bizarre problem using Optical Flow

I'm attempting to use this tool to alter a clip 26 seconds in length to 20% of normal speed. My first problem appears to be an inability to get an accurate read on the clip's length. Upon selecting it, then sending it to a Motion Project and choosing Optical Flow, I notice the number of frames being analyzed in the Inspector is astronomical: about 46,000 (with an estimated processing time of well over 12 hours). Even though the chosen clip of correct length duly loops in the small preview window, something more akin to the entire length of the source material is what seems to have actually been loaded.

Secondly, the procedure appears to usurp every last bit of space on my start-up drive. I have over 78 gigs of free space on my Mac HD, yet every time I deploy Optical Flow, a warning pops up that my computer is dangerously low on memory. Sure enough, when I check the info on that drive, only a few hundred megabytes remain, with nearly half the drive's entire capacity taken up by some sort of Motion Cache file living in the Motions Documents Folder.

Something seems to have gone wildly wrong here, and I'm grateful for any feedback or theories.

You need to export a SCQT movie of just the portion you used, reimport it back in and apply the smoothcam filter.



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Many thanks. Is this a workaround or standard protocol? In other words, have I been doing it wrong, or are there flaws with the program?

This is actually how it was designed to be used:

[strypesinpost.com]


Most of us use it like a regular filter, but it is really not intended to be used that way, but who cares? Smoothcam doesn't take in/out points but processes the whole file, so if you want it to process a small part of it, export it and re-import it.



www.strypesinpost.com