User Manual

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Tips for What to Keep and What to Delete

Understanding what false tracks look like, and then manually cleaning the track data to

reduce it to a precise set of clear tracks, will result in a more accurate solve. When

cleaning up any track—particularly yellow and orange color coded tracks—keep the

following in mind:

 Keep all tracks with motion that’s completely determined by the motion of the

live-action camera.

 Delete tracks on moving objects or people and tracks that have parallax issues.

 Delete tracks that are reflected in windows or water.

 Delete tracks of highlights that move over a surface.

 Delete tracks that do not do a good job of following a feature.

 Delete tracks that follow false corners created by the superposition of

foreground and background layers.

 Consider deleting tracks that correspond to locators that the solver has

reconstructed at an incorrect Z-depth.

Deleting Tracks

You can manually delete tracks in the viewer or use filters to select groups of tracks. When

deleting tracks in the viewer, it is best to modify the viewer just a bit to see the tracks more

clearly. From the Camera Tracker toolbar above the viewer, clicking the Track Trails button

hides the trails of the tracking points. This cleans up the viewer to show points only, making it

easier to make selections. At the right end of the toolbar, clicking the Darken Image button

slightly darkens the image, again making the points stand out a bit more in the viewer.

Hiding trails and darkening the viewer can

make it easier to see and select poor tracks.

To begin deleting poor-quality tracks, you can drag a selection box around a group of tracks

you want to remove and then either click the Delete Tracks button in the Camera Tracker

toolbar or press Command-Delete.

You can hold down the Command key to select discontiguous tracking marks that are not near

each other. If you accidentally select tracks you want to keep, continue holding the Command

key and drag over the selected tracks to deselect them.

When deleting tracks, take note of the current Average Solve Error at the top of the Inspector

and then rerun the solver. It is better to delete small groups of tracks and then rerun the solver

than to delete one or two large sections. As mentioned previously, deleting too many tracks can

have adverse effects and increase the Average Solve Error.

1600Chapter – 77 3D Camera Tracking