that the tracking cross-hairs do *not* return to the point being tracked after each step -- they are offset. You can see the *actual* tracking point only if you click with the middle mouse button on the view window.

I thought it might have been a video driver issue but I have upgraded to the latest NVIDIA studio driver and that hasn't fixed the problem.

Because the tracking point cross hairs don't accurately show the position of the track it becomes impossible to spot when the track point jumps by several (or more pixels). When such jumps occured in 15.3 I could easily see them and simply go back a frame before repositioning the tracking point to a nother part of the image which could be better tracked.

Without this accuracy I can't tell when the tracking point has shifted and thus when a jump is introduced into the stabilized output. The result... jerky jumps and totally unsatisfactory results.

Damn... I was loving the voice-isolation feature of version 18 because much of my footage is taken in noisy environments but the dialog is also a key element of what I record.

Note also that I have Parkinson's and shoot everything hand-held without a gimbal so I *really* need to stabilize all the footage I shoot and this is especially so when using up to 25 times zoom when filiming small model aircraft at distance.

This is an example of the sort of videos I make that use extensive tracking:

Do watch to the end

Cool video - I can see why you need the point tracker (I haven't tried the point tracker in recent years - didn't realize it was broken).

Nope... played around... this color-page tracker is next to useless when compared to the same function in 15.3.

if you are talking about the stabliliser you can select to use the old version via the 3 dot menu

I tried it on my MacBook (see my signature). What I'm seeing is the tracking points do not update their location in the UI even though the actual points are correct. So as I track through, even with the one frame at a time, I see the tracker point move away from the feature it is tracking, however, if I hover over the tracking point with my mouse, the tracker point jumps to the feature. In other words, this is a UI update bug, not a tracking bug - at least in the test I performed.

Yes Steve, but the problem is that because you have to "manually update" the pointer position to see whether it's still accurate it *massively* increases the amount of work involved in tracking.

On my system, hovering the mouse isn't always enough, sometimes I have to press the middle mouse button (scroll-wheel) for the display to accurately update. The footage I'm tracking is recorded at 50FPS so that's two mouse clicks per frame. Even on a 20 second shot that's 2,000 mouse clicks to track it accurately (not counting any manual repositioning of the tracking point if the tracker fails).

Sadly, this renders the point-tracker effectively useless

I totally agree that if you need to check and adjust when the tracker moves off the feature and there's no easy way to see that it has moved off the feature, this is a deal breaker. So disappointing.

In the test cases I have used, the tracker tends to stick to the feature (because the feature is barely moving) and so this isn't as much of an issue since I don't need to manually adjust the tracker, but BMD should really take a look at this and correct the UI update issue.

You have my vote if that's worth anything.

I totally agree that if you need to check and adjust when the tracker moves off the feature and there's no easy way to see that it has moved off the feature, this is a deal breaker. So disappointing.

In the test cases I have used, the tracker tends to stick to the feature (because the feature is barely moving) and so this isn't as much of an issue since I don't need to manually adjust the tracker, but BMD should really take a look at this and correct the UI update issue.

You have my vote if that's worth anything.

+1 I can not do a simple track for a lens flare anymore!

I have a similar offset issue when tracking an object in the color page. The screenshot below is meant to show the issue, not my selection skills.

What causes the actual affected area to be offset from the actual selection?