The manuals can be found on SynthEyes's Help menu.

On macOS, do not use the Help menu's search box, it is a macOS feature that searches only the macOS help.

This section covers general questions about match-moving: what it is, what you can do with it, overall workflow…

What is Camera Tracking?

"Camera tracking" or "Matchmoving" or "3D Tracking" is the process of analyzing a video clip or film shot to determine where—in 3D—the camera went, what its field of view was, and where parts of the set were. The 3D path of a rigid moving object can be determined as well.

Overall Workflow

Shoot. In SynthEyes, track using the automated system or supervised trackers, solve for the camera and environment information, export to your existing 3D animation or compositing software (Maya, Lightwave, 3ds max, Modo, After Effects...). Using your 3D software, create effects matching the original shot. Render. Composite. Edit.

Why Automated and Supervised Tracking?

If SynthEyes can track and solve automatically, why does it have supervised capabilities ? It's like cruise control on a car: automatic for the boring stuff, manual for heavy traffic. SynthEyes lets you mix and match, even in the same shot.

Can I Match One Still Image?

Yes, if there are a number of parallel lines present (See "Tripod and Lock-off Shot Alignment" in the manual). Or, if you know the exact 3D coordinates of a half-dozen or more visible features.

Can I Use Known Coordinates?

If you have survey data from a set or construction site, you can use those known coordinates to match the entire match-moved scene to that data.

FAQs covering installing and licensing SynthEyes—getting it going to start with.

Installer Fails

If an installer refuses to run, or the OS claims it is corrupted, please download again after turning off any and all "download managers." Try a different browser if necessary.

Turn off auto-save—some network's protocols apparently do not perform the renaming of the previous file properly, ie from foo.sni to foo.sni.bac Turn off auto-save in the Save/Export section of the preferences.

macOS: If the text in the SynthEyes user-interface buttons is missing or garbled, you have removed or altered macOS's system Lucida Grande font, and need to restore it. You must not override the system Lucida Grande font by placing a different one in /Library/Fonts, /Network/Library/Fonts, or ~/Library/Fonts.

Crashes During Startup

*** IMPORTANT *** SynthEyes requires support for the AVX instruction set. If you've never run SynthEyes before on a machine, you have an older machine, and SynthEyes crashes at startup, your machine probably doesn't support AVX. (On Linux, it may mean that you need to install additional subcomponents, see the Linux support area.)

If you've run SynthEyes before successfully, and now it crashes in startup, either SynthEyes crashed previously or your entire machine wasn't shut down properly. You can manually reset the preferences to fix that.

Crash or Hang?

Is it a crash or a hang? SynthEyes might seem frozen, but it could be processing a task that takes time, especially after starting certain operations. Be patient, like when opening a long movie file, which needs indexing for all image frames.

For Windows, use Task Manager to create a dump file for diagnostics (see instructions below). On macOS, select the process, Inspect it, and then Sample.

Windows Note: A problematic audio system called "Nahimic" with a video overlay may cause hangs, especially when entering the graph editor or perspective view. It's found on machines from major manufacturers, including Dell. If you encounter this issue, disable or uninstall Nahimic.

How to Report a Crash or Hang

If you encounter a crash or hang in SynthEyes, follow these steps to help us diagnose the issue:

1. Capture a full-screen screenshot immediately.
2. Document your actions for the 30 seconds leading up to the crash, including keystrokes and mouse clicks.
3. If an "Imminent Crash" dialog appears, take a full-screen screenshot before clicking "Continue" to understand the specific problem detected.
4. Emphasize using full-screen screenshots to provide a complete view of the interface.
5. If you encounter an error during a solve, send the SynthEyes scene (sni) file.
6. For significant issues, like "file reading doesn't work" or "planar tracking doesn't work," provide a detailed description of your operating system and processor.
7. On MacOS, gather information from the macOS crash reporter. If it doesn't appear, here's what to do:
• Open the Console app from Applications > Utilities in Finder.
• Select Crash Reports.
• Locate the most recent crash report for SynthEyes in the list.
• Right-click the desired log's file name.
• Either copy the contents and paste them directly into an email or send the crash report as an attachment.
8. In Windows, users can retrieve core dump files as follows:
• Start SynthEyes.
• Click the File/User Data Folder item.
• Navigate up two levels to the AppData folder, then down into the Local, SynthEyes, and CrashDumps folders.
• Right-click the last dump file and select Send to/Compressed (zipped) folder. Email the file or post larger files.
9. On Linux, users should consult their system's settings to determine the core dump file location. Every Linux system may have its own complex scheme, for example, RedHat/CentOS may use the Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (ABRT).

Recovering your SynthEyes scene (SNI) file

In many SynthEyes-detected crashes, SynthEyes will save your current SNI scene file. When you restart SynthEyes, click File/User Data File. The saved file is crash.sni there; you can check its date. Don't use it to replace any earlier versions of the SNI file you may have made; use it as a next version. If you've been using SynthEyes's auto-versioning features, you should also have a sequence of earlier versions.

If you got an error about running out of memory, check that you have plenty of free disk space on your main system drive. Your operating system likes to think ahead, and make sure it has somewhere to keep SynthEyes if it needs to move the running application to disk temporarily. (Technical explanation: it wants backing store for the virtual memory, even if the physical memory exists.)

Click here for resources if your scene looks good in SynthEyes, but you have trouble exporting to a downstream application, or the match move isn't the same in that application.

• Be sure to check the Top, Front, and Side views in SynthEyes to make sure the scene is as expected, not just the camera view.
• Check the support area for updated scripts.
• See the tutorial on diagnosing export issues.
• Be on the lookout for single-frame shifts between the camera animation and imagery if you see slight sliding or jittering in the downstream application.
• Make sure that the export file name and entire path name do not contain any accented or special characters. Valid characters are A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore, dash, and space (better without spaces, never first or last character).
• Downstream applications may need to be set for English language input.
• The Maya script has a first-frame setting that may need adjusting depending on your setup, if you notice small velocity-dependent shifts.
• If you have trouble with the Electric Image camera export, you probably need to switch to an Implicit camera type.
• Use notepad/textedit to open the Sizzle script for your export type. Check for configuration values, limitations, requirements, comments etc. at the top of the script.
• If you need to report a problem, send the SNI file, the exported output, and a screen capture of the importing application: either any error messages, or the appearance of the imported scene.