How many times do we watch a scene and think - they're lazy - I can do that, it's just package/tool/software/technique.

I find myself thinking the same thing, then I try to get the same results (of course with a lot less resources). Then I find this stuff is hard!

It's not the same as photography, where getting professional results is so much easier. With video it's a case of the weakest link is the one that stands out most. For example you get a great chroma key and you're really proud of the blend on the hair line - then you notice that yellow logo has become a brown logo.

I thought I'd use this post to document some the processes that I'm going through in order to build skills, sometimes a video on PV just unlocks an idea - other times it's a five hundred hour journey. This is where Yak shaving comes in, you set out to do a specific thing, but along the way you end up going down so many sub-tasks that one of them is bound to be shaving a yak.

I'll start with Camera Tracking. So far I've put about 20 hours in, including grabbing various clips to experiment on. Of course it's not just the tracking but the integration of the new objects afterwards.

Anyway, here's the very first attempt:

It's 12 seconds and it's rubbish, but it's enough for me to learn about:

• setting up the tracking points
• what a point cloud is and why some points are pointless
• setting the camera parameters to give the tracker a lock onto the physical measurements
• setting up and moving the ground plane
• making the ground plane invisible (and later making just the shadow of the object visible)
• adding an object in the 3D space
• solving, re-solving (*N) and exporting the rigs

But perhaps mostly, so far it has taught me that long clips are a double extra triple piggy to track.

Also, do these point and shoot cams also have an F-stop sweet spot like my Lumix 100-300 lens where between f5 or f8 is its sharpest. Is that the same for point and shoots?

Harold House