Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

Sliding. This is what you see when an object appears to be moving, instead of stationary on a floor, for example. This is a user error, not a software error, typically due to object placement errors. Almost always, this is because the inserted object has not been located in exactly the right spot, rather than indicating a tracking problem. Often, an object is inserted an inch or two above a floor. Be sure you have tracked the right spot: to determine floor level, track marks on the floor, not tennis balls sitting on it, which are effectively an inch or two higher. If you have to work from the tennis balls, set up the floor coordinate system taking the ball radius into account, or place the object the corresponding amount below the apparent floor.

Also, place trackers near the location of the inserted object whenever possible.

Another common cause of sliding: a tracker that jumps from one spot to another at some frame during the track.

“It lines up in SynthEyes, but not XXX.” The export scripts do what they can to try to ensure that everything lines up just as nicely in your post-tracking application as in SynthEyes, but life is never simple. There are preferences that may be different, maybe you’re integrating into an existing setup, maybe you didn’t think hitting xxx would matter, etc. The main causes of this problem have been when the field of view is mangled (especially when people worry about focal length instead, and have the wrong back plate width), and when the post-tracking application turns out to be using a slightly different timing for the images, one frame earlier or later, or 29.97 vs 30 fps etc, or with or without some cropping.

“Camera01: No trackers, please fix or set camera to disabled.” You have created a scene with more than one camera, opening a new shot into an existing file—one with no trackers. The message is 100% correct. You need to select the original camera on the Shot menu, then Shot/Remove object.

“Can’t locate satisfactory initial frame” when solving. When the Constrain checkbox is on (Solver panel), the constrained trackers need to be active on the begin and end frames. Consequently, keeping Constrain off is preferable. Alternatively, the shot may lack very much parallax. Try setting the Solver Panel's Begin and/or End frames manually. For example, set the range to the entire shot, or a long run of frames with many trackers in common. However, keep the range short enough that the camera motion from beginning to end stays around 30 degrees maximum rotation about any axis.

“I tried Tripod mode, and now nothing works” and you get Can’t locate satisfactory initial frame or another error message. Tripod mode turns all the trackers to Far, since they will have no distance data in tripod mode. Select all the trackers, and turn Far back off (from the coordinate system control panel).

Bad Solution, very small field of view. Sometimes the final solution will be very small, with a small field of view. Often this means that there is a problem with one or more trackers, such as a tracker that switches from one feature to a different one, which then follows a different trajectory. It might also mean an impossible set of constraints, or sometimes an incomplete set of rotation constraints. You might also consider flipping on the Slow but sure box, or give a hint for a specific camera motion, such as Left or Up. Eliminate inconsistent constraints as a possibility by turning off the Constrain checkbox.

Object Mode Track Looks Good, but Path is Huge. If you’ve got an object mode track that looks good---the tracker points are right on the tracker boxes---but the object path is very large and flying all over the place, usually you haven’t set up the object's coordinate system, so by default it is the camera position, far from the object itself. Select one tracker to be the object origin, and use two or more additional ones to set up a coordinate system, as if it was a normal camera track.

Master Reset Does Not Work. By design, the master reset does not affect objects or cameras in Refine or Refine Tripod mode: they will have to be set back to their primary mode anyway, and this prevents inadvertent resets.

Can’t open an image file or movie. Image file formats leave room for interpretation, and from time to time a particular program may output an image in a way that SynthEyes is not prepared to read. SynthEyes is intended for RGB formats with 8 or more bits per channel. Legacy or black and white formats will probably not read. If you find a file you think should read, but does not, please forward it to SynthEyes support. Such problems are generally quick to rectify, once the problematic file can be examined in detail. In the meantime, try a different file format, or different save options, in the originating program, if possible, or use a file format converter if available. Also, make sure you can read the image in a different program, preferably not the one that created it: some images that SynthEyes “couldn’t read” have turned out to be corrupted previously.

Can’t delete a key on a tracker (ie by right-clicking in the tracker view window, or right-clicking the Now button). If the tracker is set to automatically key every 12 frames, and this is one of those keys, deleting it will work, but SynthEyes will immediately add a new key! Usually you want to back up a few frames and add a correct key; then you can delete or correct the original one. Or, increase the auto-key setting. Also, you can not delete a key if the tracker is locked.

Crashes

By far the largest source of SynthEyes crashes is running your machine out of memory. Large auto-tracked HD scenes can do that on 32-bit systems. If you suspect that may be a problem, turn the queue length down to 10 on the shot setup dialog when you open the shot (or by doing a Shot/Edit Shot). It is also a good idea to re-open SynthEyes if you have auto-tracked the same shot several times—or turn down the undo setting because the amount of data per undo can be very large.

In the event that SynthEyes detects an internal error, it will pop up an Imminent Crash dialog box asking you if you wish to save a crash file. You should take a screen capture with Print Screen on your keyboard, then respond Yes. SynthEyes will save the current file to a special crash location, then pops up another dialog box that tells you that location (within your Documents and Settings folder).

You should then open a paint program such as Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, Paint Shop Pro, etc, and paste in the screen capture. Save the image to a file, then e-mail the screen capture, the crash save file, and a short description of what you were doing right before the crash, to SynthEyes technical support for diagnosis, so that the problem can be fixed in future releases. If you have Microsoft's Dr. Watson turned on, forwarding that file would also be helpful.

The crash save file is your SynthEyes scene, right before it began the operation that resulted in the crash. You should often be able to continue using this file, especially if the crash occurred during solving. It is conceivable that the file might be corrupted, so if you recently had saved the file, you may wish to go back to that file for safety.