getting the most out of tracking vs memory I think this has to do with having lots of tracking points vs memory that is slowing me down to a craw. 

I have 16GB ram, and 11GB swap. I selected detect features, giving me a lot of tracking points, (per youtube I found out this feature) when I run it to track of course it runs fine for a while until my RAM is almost used up, then slows to a craw. 

I too have proxied my video to 50% as well. 

from what I have learned on YouTube the more tracking points the better. How do I utilize this feature in blender to select the points for me and still be able to use them all while tracking something over 150 frames. the limit that 
they all use for training purposes.

this too is a per-recorded movie by someone else.
More tracking points are not better, but accurate ones are. More inaccurate trackers will only make things worse, not better.

The automatic feature detection sounds good in theory, but I still prefer choosing the tracking points myself, focusing on what items will be in frame for the longest time in the scene and which will help blender determine the 3d space.

To get better performance, let blender cache the  whole shot into RAM. You might need to increase the cache size in the system preferences.



For more tips on motion tracking please read: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/42332/1853