5 Tracking tricks you should know before tracking objects in resolve

hi i'm alex jordan from blonde color grading and filmsimplified.com and today we're going to be taking a look at a couple of tracking tricks in davinci resolve that you probably didn't know that will make your life much easier let's start tracking and resolve is magic you simply add a window place the window whatever you want change the size of the window i'm just hitting a shortcut key here and it will just track like it's just unbelievable however sometimes you will run into trouble based on the scene you're trying to track and the portion of the scene that you're trying to track for example here i have this footage notice that when the camera move there's a parallax effect to the right of the scene first we have this section in front and this section in the back notice that when the camera moves these sections move at different speeds so the objects in the front are moving much faster than the objects in the background this simply means that if i add a window so i'll simply come here add a window and maybe position it this way and simply i'll just come to the tracker drag forward and notice what's happening the tracker doesn't really know where to focus on so now we just tilted the tracking window which is not something you might want to do so let's continue tracking backwards and again look at the window how it's moving that's simply because the window does not know where to focus should it focus on the front this is trying to follow the objects in the front or should it focus only on the back and this is where the first two tricks come in let's take a look at the first one this reset add the window and adjust it to its own position and now i'm going to do a very simple trick i'm going to make the window much smaller so i'll just really make the window small and make it focused only on a very small area note that the area inside this smaller circle will be tracked so now we just told the tracker to ignore the objects in the front and only track the background so let's go to tracking and track forward and notice how it's just only tracking the background now and ignoring the foreground entirely and let's track backwards and it's the same thing so now we have a much better tracking data however we have a problem now the window is much smaller it's tracking only a portion of the image not the entire image well just make sure that in the tracker window you're selecting clip mode and now you can simply change the size of the window to any size you want so i'll just change the window size and now notice that even though i changed the window size the window is still tracking the background and ignoring the foreground because all the tracking data here were performed while the window was smaller and it only covered this area so when you're tracking you can make the window smaller track any object you want or maybe a part of the scene that you want and after that you can change the size of the window to any size you want and it will still be locked to the area it originally tracked so now even if i move the window to the left side notice that it's still moving with this area here actually i can change its size move it to this side and it will still be tracked to the original size so that was the first solution let's take a look at another solution reset i'll add a new window maybe just come to this part here and again change the size and now i want to repeat the same thing i just want to track the background without the foreground but i don't want to change the size of the window for any reason let's take a look at another solution in the tracker i have this section to the bottom i'll activate it by clicking here activating interactive mode i have these tracking markers appearing on the screen these markers they tell you what features in this image will be tracked it just looks at you know what's inside the window and decide you know these points are the points i'm going to be tracking note that some of the tracking points are on the background while other tracking points are on the foreground well it's pretty simple i need to delete the tracking points that are on the foreground basically telling resolve to ignore it i can do that by simply clicking and dragging so now i just selected these points and then i can simply click this icon here to delete all of the points selected so i'll click the icon and notice that all the points here disappeared now if i track forward notice that resolve will only focus on the background and it will completely ignore the foreground and back to this point and track backwards and it's much better and now to the third trick the point tracker i'll add a window here and again just the same window with the same area and now i don't want to use the full power of the tracker because the tracker here tracks rotation size 3d it tracks many things and sometimes you want to track a very specific feature just a point like an eyeball or something well in that case you can use the point tracker i'll come to the tracker here and notice that to the bottom right of the tracking window i have this drop down menu it currently says cloud tracker so the tracker we're using now is the cloud tracker i can open this drop down menu and switch it to point tracker this simply allows us to track a point just one point on the screen first i need to select the point or tell resolve what point to track i can use this button here i'll click it and once i clicked it i have this plus sign added to the monitor so i can hold this plus sign and move it around i'll click here and maybe i'll just place it on this point here for example so now we have this one point i'll simply hit track forge as usual and now we're tracking a single point rather than the advanced tracking system that resolve uses this is still pretty advanced but now we're focusing only on one point on the screen this is very beneficial if you have a very complex scene with a lot of moving stuff and you just want to track one thing you just want to track an eyeball something very small on the scene maybe and you just want to make sure to be able to track that one thing this will work magic let's take a look at one more trick i'll reset everything add a new window and now i have this window here and i'll track for example her movement so i'll just press it here track forward now let's say i need to add another window for example for a similarly moving object in the screen so i'll simply come to windows here and maybe add this time a linear window for example so this is another window let's move this window here and let's say that i don't want to track this window again i already have all the tracking data in the uh first window so i can simply copy the tracking data from one window to another even across nodes if you wanted so i'll select the first window so this is the window that is tracked i'll go to tracker and using these three dots to the right here i'll click and here i have these two options copy track data and paste track data so i'll click here to copy it and then i'll select the other window by clicking on it i know it's selected because it's much brighter than the window that is not selected so while this window is selected i'll simply click the three dots here and select base track data and now the same tracking data is applied to the other window notice how they both move even in 3d space the same way this can be very beneficial if you want to add another node and you added a window and you already tracked something you don't want to go back and track it and you want both windows to match 100 you can simply copy and paste tracking data even across multiple nodes so for example i'll add a new node here and maybe i'll add a window now to her face for example so even though this is a different node i'll simply open the tracker window open the three dots and select base tracking data and notice that now we have the same tracking data applied and remember just like from the first trick because we are on clip mode we can move this window to a different location without any problem notice how now we change the position of the window and it's still tracking perfectly the last trick here is to simply ignore the tracker entirely if you have something very simple between two or three points in the image you can simply place your window manually very easy let's add a window here for example to this part of the image and now notice something very interesting i'll switch to the tracking window from these controllers i'm currently selecting clip i'll switch now to frame frame simply remembers the position of this window at this point in time so notice what will happen here once i move the window and new point was created so now i have a new point added this point remembers all the properties of this window at this point in time so now let's move the playhead to this part here and change the position of the window for example i'll move it to the right however before i move it just make sure to keep your eye on this area here i'll move the window and notice that a new point was created this point now will remember the position of this window at this particular point in time and now if i play between these two points notice that the window is moving it's changing its position from this point to this point and i can add as many points as i want to for example at this point in time i want the window to be here notice how simple things are you don't even need to create a new keyframe or anything you just move to a certain position move the window and now the window will just keep on changing its position between these points i believe these tricks will make tracking much easier for a lot of starting filmmakers if you like this please visit us at filmsimplified.com where you can join our free davinci resolve crash course that is designed for the absolute beginner and will take you through every tab and resolve thank you filmsimplified.com

Channel: Learn Color Grading

Views: 40,730

Keywords: Davinci resolve 12, davinci resolve, color grading

Id: r6-Iq4xDfUY

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020