Notice the track points outside the masked in portions, and the stuck banner. I've used the process of masking in steady portions of the frame in a precomposed composition hundreds of times, and when I turned on after effects today, it doesn't seem to be working at all. Am I missing something new?
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Now it is really stuck on there. Removed the effect and still, the blue banner:
tried again from scratch, same issue, tries to use portions masked out in previous composition:
System: Windows 8.1, 4790k, 32Gb Ram, GTX960, not sure on "Hardware Accelerate Panels"
Typical workflow I've always used:
1. Import photos as JPEG Sequence
2. Create Composition by dragging to the filmstrip
3. Precompose that composition
4. mask in portions that stay steady on the precomposition
5. Apply warp stabilizer to the first composition (Composition WITHOUT the masks)
6. remove masks
7. adjust track points as needed (shadows seem to confuse WS more than anything else)
Today I followed the exact same procedure, and no matter if the masks are present or not, it will track something completely different.
Also dynamic link seems to be pulling the preview resolution rather than compositions resolution, but I'll fill out a separate entry for that.
Your workflow is really confusing. Warp stabilizer needs a fair amount of fixed geometry to work properly. If the original shot is this:
even if the big dish with the clearance lights is not part of the shot, I don't see any reason to mask any of the shot and masking so you are just tracking the barn doesn't make much sense either.
If you are attempting to pre-compose so that Warp Stabilizer uses the mask then you need to MOVE all attributes, not leave them. I'm also not sure that you have revealed all modified properties of the layer that is giving you problems. Press the U key twice. If you see a mask on the same layer that warp stabilizer is applied to it won't use it.
The only reason to use Warp Stabilizer is to remove some of the camera shake from an unstable shot. What are you trying to accomplish? Without understanding what you are trying to do I don't know what suggestions to make.
For example, if this shot did not include the big dish and I wanted to put it in I would MOTION Stabilize or use Mocha to motion stabilize the shot, then add the dish in, then put the camera motion back in the shot and add it to the dish. If I then wanted to smooth out the camera move I would nest this comp in a new one and warp stabilize the nested comp. If there is a bunch of things moving in the shot - like cars or other things, that foul up the warp stabilization then I would remove the trackers that attach to the moving objects.
Please give us more details. I can't figure out what you are trying to do with those masks but I doubt that it would work no matter what version of AE you were using.
Hello Rick,
I appreciate the response, and wanted to say though you are trying to help, it sounds a lot like:
Q: This feature that use to work is no longer working
A: You should have never been using that feature
If this wasn't your intention, I apologize for reading it that way.
In any case you bring up some good questions. The masks are not exactly supported out of the box for warp stabilizer, it even warns you if you try to use them in the same composition. The answer to that is to use a precomposition. Something I've been doing for years to highlight steady portions of a frame to smooth out the video. Here is the original article I used to do achieve this: Use Warp Stabilizer based on background : Adobe After Effects
There are two reasons I need to use the barn mask the in the above composition. One, the dish isn't your average dish, it is this one: Green Bank Telescope - Wikipedia , which is a radio telescope. It isn't focusing on some geosynchronous satellite for espn, but looking out into the cosmos which requires it be constantly moving. I would hate for the frame to track the dish and give the viewers motion sickness.
The second reason is these are 30 second exposures each, which with the wind and camera IS, each one has a good chance of being slightly moved in position depending when the exposure started. You'll have to forgive me, but I don't typically travel with a good sturdy 20 pound tripod, nor did I have a bag of rocks to serve as an anchor.
Here is the footage after hours of going through lightroom and trying to hand stabilize is:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29765/GBT.mp4
Anyway, the issue still remains, it worked in previous versions of Adobe AE, and it is broken in 2017. It does not honor masks, and seems to track random other portions of the frame.
I don't know of any other stabilizers that come with the tool out of the box. If you know of any free plugins, I saw you mention two above, please link your favorite tutorial here so I can go off and try that tool 
while Adobe decides which other thing they are going to charge me monthly to break in an update 
My intention was to say that I don't think you are using the right workflow. I didn't say that Warp stabilizer isn't working. I didn't say that you shouldn't have tried to use warp stabilizer. I said that I didn't think you were approaching the problem in the right way.
I just wrapped up a project using Warp Stabilizer in CC 2017 and it worked just fine. There was a mask involved and a pre-comp in one of the shots. The problem with your procedure, as far as I can see, is that you are not including enough information give warp stabilizer a chance to work. It also looks like you did not move the footage and the masks to the pre-comp by moving all attributes. That would explain why you have trackers in the masked area.
For a time-lapse with long exposure times and a not perfectly stabilized camera I would have chosen Stabilize Motion instead of Warp Stabilizer. Warp stabilizer depends heavily on predictable camera motion between frames. If you had started your post by saying I have a time-lapse sequence where the camera moves a bit between shots and the exposure times are 30 seconds I would have suggested that you try Stabilize Motion first using position and rotation. Judging from your shot I may have added an adjustment layer, bumped up the exposure or used equalize something like this:
Then stabilized motion or used a subtraction mask on the antenna and the sky and tried Motion Stabilize. When I had a good stabilized shot I would have turned off the effects in the pre-comp and rendered a production master.
Or for using Warp Stabilizer like this:
Based on a 5 minute test I think Motion Stabilize will give you the best result. You'll probably have to track a half dozen frames by hand.
Doh! Thanks Rick, I didn't even know that there was a built in tool called Motion Stabilize. I think the original tucows forum led me astray for a number of years Thanks I appreciate the screenshots, they were most helpful.
These two points got me 99% of the way there with one major jump towards the end. I'm going to test the masking here in a bit and report back, because while this solves my problem, it doesn't quite say why there are track points showing up where they shouldn't be for warp stabilizer.
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