Match-Moving Tutorials and More:
Learning Camera Tracking
Online Video Web Tutorials
Other Web Tutorials
FAQs
Practice Exercises
Build-It-Yourself Projects
Useful Commercial Products
Recommended Books
Training DVDs
FAQs
- FAQs about camera tracking.
- More advanced good questions from Siggraph and the forum.
- Lens distortion: additional information about the algorithms.
- See FAQs for technical support
Practice Exercises
- Uphill. Automatic and supervised tracking.
- 1905 San Francisco. Supervised tracking, moving-object tracking, interesting way to set relative scales.
- Apollo 16 Lunar Rover. Inspired by Magnificent Desolation but featuring actual HD NASA imagery, an excellent "final exam."
Other Web Tutorials
- A six-part series on SynthEyes and C4D at Cineversity (VFX Track).
- Tutorial on modeling an object using SynthEyes, by Chris Wells.
- Karl Holt's SynthEyes Review/Tutorial on CreativeCow.net. (earlier SynthEyes version)
- If you are planning to shoot hand-held DV to track, we
recommend that you check out some simple inexpensive do-it-yourself
camera stabilizers, search the web and also these:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/
http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/steady/steady.html - How to shoot video from a helicopter, from hd24.com
- See Digital Juice, click on DJTV and All Videos for great tutorials on how to shoot better videos. The shows on green screens and dollies are our picks.
Build-It-Yourself Projects
- Build your own small camera dolly
- Download the 50x27 inch lens grid and print it at most copy shops such as FedEx Kinkos.
- See the resources page at Hollywood Camera Work.
Useful Commercial Products
- Red/cyan anaglyph glasses from American Paper Optics work very nicely, see 3dglassesonline.com.
- Advanta-Jib Lite - a brilliant 4' - 10' jib system that provides manual camera pan and tilt control! You can create complex camera moves that look like they must have been done with a sophisticated electronic camera head. But because this is a (clever) mechanical system instead, the cost is quite reasonable.
- Kenyon Laboratories - makers of Kenyon gyros such as KS-6 for stabilizing shots from helicopters. Hint: takes two, at right angles, for full stabilization.
- Aerial Exposures offers multi-gyro stabilization platforms using Kenyon gyros. Also offers aerial HD/Red video services in the NY/NJ/PA/CT area.
- Stickypod - a nifty collection of affordable (starting under $100) camera mounts for shooting from cars and other vehicles.
- Spiderbrace - simple and inexpensive camera braces for more stable shooting with today's smaller camera sizes.
Our Recommended Books:
Comments on Dobbert's book from SynthEyes customers: "I am half way through this book and it is amazing!!!" and "The book's great! Well written and a nice mix of theory and practical examples."
The subtitle on "Setting Up Your Shots" is "Great Camera Moves Every Filmmaker Should Know" — which is a lot more to the point. This is a nice visual guide to the different moving-camera shots, a when and why guide to moving the camera (it leaves the how to other nitty-grittier books). If you'd like a more kinetic look to your work, this is a great collection of ideas.
And of course you've got to love Star Wars, this is an extensive behind-the-scenes look at how the visual effects were done. See the VFX World review. And he's a SynthEyes customer too!
Training DVDs
Tim Dobbert has put together three training DVDs, available through The Gnomon Workshop. Several software packages are used; the third DVD includes material on SynthEyes.
- Matchmoving: Essential Production Techniques
- Matchmoving: Object Tracking in Production
- Matchmoving: Advanced Production Techniques.
There's a nice course on camera blocking and staging that includes a lot of material on planning moving-camera shots, from Hollywood Camera Work. Also see their resources page for information on dollies and cranes.