This video is brought to you by Storyblocks Audio
[Outdoor birds sounds]
-What are you doing here, Jordy?
-Just trying to be healthy, Yannick!
-Seems like you really need it, Jordy.
Hahaha!
-I bet I’m better at sports than you’ll ever be!
-Let’s do this!
[heavy metal music]
-Aghhh!
-Ahhhh!
-Let’s do this!
[Cinecom's intro music]
Hey folks, Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Copy Cat Friday!
Youtube's greatest series in which we recreate cool effects from famous films,
music videos and now and then a commercial.
Beats by Dre have released their Powerbeats Pro.
No idea if they’re any good, but…
…we’re just here to look at the creative effect
that they pulled off in their commercial video.
They've made sure that the earplug was always in the middle of the frame,
this is done through a simple technique inside Adobe After Effects,
however there're a few things we need to pay attention to
while taking the necessary shots.
But before we dive into that,
I'd first like to thank Storyblocks Audio for their support today.
For a single price per month or per year,
you gain access to their incredible library packed with sound effects,
loops and music.
You can download unlimited audio files without additional costs,
plus you can use anything for commercial work as well.
All of the sound effects and music you heard in the intro
came from their library.
Just like some of the biggest TV channels in the world,
we also love their library
and make use of it with almost every project.
To start browsing through the library of Storyblocks Audio,
make sure to click the first link in the description below!
[Montage music]
Of course, you don't need earplugs,
this effect can be achieved on any object.
To make it yourself easy, though, make sure that the object you wanna stabilize
has a good contrast to its background.
In this case, the white earplugs definitely stand out and will be easier to stabilize.
The first thing we need to pay attention to during the shot
is gonna be motion blur.
This is the blurriness that occurs on moving objects.
It's something natural, but when we're gonna stabilize the shot,
the motion blur should be gone or at least pulled back to a minimum.
So you wanna increase the shutter speed of your camera.
If you're shooting at 25 frames per second,
don't be afraid to pull it up to 120 of a second or even a little faster.
The next point we're gonna have to pay attention to is resolution and framing.
The post stabilization is gonna crop into your frame,
so you wanna shoot at the highest resolution possible.
And since we're cropping, a medium shot is gonna turn out as a close-up.
So if you wanna have a close-up shot of your subject,
you're gonna need to stand back
and actually take some kind of a medium shot.
And that brings us to the final tip while shooting.
To minimize the amount of crop, we're gonna try our vey best
to shoot the desired object in the middle of the frame.
Use your monitor guides to align your subject in your frame
and try to keep it in there while taking your shot.
Going handheld is of course not so easy, but it does work.
If you can use a gimbal, then that definitely helps.
So with these three tips in mind, go ahead and take your shots.
You could even turn around your head,
but that's gonna require a little different technique in After Effects,
which we'll also have a look at by the end.
Jumping now into Adobe After Effects, drag your shot into a new composition.
With the layer selected, head over to the tracker window.
If you can't find it, then locate it from the menu on top,
Window, and from there choose Tracker.
Click on Stabilize Motion, which is gonna give you a tracking point.
We're only gonna track the position, so you can leave the other options off.
Enlarge the inner square to cover the earplug,
which is the actual tracking mark.
The outer square is the searching area, so that one can be bigger.
The more motion you have, the bigger the outside square should be.
Now before we're gonna click the tracking button,
I'm gonna open up the options of the tracker first.
There's an interesting feature here on the bottom
where you can choose what the tracker has to do
when it has trouble following your subject.
And by default, the tracker will try and fix its position,
but usually this doesn't turn out great.
So what I'm gonna do is change Adapt Feature to ‘Stop Tracking’.
Then press OK and hit the Track Forward button.
Whenever After Effects loses the earplug as a tracking mark,
it will simply stop its tracking and not go wild.
You can then simply adjust your tracking point
and perhaps change the size of the squares
and then Track Forward again.
Once After Effects is done with the tracking you can hit Apply.
You'll notice now that your shot is stabilized around the EarPod,
but doing so moved the clip around revealing black areas.
Since the tracking was done on the anchor point,
you can simply scale and position your clip to cover up the entire Comp.
And that's it!
A super simple effect, but it looks awesome!
Now let’s take this idea a step further.
Right here we've got a shot where I do a complete turn.
Tracking on the earplug is not gonna be possible.
And there're two ways we could do the tracking.
The first one is gonna take a long time.
You wanna go back to your tracking window,
but this time make the inner square so big that it covers your entire head.
The outer square is gonna be a little larger again.
The bigger your squares are, the longer the tracking is gonna take.
But it works.
If you have the patience,
you'll find out that the stabilization worked out pretty good.
To make it yourself easy, you can make a long shot
so that your head appears smaller on screen, and so the tracking will go faster.
But then there's the second way of doing this.
This however is gonna require you to purchase the Pro version
of the Mocha plugin.
With the free, build in version of Mocha we can do the tracking,
but we can't really tweak the stabilization.
So that's where Mocha Pro comes in,
which you can drag to your clip from the Effects Library.
There is also a trail version available if you'd like to try it out yourself too.
Click on Mocha to open up the dedicated program.
From here we're gonna start by tracking the Pen tool
and drawing a quick shape around your subject's head.
When done, click on the ‘Track Forward’ button.
The tracking will go super fast, but not 100% correct.
So now and then you need to adjust your mask.
But Mocha does a great job at calculating the changes on the mask.
When the tracking is done, you wanna move over to the tab Stabilize.
From here you wanna make sure only X and Y translations are selected.
This is the position of the clip.
Also check ‘Maximum Smoothing’ and then click on the Render Forward button.
Mocha will then stabilize your shot on the previous tracking
and when it's done you can click on the Export Stabilized Tracking Data button.
From the dropdown, select After Effects Transformation Data
and then click on 'Copy to Clipboard’.
You could then close Mocha and within After Effects,
select your clip and hit CTRL or Command C
to paste the tracking data.
[Music]
And that's it!
A way to make the tracking go a whole lot faster.
Thank you guys so much for watching,
thank you Storyblocks Audio for the support.
Definitely make sure to check out their library,
but more important:
Stay Creative!
-This is enough for today, don’t wanna break the wrist.