Starting a New Project
Table of Contents
Mocha workflow is designed around a project structure. It is good practice to only work on one shot per project file to minimise layer management and to keep the work streamlined.
The basic tracking workflow for mocha is:
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Import your footage
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Draw a loose spline around the shape you want to track
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Track the spline
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Set the ‘Surface’, or corner pin where you want the inserted image
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Adjust your track if necessary
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Export the completed track
The basic rotoscoping workflow is very similar:
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Import your footage
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Draw a loose spline around the shape you want to track.
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Track the spline
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Adjust your track if necessary
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Add new shapes for rotoscoping and link them to your track
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Adjust shapes where necessary
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Export the rendered mattes or the shape data
When you start the application you are presented with an empty workspace. No footage is loaded and most of the controls are consequently disabled. To begin working, you must open an existing project or start a new project.
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Choose → (Ctrl/CMD+N) or select the New Project icon on the toolbar. |
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Select the clip to import by clicking on the Choose... button to the right of the top line. This will bring up a file browser, where you can select almost any industry standard file formats. Image sequences will show up as individual frames. You can select any one of the frames and the application will automatically sequence the frames as a clip when importing. |
Name
A project name will automatically be generated based on the filename of the imported footage, but you can change it by editing the Name field.
Location
Your project file and cache files will output to a directory called “Results” by default. This is created in the same folder your clip is imported from. You can change this using the Change... button or using the dropdown box to set a different relative or absolute path.
Frame Range
The range of frames to import. We recommend to only work with the frames you need, rather than importing very large clips or multiple shots edited together.
Frame Rate
Normally this is automatically detected, but you have options to adjust if necessary. Make sure you check the frame rate before you close the New Project dialog.
Separate Fields
If you are using interlaced footage, set your field separation here to Upper or Lower. Make sure you check your fields match your footage before you close the New Project dialog. If you don’t set them correctly, you cannot modify them and will have to restart the project.
Remove Pulldown
If your footage has pulldown, set it here.
Advanced options
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Clicking the Advanced tab will provide you with important settings such as frame offset and color space. |
Frame offset
Normally this is set to 0 or 1 by default. You also have the option to view as Timecode or Frame numbers. If your clip has an embedded timecode offset and you switch to Timecode, the offset will be used in your project.
Caching
If you wish the clip to be cached into memory, check the Cache clip checkbox here. Caching is recommended if you are working a computer that has fast local storage, but your shot is stored in a slow network location. If your shot is already stored on fast storage, you don’t need to cache. More often than not, you can leave this setting off.
Colour space
Set to Linear, Log and Panalog.
Conversion
Set to None, Float or 8-Bit
Offset
If working with log color space, set any offset here.
Soft clip
If working with log color space, set soft clip value here. Default is zero making falloff linear, rather than curved.
Log reference white
If working with log color space, set white reference value here.
Log reference black
If working with log color space, set black reference value here.
Gamma
If working with log color space, you can adjust Gamma here.
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If you will only be working on a section of the shot you can use the In and Out points to set the range on the timeline.Note that the In and Out points affect the range of the Überkey button. You can zoom the timeline to only show you the part between you In and Out points by clicking the Zoom Timeline button.
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IMPORTANT CONCEPT Interlacing and frame rate are especially important to get correct if you intend to export tracking or shape data to another application. If footage settings do not match between your mocha/motor project and your compositing/editing application, the track or shape data can be offset strangely when imported. |
Only import as much as you need
Working with very long files can be time consuming for the artist and can slow down the tracking as it searches for more frames. Try to only use what you need, and work on individual shots, rather than multiple shots in one piece of footage.
Frame rate, dimensions and pixel aspect ratio are important
Make sure these values match the settings in your compositor or editor, otherwise tracking and shape data will not match when you export it.
If you are unsure which field your interlaced footage is in, import it and check
If you quickly start your project with a guessed field order, you can check to make sure it is correct by using the right arrow key to step through the footage. If you footage stutters or steps back a frame while you’re stepping through, it is probably in the wrong field order, or you may have to set pulldown.
Try to avoid interlaced footage where possible
Interlaced footage is painful to work with. For your own sanity, try not to use it unless you have to!
