Using our Motion Capture technology, one can precisely record the video or film camera's trajectory in 3D space. The idea is to attach MC markers to the camera and track it as a ordinary rigid body. At first, it may seem overcomplicated, however it is immediately known whether the trajectory of the camera could be reconstructed (peace in mind for VFX supervisor!) and it is quite precise. And doesn't depend on anything in the scene, making VFX work much simpler!
This allows for bypassing costly tracking with ordinary matchmoving software, that relies on tracking markers in the video. Sure, experienced matchmover will save almost every shot, however at what cost...
Pros:
One gets the relative 3D trajectory of the camera directly. It is precise and all the potentially problematic and unreliable matchmoving is completely bypassed, which saves costs and time: the MC operator tracks the action and if he confirms the trajectory was recorded, there is no risk of potentially failing matchmove of a shot. The only calibration needed is matching camera nodal point and exact focal length to the rigid body object formed by the MC markers (one calibration per each lens required).
- With common matchmoving approach, where the video is analyzed afterwards, there is inherent risk that part of the shot might include too few or untrackable static features, making the tracking problematic or almost impossible.
- The tracking markers for matchmoving damage keying background by adding extra objects that have to be removed from the image, and even worse, for high end cameras with large chip sizes, such as RED One, narrow depth of field with open aperture and long focal lengths may effectively make the use of image tracking almost impossible because the markers simply are out of focus and totally blury, unusable.
Cons:
Of course, things aren't that simple, extra work and calibration is always necessary and unless some other processing is available, this pipeline can't account for zoom changes during the shot and lens distortions. Also, the camera may only move in reasonably large volume covered by MC setup.
- many cameras track lens zoom in real time and store it as metadata of recorded frames.
- lens distortion model can be prepared independently recording a test scene and using common matchmoving software to extract the distortion.
Should You be interested in this technology, please contact us for further details first as the pipeline of the processing isn't straightforward. However, once again, it may save You the day...