Any tutorials on all the trackers in v15, when to use which

Resolve keeps getting better but with it for some of us noobs, it gets a little confusing as to when to use certain things... as per my subject.. trackers. First, up until 15, the tracker has always been in the color panel. But now I am finding some tutorials that make fusion clips and go in to fusion to track things. So my first question is.. when to use fusion tracking and when to use the color panel tracking.. is there any difference... does fusion have a better tracker... and does the studio version offer a better tracker than the free version?

Next up.. the actual trackers. I have yet to play with the fusion tracking.. but in the color panel tracker, typically I have seen and thus tried to learn how to use power windows with tracking. So far every tutorial I have seen always has some sort of perfect video footage to track where what they are tracking is always in view.. or might go off screen a bit but tracking something a bit larger then adjusting the power window keeps it tracked. In my case, I am tracking individuals on a sports field who are often obstructed by other players. Think of soccer footage from the sideline (not elevated) where you track one player for some reason (in my case I am trying to up the video highlight reel by doing something fancier than pointing a big ugly arrow at the player to draw focus to them for the clip). Often times a player will go behind/around another player.. so when I try to track.. my tracker hops to the player they just went behind... or in some cases, like when a corner kick is happening and I am trying to track the player that heads the ball into the net.. there are a lot of players around.

So, with that description.. I am trying to figure out what tracker is best to use. In v15, There is CLIP and FRAME which I am not quite clear on what the difference is and when to select one or the other.

In either mode, you now have Point tracker and Cloud tracker. Again, not really clear when to use one or the other and why?

Point tracker looks like you click on the lower left tracker panel area with the arrow and a + to add a + on the clip.. which you then move to a position you want to track.. I think? Looks like I can add a bunch, but not really sure if that helps or not. Does it track multiple things creating data for each tracker point, and you can copy/paste any one of those tracks to an object you want to match the tracker movement? Or do the more points you add the better the track?

Cloud Tracker has some interactive mode, and a square with a few + in it, and then the arrow with the +. So again, not sure if/when I should use any of this.

Here is the thing.. I have read a bit of the manual, but I personally learn better by watching and trying to do in these situations, but as well, I am hoping others that are good with tracking have by now played with the v15 and know when to use which one for what purposes and might better explain it here for others to discover. Or link to really good tutorials that demonstrate the different trackers, when to use them, etc.

Thank you.

Alexis van Hurkman has been developing a video tutorial on new features in v15, which will be available from Ripple Training once it's completed. Should be very useful, although we'll see how in-depth it is.

No budget at this time to pay for training videos.. though those that make them certainly deserve to be paid. I was hoping for a specific short tutorial or discussion on the subject.. so others can find it and learn from it as well. Tracking is one of those things that I suspect more people would use if they understood it better.

No budget at this time to pay for training videos.. though those that make them certainly deserve to be paid. I was hoping for a specific short tutorial or discussion on the subject.. so others can find it and learn from it as well.

It's covered pretty well in the manual, and you can read that for free. Tracking is a very complicated subject. I can tell you that I almost always just use the automatic tracking for part of the shot, and I generally wind up using manual rotoscope controls for the rest of it. And then there are occasions where the entire thing is done by hand. And then there's cases where I have to use multiple windows at the same time. Plus cases where I have to use an occlusion mask in addition to the windows in order to avoid letting the window affect something it shouldn't be touching.

And sometimes keys work better than windows; sometimes I use keys and windows in combination. Sometimes I use tracking in combination with color keyframes to dissolve the window in or out or change the correction depending on exposure. It would take an hour to explain all this in a tutorial -- you just have to dive in and start playing with it and figure out the tools yourself.

The main point is: tracking is highly dependent on image content, camera motion and technical quality. So, whatever somebody might demonstrate in a video may work more or less for your own stuff too or not at all.

Trying to dig into underlying principles of tracking will help you build a basic understanding (there are heaps of free tutorials on Mocha, for example). The rest is spending time with your own stuff…

@Marc.. that you know to do that is what I want to learn/understand better. The manual only goes so far in my opinion and I have read through that part.. and others.. not the whole thing though. I guess I was hoping for some sort of scenario when you pick one over the other and why.

My rule of thumb is that if I can't do it in Resolve's tracker in a couple of minutes I cut the losses and move on. Resolve's color page tracker is super fast and very, very good. But the manual control is minimal.

Fusion's tracker is much slower, but it's well equipped to handle tough situations.

I guess I was hoping for some sort of scenario when you pick one over the other and why.

The "when and why" is very content dependent on all but the simplest cases.

Example from my own last week, a simple shot where I had to do label replacement. Aha, lets use planar tracker! Well, it would work if it weren't a chips pack which is deformed during shot so that label also warps heavily. Aha, lets use smart paint (a Nuke thing which produces distortion map based on motion vectors)! This works, but only for part of shot, second half is driving way off. Now, for second part I can use planar track, so good for that. First part now has movement from smartpaint but smartpaint does not give motion blur... Ok, lets drive a simple point tracker over the shot and use its motion to generate blur for smartpaint part. Shot done! Phew, good that the pack didn't rotate too much, otherwise I would have had to use object track or manually animate the movement of 3D pack to get propet perspective change.