setRamMipmapPointerFromInt does not call free() on the pointer it’s passed. setRamMipmapPointerFromInt is made to allow you to tell Panda to read from an arbitrary buffer. In this case, that’s a bad idea because OpenCV is free to modify the buffer after you pass the pointer to Panda.
It is important to copy the data for this reason, to ensure that you’re reading a full frame and not reading into whatever OpenCV puts into that buffer after it is done with it.
The blog post clearly states that Panda does not copy the data into a buffer- setRamMipmapPointerFromInt will make panda upload the data directly to the graphics card when the graphics card needs the texture. But at the time when this happens, OpenCV is already writing other data to the buffer.
That is, if I’m right about what’s happening.