They move a lot, unfortunately. That's why *I* can't do it.
I'm really, really, really hoping someone here can help.

My condoleances.

Do you have to rotoscope? No chance of using multiple chromakeyed masks?


Combustion 4 has lots of rotoscoping features, including letting you group any subset of the control points in a mask layer, as well as B-splines that are sometimes much quicker to work with than the Bezier splines in Vegas.

Why isn't there a motion tracking plugin for Vegas? I seems like all the other NLEs have some sort of motion tracking matte plugins available. This would be an invaluable tool.

As a "plugin" I guess you could use Boris for that.
But for my particular problem, I'm dealing with chains - or, the equivelent of dangling rope.
Man... I thought I'd get a few takers here on my offer. I'm willing to pay and everything.
But I guess we're all editors here.
Anybody have a suggestion where I can quickly find an artist who can do this? I'll have a WVM available by 7pm PST.
Thanks.

Just sent you an email - I'll possibly do this - just wanna finish d-loading the clip and see for sure - I'll tell you then for sure - but I think it looks doable - I may need some more detailed info to do it for sure.

Dave

You gotta plan ahead for what you're going to rotoscope. I did a whole scene of football players, the whole front line and the running QB with receiver in about 10 hours. It isn't as hard as it is tedious. Here's what I did to accomplish it:

I worked in layers, I took only the portions of the clip that had the players (i.e. in a 10 second clip, the front d line was only seen in 3 seconds, I took that 3 seconds), made a new track and copied that clip to it, keeping it within the time frame. Masked out the first batch.

Second, I took out the receivers, then the QB, each with their own event and track. When put together, it looks like they're all cut out individually.

I cheated a bit by making any kine shape when players overlapped, meaning I didn't have to be true to the form when they were intersecting each other.

I don't know how to show you my work, how to upload it somewhere where you can see.

Here's a few things to remember when rotoscoping.
1 plan ahead. know if you're going to use a feather or not, that way, you don't have to go back and redo anything. sometimes the feather isn't the best thing to use for a smooth edge. without feather keeps things crisp and 'real' looking.

2 make sure your preview is BEST, because using draft, preview or even good won't give you an accurate image to rotoscope in the 'event pan & crop'.

3 don't worry about getting 'every' frame, try going every other, or even three frames. If your footage field order is 'lower' (which is common for most NTSC broadcast) then the interpolation will 'guesstimate' the motion. if you use progressive, then you might want to use frame by frame.

4 try to keep the points within the same area of your subject. If one point is on the nose, try to keep it there throughout. moving them around just because it makes it easier for you to manage the dots will result in an odd animation, sorta like marching ants.

try these out, see if it works for ya. it took a while for me get it the way i wanted it to work, so i hope this'll help ya.

Sounds interesting!
And, of course, you're right, planning ahead is of great importance. I learned a lot on my venture into roto-masking.
As to your clip. I think many of us would be interested in seeing it. Try going to
http://www.vegasusers.com/
That's a place many folk upload their Vegas clips for others to view. Then let us know that you put it up there so we can all go and have a look.
I don't know how to upload a clip there (I never figured it out), but lots - LOTS of other folk have. It's a great site that deserves praise and support.

Mathew isn't joking - at least not the stuff that he's doin!!!

lets just say that If I don't see any chains for a while, I'm not gonna be sad

:)

Dave

HAHAHA!
That'll make more sense to everyone when I finish the spot I'm working on (and then share it here).
Dave was/is instrumental in me getting this project completed.
However, due to a computer that's not current-top-of-the-line or hooked up to a render farm, it won't be done until this weekend ( some 3D renders are slower than others - especially when the opperator makes several mistakes due to lack of sleep).
A big public thanks to Dave for the help!

yea - just make sure to post it in a really low res so that they can't scrutinize it too closely - LOL.

It was my pleasure, believe it or not. I always like to help out people on the forum and get to know folks more, and a good challenge now and then keeps you on your toes, right?

=)

Dave

Hey mjroddy, I uploaded the clip to vegasusers.com, but i don't think chienworks approved of it, since it was created in final cut pro (the final output). I only contributed the music piece and the rotoscoping.

Pitty, that.
It would have been a good thing to see your Vegas rotoscoping. Sounded like an interesting project.
Well, if you ever get web space and can toss it up for all to see, definitely let us know. I mean, Vegas work is Vegas work, right? Guess it depends on how much was done in FCP. Thanks for trying and posting the followup here.

I was curious if and how you accomplished your rotoscoping in the end. The recommendations so far looked way to time consuming for my desires.

I found Debug Mode Wax for free download yesterday. The recommendation was from a 2003 post at Camcorderinfo, but I'm considering trying.

Wax is good. Go for it.
My resulting commercial can be found at
www.matthewroddy.com/mvp
then go to the :30 commercials area.
The spot is for Top Choice Mortgage. The parts I had to roto were for the part where the lady puches the house back into place. There were several elements there that I had to roto.

If you need to do more roto work, consider if Silhouette Roto could be worth a $295 spend (as an AE plug-in), or slightly more as a standalone.

This tool is absolutely amazing. It doesn't do anything except rotoing, but perhaps as a result it does that exceedingly well.

It is even easy to use. You can quickly set up multiple trackers that automatically modify complex masks on a frame-by-frame basis. You can adjust feathering on a point basis rather than on a mask basis, and, and, ...well you get the idea.

This is absolutely a dream tool, and I can't see them maintaining this price when it becomes more widely known. It's at V2.1 right now, and feels very mature.

Something that would take a full day in Vegas (with tears), could likely be done in minutes with Silhouette, without tears.

It has a very good optional Paint module also, that works in Float as well (that is not feature diarrhea, float precision can boost quality dramatically even for 8-bit footage).

yea - it wasn't just masking, but the chains had to be created as well, and "painted" in each frame. It turned out alright too - atleast for 40 hours or something like that - wasn't it?

Can't remember anymore.

Dave

I think I remember seeing this clip on tv. nice job

Yeah, Dave... Something like that. ;-) I just realized, I gotta get your name on the write up. Please jot me a note with (mjr AT matthewroddy ZOT com) and I'll be happy to put up a link to your home web site (if you have one) and give you full credit for the work you did.
(Dave did the chains for me, saved as a TGA sequence - WHEW!! - THANKS!!! Couldn't have been done with out CHAINS!)

Next time you need to do chains, Silhouette can do "custom brushes", with these you can create one link and then paint a whole chain with just one paint stroke.

:O)

Bjorn,

Re Silhouette Roto: how does the paint program integrate with the Roto tool? Would it be effective to use a different 3rd party paint tool?

I REALLY REALLY wish Vegas had motion tracking built in.

-jerry

The paint functionality is actually always in the Roto program.

Buying Paint separately only enables that functionality.

You could certainly use a 3rd party paint tool, but you'd lose the very nice and time-saving integration, like quickly painting with animated roto shapes.

Roto alone is $295, and Roto+Paint is $495 on special, so the difference is pretty small.

My jaded jaw doesn't drop very often, but this program made it happen.

Makes you wonder why Autodesk/Discreet or Adobe didn't create something this good...

Motion tracking can be medium quality (After Effects), better quality (Boris), high quality (Combustion, Digital Fusion), or WOW (Silhouette).

The difference really is that big, but in the end of course it's only about saving time.

If you've got lots of it, the end result will be the same (except I don't see how you could replicate the result of Silhouette's variable feathering across a mask boundary).

And for the avoidance of doubt, I have no connection with this company other than as a customer.

Too bad their web site is so basic. I think they are geeks with a better mousetrap, and they don't really know how to do marketing.

nah - No need for credit being given - all I did was subcontract work. I do that for lots of folks.

Dave