[John Weaver]

Your point is valid, but mostly inapplicable in my situation. I may not have been clear in the original post, but I’m taking aerial photos as a commercial drone pilot. This isn’t a situation that warrants exact placement from shoot to shoot.

All the photos have been built into a flight software so they are taken from the same GPS coordinates each time. However, many variables like wind, compass calibration, launch point (can change at times), and margin of error means that the photos will never be in the exact same place every time.

I thought through all of this before I began the project. But to begin with, the company wanted multiple extra angles so they could choose from their favorites. It wasn’t until the 3rd shoot or so that we could actually set GPS points to limit variables in future photos. That means some of the earliest photos were from different heights, slightly different angles, and even different proximity. I’ve learned a lot for future projects to avoid the struggles I’m facing with alignment now.

Unfortunately, there is no going back in time unless you’ve got another helpful idea on that. I’m looking for a solution that fits my current situation with the first 3 of 7 (so far) progress shoots being in slightly different positions. I can continue to use the method I outlined, but there has to be better ways.

[John Weaver]

I will second the use of proxies if you aren’t already using them. I didn’t have issues until I started using 4K video with a high bitrate. Even after building a custom rig, things would slow down after adding edits, effects, and more. So I create proxies for everything now.

You can do that in your project window by selecting the videos you’re working with, right clicking and choose “Create Proxies”. I recommend finding a resolution that is the same ratio as the video you’re using or creating a custom preset, otherwise you will get black bars around the edges. You can also go into File>Project Settings & set the ingest settings to create proxies so it will always create proxies on anything you import (at least to that project).

Hope that helps!