A method for automatically optimizing a parameter set for a tracking algorithm comprising receiving a series of image frames and processing the image frames using a tracking algorithm with an initialized parameter set. An updated parameter set is then created according to the processed image frames utilizing estimated tracking analytics. The parameters are validated using a performance metric that may be manually or automatically preformed using a GUI. The image frames are collected from a video camera with a fixed set-up at a fixed location. The image frames may include a training traffic video or a training video for tracking humans.