Time lapse from too many big files

My primary advice would be to use a video application such as Premiere Pro. Photoshop is primarily an image editor with a few video functions added on. It was not designed for a bigger video job like this.

However you may be able to workaround Photoshop limits by batch processing the files to resize them (work in smaller groups if your machine grinds to a halt). Then produce smaller video clips before splicing them together to make a final clip.

Dave

What in you opinion is a reasonable size frame size 1K 1920x1080, 4k 3840x2160 or 8k 7680x4320.  Photoshop has a 8000 Layer limit. Open 5000 image into Photoshop and decoding the images will consume a lot of machine resources. To be honest you do not want to be editing a 5000 to 8000 layers document in Photoshop. Perhaps there is a Video Camera that can  capture your Time Lapse as a Motion Jpeg Video file just keep adding full frame to the video file being Created.  Editing 5000 Large image layers in Photoshop IMO is not reasonable as you found out.  Can your machine handle 5000 small image layers.  Did you test that duplicate a small layer full of noise 5000 times them move a layer do anything  to a layer like test if it is possible to create a frame animation with 50000 frames and render an mp4?   Photoshop has many limits it would not surprise me if Photoshop could not render a time lapse mp4 with 5000 small 300px x 200px frames.    Frame Animations may even be limited to 500 frames  You would the need to create 10 videos  500 frame time lapse mp4 then splice the 10 video in a video time line.