In the last installment, I gave a tour of the improvements and features found in the Tracking and Stabilize Motion features of After Effects 6.0 Pro. In this installment we’ll work through an exercise putting the Stabilize Motion feature to work.
I believe image stabilization is the easiest aspect of the two tools to comprehend and is a great place to start and get experience in placing tracking points in the best location. [an error occurred while processing this directive]When stabilizing footage, Adobe After Effects can track pixels using two different methods; the fist is position, which when applied will alter the Anchor Point of the video layer to ensure that the area tracked remains fixed. With only the position box highlighted, you only have to deal with one tracking region.
The other tracking option is to track the rotation of a clip. With the rotation option selected, After Effects gives you two tracking region boxes to work with. The two region indicators calculate the rotation between the two tracked areas, and applies the resulting data to the rotation property of the layer.
(The Position and Rotation tracking methods are found in the Tracker Controls Palette. As described in the last installment, the Tracker Control Palette becomes active once you place a clip in the Timeline and choose to either Motion Track or Stabilize a clip.)
For example, if the tracked elements in the clip rotates clockwise by 5 degrees in one frame, After Effects will rotate the layer counterclockwise by the same amount. This continues frame by frame until the analysis is complete.
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