Face tracking is horrible

[toddf75168194]

35 second sequence 60fps .. i cannot track but 5 to 7 seconds at a time or 420 frames. have to stop it.. "try to escape" and IF i am able to break out of it... and that is a big if...purge memory and try again.. the further i go the less i can track.. after the initial 7 seconds then i can only track like 4 seconds.. and typically takes a good 2 min to break from the sequence if it don't crash.. is there a way to fix this? it is one of the primary reason i use EA... 32 gigs ram 8 gig vid card quad core amd. Been waiting for a fix for almost a year..

or is thee another face tracking software i could use and still add in to AE. I do  have moca pro.. but seems it does not do prospective on faces. any help would be great...

[Rick Gerard]

35 second sequence??? A sequence is multiple shots, i'm assuming you mean a 35 second shot.

First question, are you going to use the entire 35 seconds in your final comp? If not, why waste time tracking frames that you are not going to use. Trim the shot. This is generally the best workflow for any VFX project. Most of my comps are seven seconds or less and that's pretty standard for a compositing shot in AE.

If you are going to use the entire shot then first make sure AE is up to date and give us OS and AE version details down to the last decimal point. The latest upgrades have fixed a lot of bugs. If you are all current then I would first suggest that you put your shot in a separate comp with nothing else in the timeline and try the tracking. Make sure you don't have too much of the surrounding areas selected. If that still causes problems and all you are trying to do is to track the perspective changes in the face I would probably use Mocha. It's faster for things like adding scars or other things to faces. There are several tutorials on the Mocha website and on Video Co-pilot that show how to successfully track faces using Mocha.

Here's one other thing to think about. Compositing on a face always works better if you plan the shot before you shoot it. Just taking some footage that was shot with no plan and then trying to do some face tracking is asking for trouble. That's why they hire someone like me, a Visual Effects Supervisor, and put me on the set. It's called spending money to save money.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi ToddF,

Did you ever solve your problem? If so, how did you end up doing so?

Thanks,
Kevin