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OpenCV: Inconsistent Results with Optical Flow Calculation Using Farneback Method

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 63 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-08-07
opencv optical-flow video-processing python

I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I'm updating my dependencies and I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm working on a project where I need to analyze the motion of objects in a video stream using OpenCV's Farneback method for optical flow calculation. However, I'm observing inconsistent results when processing videos with different frame rates and resolutions. For example, when I run the following code on a 30 FPS video with a resolution of 640x480, I get smooth optical flow vectors, but when I switch to a 60 FPS video with a resolution of 1280x720, the flow vectors appear jagged and sometimes even point in the opposite direction of the actual motion. Hereโ€™s the code Iโ€™m using: ```python import cv2 import numpy as np cap = cv2.VideoCapture('input_video.mp4') # Parameters for Farneback optical flow farneback_params = { 'pyr_scale': 0.5, 'levels': 3, 'iterations': 3, 'poly_n': 5, 'poly_sigma': 1.2, 'flags': 0 } ret, old_frame = cap.read() old_gray = cv2.cvtColor(old_frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY) while True: ret, frame = cap.read() if not ret: break gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY) flow = cv2.calcOpticalFlowFarneback(old_gray, gray, None, **farneback_params) # Visualizing the flow hsv = np.zeros_like(frame) magnitude, angle = cv2.cartToPolar(flow[..., 0], flow[..., 1]) hsv[..., 0] = angle * 180 / np.pi / 2 hsv[..., 2] = cv2.normalize(magnitude, None, 0, 255, cv2.NORM_MINMAX) rgb = cv2.cvtColor(hsv, cv2.COLOR_HSV2BGR) cv2.imshow('Optical Flow', rgb) old_gray = gray.copy() if cv2.waitKey(30) & 0xFF == 27: break cap.release() cv2.destroyAllWindows() ``` Iโ€™ve tried adjusting the `pyr_scale` and `poly_n` parameters to see if I could get more stable results, but it doesn't seem to help much. I also checked that the videos are properly encoded and not corrupted. I'm running OpenCV version 4.5.1 on Python 3.8, and Iโ€™m curious if there are any specific settings or best practices for using optical flow with videos at varying frame rates and resolutions. Is it possible that the parameters Iโ€™m using are not suitable for higher resolution videos? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Any ideas what could be causing this? I'm working on a microservice that needs to handle this. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Any suggestions would be helpful.