Image Preprocessor Basics

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Image Preprocessor Basics

The image preprocessor dialog provides a range of capabilities aimed at the following primary issues:

Stabilizing the images, reducing wobbles and jiggles in the source imagery,

Making features more visible, especially to you for supervised tracking,

Reducing the amount of memory required to store the shot in RAM, to facilitate real-time playback,

Correcting image geometry: distortion or the optic axis position.

You can activate the image preprocessor panel either from the Open-Shot dialog, the Shot menu, or most commonly from the ‘P’ keyboard accelerator.

The individual controls of the image preprocessor are spread among several tabbed subpanels, much like the main SynthEyes window. These include Rez, Color, Cropping, Stabilize, Lens, Adjust, Output, and ROI.


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As you modify the image preprocessor controls, you can use the frame spinner and assorted buttons to move through the shot to verify that the settings are appropriate throughout it. Fetching and preprocessing the images can take a while, especially with film-resolution images. You can control whether or not the image updates as you change the frame# spinner, using the control button on the right hand side of the image preprocessor.

The image preprocessor engine affects the shots as they are read from disk, before they are stored in RAM for tracking and playback. The preprocessor engine can change the image resolution, aspect ratio, and overall geometry.

Accordingly, you must take care if you change the image format ---if you change the image geometry, you may need to use the Apply to Trackers button on the Output tab, or you will have to delete the trackers and do them over, since their positions will no longer match the image currently being supplied by the preprocessor.

The image preprocessor allows you to create image processor presets (“prepsets”) within a scene, so that you can use one prepset for the entire scene, and a separate prepset for a small region around a moving object, for example. Prepsets can be configured to affect or not affect various groups of controls.

Use the PrepSet Manager to manipulate prepsets, including storing prepsets as preferences or into files. The PrepSet Manager is available through the image preprocessor button or via the Shot menu.

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