Q100200: How to resolve slow performance with Tracker nodes by disabling keyframe thumbnails in the Viewer

Elisabeth Wetchy

Updated : July 19, 2024 20:59

Created : October 31, 2016 12:57

SYMPTOMS

When Tracker nodes are present in a script, Nuke can frequently become unresponsive for a few seconds or be slow to work with. This happens specifically when Tracker nodes are generating keyframe thumbnails. Keyframe thumbnail task messages can also appear when performing other tasks like rendering, and cause a significant slowdown.

CAUSE

Thumbnail patches for the tracking keyframes (which appear at the top of the Viewer window during tracking) are pulled in from the upstream node tree, so all operations happening above the Tracker node are applied to the thumbnails.

If there are a lot of keyframes, or CPU expensive operations above the Tracker node, it can take a long time to rebuild the thumbnails.

RESOLUTION

If you are experiencing slowdown with a similar setup, then please try turning off the keyframe thumbnails during tracking.

You can turn off keyframe thumbnails in the Settings tab of the Tracker node by setting the following two options (which are highlighted red in the image below):

• Settings tab > General > show zoom window to never
• Settings tab > Keyframe Tracking > keyframe display to none

When you are doing hand-tracking, you can disable keyframe patch creation by turning off "create new key when track is moved" (highlighted below in yellow):

If this doesn’t stop Nuke from becoming unresponsive, the UI freezes might be related to the autosave functionality in Nuke. For more information, please see the following article: 

Q100199: Slow performance/UI freezes when working with scripts that contain Tracker nodes

FURTHER HELP

If you continue seeing issues after performing the steps outlined in both articles, then please open a Support ticket and let us know the issue you are encountering and the troubleshooting steps you have taken so far.