Tracking Control Panel

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‌Tracking Control Panel ‌

The tracker panel has two variations with different sizes for the tracker view area, and slightly different button locations. The wider version gives a better view of the interior of the panel, especially on high-resolution displays. The smaller version is a more compact layout that reduces mouse motion, and because of the reduced size, is

better for use on smaller laptops. Select the desired version using the Wider tracker- view panel preference.

Tip: You’ll often see additional information below this panel in the Trackers room; depending on your monitor size it may appear to be cut off. That’s really the Coordinate system control panel , grouped here for convenience on larger monitors. See the Coordinate System control panel documentation for details, and switch to the Coordinates room to operate it if it is truncated. If having it truncated really bothers you, turn off the Secondary panels preference in the User Interface section, and you won’t see it at all.

Tracker Mini-View. Shows its interior---the inner box of the tracker. Left Mouse: Drag the tracker location. Middle Scroll : Advance the current frame, tracking as you go. Right Mouse : Add or remove a position key at the current frame. Or, cancel a drag in progress. Small crosshair shows the offset position, if present and offset not enabled.

Create. Mode Button. When turned on, depressing the left mouse button in the camera view creates new trackers. When off, the left mouse button selects and moves trackers.

Delete. Button (also Delete key). Deletes the selected tracker(s) or other objects. If nothing is selected when the button is clicked, then delete-tracker-mode is entered or left. In this mode, simply clicking or lassoing a tracker deletes it, which is helpful when cleaning up autotracks before they have been solved. Delete- tracker-mode is automatically exited when this tracker panel is closed (even if a new one opens immediately thereafter).

Channel. , , , , , .Button. Selects channel to be used for this particular tracker, either normal RGB, red, green, blue, luminance, or alpha . Alpha is usable only for planar trackers and may not be selected for other tracker types. If all trackers will use the same channel, make the channel selection on the image preprocessor's Rez tab, which will greatly reduce RAM storage requirements for the shot (and enable Alpha to be tracked if necessary).

Finish. Button. Brings up the finalize dialog box, allowing final filtering and gap filtering as a tracker is locked down.

Lock. Button. Lock or unlock the tracker. Turn on when tracker is complete. Not animated

Tracker Type. , , , , , . Button. Flyout to change the tracker type to normal match-mode, dark spot, bright spot, symmetric spot, planar (use the planar panel to create planar trackers, don’t set this here), or neural net. Right- clicking this button switches back and forth to/from match-mode and symmetric, or dark/bright spots. Right-clicking the neural net selection brings up the dialog to re-select the desired network name. A different neural net (or none) can be set for each individual tracker.

Direction. Button. Configures the tracker for forwards or backwards tracking: it will only track when playing or stepping in the specified direction.

Enable. Button. Animated control turns tracker on or off. Turn off when tracker gets blocked by something or goes offscreen, turn back on when it becomes visible again. Right-click, shift-right, and control-right delete a key, truncate, or delete all keys, respectively.

Contrast. Number-less spinner. Enhances contrast in the Tracker Mini-View window.

Bright. Number-less spinner. Turns up the Tracker Mini-View brightness.

Color. Rectangular swatch. Sets the display color of the tracker for the camera, perspective, and 3-D views.

Now. Button. Adds a tracker position key at the present location and frame. Right-click to remove a position key. Shift-right-click to truncate, removing all following keys.

Key. Spinner tells SynthEyes to automatically add a key after this many frames, to keep the tracker on track (relevant only for pattern-matching tracking).

Key Smooth. Spinner. Tracker’s path will be smoothed for this many frames before each key, so there is no glitch due to re-setting a key. Warning : this can force your machine to do a LOT of work, and respond slowly, if you make this value too large!

Pos. H and V spinners. Tracker’s horizontal and vertical position, from –1 to +1. You can delete a key (border is red) by right-clicking. Shift-right-clicking will truncate the tracker after this frame.

By Hand . (Hand animation) Button. Animated. Used to suspend tracking and hand- animate the tracker over a range of frames, typically to handle occlusion. Right- click, shift-right, and control-right delete a key, truncate, or delete all keys, respectively.

Cliff. (Cliffhanger) Button. Normally (with the button off), trackers are automatically shut off when they reach the edge of the image. That is inconvenient if the tracker hovers on the edge, so mark it as a cliffhanger, and the automatic shutoff will be disabled. Turns on automatically when you re-enable a tracker that was just automatically shut off.

Size. Size and aspect spinners. Animated. Size and aspect ratio (horizontal divided by vertical size) of the interior portion of the tracker.

Search. H and V spinners. Animated. Horizontal and vertical size of the region (excluding the actual interior) that SynthEyes will search for the tracker around its position in the prior frame. "Prior frame" means the adjacent lower-numbered frame for forward tracking, the adjacent higher-numbered frame for backward tracking. Shift-right to truncate, control-right to clear.

E (ie Edit Offset). Button. When (normally) off, Nudge moves the tracker itself, and the time bar shows keys on all the tracker's channels. When E/Edit offset is turned on, Nudge keys will move the offset of the tracker, and the time bar will show the keys on the offset channel. Both are contingent on the tracker having an offset. Edit offset facilitates using the offset channel to overlay correcting offsets over top of a slowly drifting tracker, if you desire (vs correcting the tracker itself).

Offset . Button. Animated. When on, the offset channels will be added to the tracked location to determine the final tracker location. When off, the offset position is not added in. Offset tracking is typically used for occlusion or to handle nearby trackers. Right-click, shift-right, and control-right delete a key, truncate, or delete all keys, respectively.

Offset. H and V spinners. Animated. These give the desired final position of the tracker, when the Offset button is on, relative to the 2-D tracking position. Shift-right to truncate, control-right to clear.

New+. Button. Clones the currently-selected tracker(s) to form new trackers, typically to be used for fine-detail offset trackers. If a tracker being cloned has an offset channel, you will be asked whether you wish to keep it, or clear it after baking in

the offsets as position keys (making it much easier to add additional animated offsets).

Weight. Spinner. Animated. Defaults to 1.0. Multiplier that helps determine the weight given to the 2-D data for each frame from this tracker. Higher values cause a closer match, lower values allow a sloppier match. You can reduce weight in areas of marginal accuracy for a particular tracker. Adjust the key at the first frame to affect the entire shot. Shift-right to truncate, control-right to clear.

WARNING: This control is for experts and should be used judiciously and infrequently. It is easy to use it to mathematically destabilize the solving process, so that you will not get a valid solution at all. Keep near 1. Also see ZWTs below.

Exact . For use after a scene has already been solved: set the tracker’s 2-D position to the exact re-projected location of the tracker’s 3-D position. A quick fix for spurious or missing data points, do not overuse. See the section on filtering and filling gaps. Note: applied to a zero-weighted-tracker, error will not become zero because the ZWT will re-calculate using the new 2-D position, yielding a different 3-D and then 2-D position.

F: n.nnn hpix. (display field, right of Exact button) Shows the distance, in horizontal pixels, between the 2-D tracker location and the re-projected 3-D tracker location. Valid only if the tracker has been solved.

ZWT. When on, the tracker’s weight is internally set to zero—it is a zero-weighted- tracker (ZWT), which does not affect the camera or object’s path at all. As a consequence, its 3-D position will be continually calculated as you update the 2- D track or change the camera or object path, or field of view. The Weight spinner of a ZWT will be disabled, because the weight is internally forced to zero and special processing engaged. The grayed-out displayed value will be the original weight, which will be restored if ZWT mode is turned off.

T: n.nnn hpix. (display field, right of ZWT button) Shows the total error, in horizontal pixels, for the solved tracker. This is the same error as from the Coordinate System panel. It updates dynamically during tracking of a zero-weighted tracker.

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