


In Mocha Pro 5 you can select GPU for rendering in the Mocha Preferences Menu > GPU tab. If you have a somewhat modern OpenCL-compatible graphics card (any of the current offerings from Nvidia, AMD and Intel, for example) then you will see a big increase in tracking speed. One of the best improvements is the GPU acceleration. While Mocha Pro 5 isn’t cheap, there are many new features that justify the price of admission. There are also upgrade pricing options if you are coming from Mocha Pro 4. For software and hardware specs click here. It can also be purchased as a plug-in only for Avid for $695, Adobe for $695, OFX (Nuke and Fusion at the moment) for $695 or multi-host for $995. Mocha Pro can be used as a standalone tool for $1,495 or as a standalone app plus multi-host plug-ins for $1,995. In simple terms, think of Mocha as being able to track objects with flat (or flat-ish) faces, like a billboard or the hood of a car, as opposed to a single point much like the tracker in Avid Media Composer. Mocha Pro 5, the latest update to the Mocha family, is a 2D planar tracker that tracks surfaces and planes instead of points. Whether you are obscuring a face with a blur or painting out an errant drone from the sky, Mocha Pro will turn hours of work into minutes. In the end, tools like Boris FX/Imagineer System’s Mocha Pro are life-altering tools for an editor that will directly affect how much time you can save and how much money you can make. I bet you will find someone younger and hungrier than you doing things beyond your imagination.

If you need proof, hop on over to YouTube and search for tracking and rotoscoping tutorials.

If you are one of those editors who doesn’t want to learn how to better track or roto, you might want to rethink your stance. Personally, the more options I have in my toolkit, the more employable I become. Some editors want to stick to cutting, while others find it exciting to push their creative boundaries. A common theme among editors and colorists these days is where to draw the line when asked to do more than their job description.
