Stabilizing is taking video that was shot handheld or on a cheap tripod on a vibrating ship and making it look like you shot it correctly, smoothly, and watchably. It is usually done in your compositing software but Mocha Pro can do it inside the tracking software and even render out a video for you. Inserting is placing a picture or a video clip into a frame or other space that you have already tracked and rotoscoped.

X spline outlining the plane of the ship for stabilizing in Mocha Pro. Sometimes you will have a mask for every finger on a hand. Sometimes you will adjust the mask on pretty much every frame. Then jump to the middle and adjust that, then start jumping to the middle of the other keyframes until the mask moves correctly following the action. You usually start at the beginning and draw the mask, then skip to the end and move and adjust it. Every time you adjust the mask, you create a keyframe. You move thru the clip and adjust the points on the mask to follow whatever it is you are trying to take out, usually a person. What happens is: you have to make a mask that has a bunch of points on it.

Rotoscoping strikes fear into the hearts of VFX artists. Rotoscoping is sort of like keying out a green screen if someone forgot to shoot the actor in front of a green screen. Tracking is also great for adding the missing second story to your set while the camera is panning (or even burning down the missing second story in the midst of that pan). But it can also be used to replace heads, add wounds to actors, or wings or horns or whatever. It's used a lot to replace a sign on a moving vehicle or to put something else on a TV or computer screen in a moving camera shot. Tracking is the process of following around a specific part of your video image, so that you will later be able to stick something else on top of that part. Let's break down each element for folks knew to Mocha, or for folks who'd just like a refresher! While it is a higher price point, it's also more powerful. Mocha Pro is the big brother of Mocha AE and, as such, is a full-featured software program for tracking, rotoscoping, inserting, stabilizing and removing items from video clips.

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