Tracking 4k with over 5000 frames (need some advice)

i did a drone shot amd i have 5000 frames to track for a 3D project, and i’m not sure i can prefetch all the 4K frames into my 32Gb ram, my question is this… whats the best way to prepare and manage 4k resolution and 5000 frames in blender tracking?

Export the camera data to new file. Because if you don’t need the tracker points anymore.
So just autotrack , I guess even with 512GB it would be"" can I prefetch ???

edit> I guess, in a way I am saying, it cannot be done, unless you compromise.

I don’t use blender tracker myself, why would you need to prefetch whole sequence? Feature tracking only compares previous and current frame and if you already have feature tracks generated, image itself is not needed any more for solving.

i’m not 100% sure i can get that camera data now. and i still need to track all these frames :frowning: the reason i need the hole sequence is that this is a client request. i’m trying Autotrack addon, i’m hoping it will get me some results .

If I were you, I would render out a reduced resolution sequence (1080p or even 720 would probably be fine) for tracking. The added resolution from 4k isn’t going to make that much of a difference as far as the tracking is concerned.

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The autotrack addon works pretty well, I use it a lot on drone shots for VFX

Few tips (that you may already know, but just in case)
*With a cinema camera, sensor and lens data helps. For drone shots, I find it’s best to just use the defaults.
*Use “Previous Frame” instead of “Keyframe”. This way you don’t have to have the entire shot cached at once
*I always track in the best resolution I can

The longest drone shot I’ve done is around 1000 frames and even though it didn’t cache all at once, I was still able to track it.

I have to check my friends drone settings, but I’m tracking as we chat, right now I tracked so far 2500 but the solve error is around 0.5 because I still didn’t get the sensor and focal length information yet

You may not need it. And .5 is really good. You can also improve it with “Refine Tracking Solution”. The default settings work well for both that and the camera/lens data. But drones are the only thing I’ll leave at the default camera/lens.

Can’t you use Movie Clip proxies to improve memory overhead as well?

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second the downres on the footage. dropping down to 1080p or 720p proxy for the track will be many times lighter, with potentially no loss in accuracy… especially with a drone shot like what you have going.

i’ll try that seems like a good solution. thanks :slight_smile:

i’ve tracked from frame 500 to 3000 by tracking 500 frame interval in the timeline, when i tried to solve the camera it gave me an odd results of frame 0 to 1000

The tracker sometimes fails to identify the best couple of images to estimate geometry, and this may lead to wrong motion estimation.

You may try to set keayframe A and B in solve panel by hand, looking at a part of the tracking where at least 8 or more tracks are both part of the 2 frames you choose.

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