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Tracker Comparison

This page shows head-to-head performance of SORT, ByteTrack, and OC-SORT on standard MOT benchmarks. Results are shown with default parameters and with parameter-tuned configurations found via grid search.

MOT17

Pedestrian tracking with crowded scenes and frequent occlusions. Strongly tests re-identification and identity stability.

Visualization of ground-truth annotations for MOT17.

Info

Parameters were tuned on the validation set. Results are reported on the test set via Codabench submission. Detections come from a YOLOX model.

Results using default tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 58.4 69.9 67.2
ByteTrack 60.1 73.2 74.1
OC-SORT 61.9 76.4 76.0

Results after grid search over tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 60.4 72.5 75.8
ByteTrack 60.5 72.7 76.1
OC-SORT 62.0 76.5 77.3

Tuned configuration for each tracker.

SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 10
  track_activation_threshold: 0.75
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 2
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.3

ByteTrack:
  lost_track_buffer: 10
  track_activation_threshold: 0.7
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 1
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.3
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.5

OC-SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 30
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.3
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 3
  direction_consistency_weight: 0.2
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.4
  delta_t: 1

SportsMOT

Sports broadcast tracking with fast motion, camera pans, and similar-looking targets. Tests association under speed and appearance ambiguity.

Visualization of ground-truth annotations for SportsMOT.

Info

Parameters were tuned on the validation set. Results are reported on the test set via Codabench submission. Detections come from a YOLOX model.

Results using default tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 70.9 68.9 95.7
ByteTrack 73.0 72.5 96.4
OC-SORT 71.7 71.4 95.0

Results after grid search over tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 72.9 73.0 95.8
ByteTrack 73.3 73.5 95.9
OC-SORT 74.0 75.4 95.6

Tuned configuration for each tracker.

SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 60
  track_activation_threshold: 0.9
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 2
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.05

ByteTrack:
  lost_track_buffer: 10
  track_activation_threshold: 0.9
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 1
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.05
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.7

OC-SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 60
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.1
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 3
  direction_consistency_weight: 0.2
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.6
  delta_t: 3

SoccerNet-tracking

Long sequences with dense interactions and partial occlusions. Tests long-term ID consistency.

Visualization of ground-truth annotations for SoccerNet.

Info

Parameters were tuned on the train set. Results are reported on the test set. SoccerNet-tracking has no validation split. This dataset provides oracle (ground-truth) detections.

Results using default tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 81.6 76.2 95.1
ByteTrack 84.0 78.1 97.8
OC-SORT 78.4 72.6 94.1

Results after grid search over tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 84.2 78.2 98.2
ByteTrack 84.0 78.1 97.8
OC-SORT 82.9 77.9 96.8

Tuned configuration for each tracker.

SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 30
  track_activation_threshold: 0.25
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 2
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.05

ByteTrack:
  lost_track_buffer: 30
  track_activation_threshold: 0.5
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 2
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.1
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.5

OC-SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 60
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.1
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 3
  direction_consistency_weight: 0.2
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.4
  delta_t: 1

DanceTrack

Group dancing tracking with uniform appearance, diverse motions, and extreme articulation. Tests motion-based association without relying on visual discrimination.

Visualization of ground-truth annotations for DanceTrack.

Warning

DanceTrack test set evaluation is currently unavailable because CodaLab, which hosted the benchmark, has been discontinued. Migration to Codabench is in progress. Results below use the validation set instead.

Info

Parameters were tuned on the train set. Results are reported on the validation set. This dataset provides oracle (ground-truth) detections.

Results using default tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 45.0 39.0 80.6
ByteTrack 50.2 49.9 86.2
OC-SORT 51.8 50.9 87.3

Results after grid search over tracker parameters.

Tracker HOTA IDF1 MOTA
SORT 50.6 49.6 84.3
ByteTrack 53.2 54.6 86.8
OC-SORT 52.0 51.8 87.2

Tuned configuration for each tracker.

SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 10
  track_activation_threshold: 0.9
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 2
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.05

ByteTrack:
  lost_track_buffer: 60
  track_activation_threshold: 0.9
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 1
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.1
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.5

OC-SORT:
  lost_track_buffer: 30
  minimum_iou_threshold: 0.1
  minimum_consecutive_frames: 3
  direction_consistency_weight: 0.2
  high_conf_det_threshold: 0.6
  delta_t: 1

Methodology

Detections

Each dataset uses one of two detection sources: oracle detections (ground-truth bounding boxes provided by the dataset) or model detections (produced by a YOLOX detector following the ByteTrack procedure). The source is noted per dataset above.

Tuning

Best parameters per tracker and dataset were found via grid search, selecting the configuration with the highest HOTA. Tuning and evaluation always use separate data splits to reflect real-world usage:

  • Train + validation + test: tune on validation, report on test.
  • Train + validation: tune on train, report on validation.
  • Train + test: tune on train, report on test.