Solved MS 16 Motion Tracking and Stabilization capabilities

I use Movie Studio 13 but also use DaVinci Resolve to lock a lecture speaker into a specific position in the frame. (see example result below) It would be great if I could do it all in Movie Studio.

Ideally I could precisely track the speaker with the camera, but I've found I can't react fast enough to make that work reliably so I do it while editing. I have done it in Movie Studio using manual key frames, but that approach is very very labor intensive for an speaker that wanders the stage or even just moves much at the podium.

Currently I use DaVinci Resolve's motion tracking to track the speaker's head, then copy the resulting motion tracking key frames into the video stabilization function. This results in a video with the speaker locked into one position in the frame. Then I import into Movie Studio to put it all together with slides and other content.

Can the new motion tracking in Vegas Movie Studio 16 do something similar?
Thanks.

Hi JHT

That's the first time I've ever heard someone doing something like this.
If I am understanding you correctly, I'm surprised you can get this to work at all, without loosing too much of the video at sides and top/bottom of video frame. Doing what you are doing is going to zoom in on the video frame, which will result in lower resolution video.

There is a new video on the Vegas Pro YouTube channel, which explains how the Motion Tracking tool works in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 16.
You can download the free trial for VMSP16 and test this out.


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My original video of the speaker is 1920x1080 pixels, and I only need the video of the speaker to be 240x1080 pixels since a 4x3 aspect ratio slide takes up the rest of the frame. So locking down the position of the speaker does create black bars on the sides, it usually is not a problem since I am cropping down to only 240 pixels wide to fit the speaker in next to the slide. DaVinici Resolve has a option to zoom in when doing the motion tracking, but I don't usually use that feature.

Here is the example again -- hopefully works this time.

Cool
Now I understand what you are doing.
That's a very clever idea :!:

I need some time to wrap my head around this and will message again soon.

Having played with this I don't think it will achieve what you want. The Motion Tracking tracks the movement of an object across the screen but doesn't move it into a fixed position.

MV16 Plat has a lot of new tricks though to get ones head around.

I agree with Eric.
You cannot use the new Motion Tracking tool in Vegas to do what you want.
That would be the opposite of Motion Tracking.

Stick with your current workflow.

Motion Tracking is only 1/2 of the puzzle, the missing half is feeding the key frames generated by motion tracking into the stabilization tool. I got a reply from Magix saying they had added this to the feature to their list of user requests.

Thanks everyone for all the replies.

I was researching this too, and came across a tutorial using store.pixelfilmstudios.com/product/fcpx-stabilizer/ in Final Cut Pro

Really seems like the only missing part is chaining the key frames from the tracking into the pan/tilt/zoom already built into MS

I did find a work around, though, so wanted to share, even if it's a bit of a necro-post, since I expect others will find this thread too, and OP may be interested.

Here's my footage, rendered with MS16.0 build 109:

Steps to reproduce:
1) Import source clip
2) Add clip to time line
3) Open event's pan/crop editor
3a) Right click, choose invert horizontal
3b) Right click again, choose invert vertical
4) Open event's fx editor
4a) Add bezier mask plugin
4b) Modify bezier mask plugin settings to focus on subject of choice
4c) Run tracking algorithm on mask
5) Add the SAME clip to a new video track ABOVE the original. Make sure they're both aligned in time.
6) Open new clip event's fx editor
6a) Add picture in picture plugin
6b) Set scale to 1.0
7) Select both video events
Click Tools>Extensions>Copy Motion Track to PiP
9) Click on second (top) video event's pan/crop editor
9a) Pan clip so that object of choice is in correct location on final video frame

This method preserves the original footage quality, but you get more black bars, because you're cropping the footage once when set the pan/crop of the top clip, and then again when you do the PIP movements

The alternative method (labeled "Downscale/Upscale" in the example clip) sacrifices video quality for smaller black bars. It's similar to the method above, but first you center the subject in the original (inverted) clip, then set the pan/crop editor for both the original and target clips to render at half size. This leaves 1/2 the frame for movement WITHOUT cropping the remaining clip. Finally, add a SECOND PIP to the target clip's FX chain after the first PIP, and set this new PIP scale to 2x. This will return the clip to the normal size, but will upscale from the half resolution version.

I should mention that the reason this works is because the initial inverting (prior to the tracking) causes the tracks to also be inverted. Then, when you apply the inverted tracking to the normal clip, you end up "undoing" the motion tracked, leaving the subject still while everything else moves around.

What a neat hack!

I also found that if you have Vegas, you can run a custom script to export the motion track, and then apply it to pan/crop. Too bad MovieStudio doesn't support this.

Here is a post with more details
www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/bizer-masking-while-zoomed-and-keeping-it-centred--114969/#ca712169

The black bars aren't a problem for my application since I only need a slice of the frame that includes speaker.

Thanks for your post.