Astro Pixel Processor 1.038 released

[Haverkamp]

Hi all,

Version 1.038 of APP is released and now available for download from your members area at:

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/my-account/

Wei-Hao experienced very long start-up times. Has anyone else experienced this? In your OS user directory you’ll find log files of APP. Please remove these before installing this new version. In this new version, the logging is now enabled for communication with the license server and the locking/unlocking of the log file is fixed. Possibly this can help in finding the cause of the long start-up time.

log files are the files that start with : .APP-client-log*

please remove all of them before installing 1.038.

Location of logfiles are at:

Windows : C:\Users\user\

MacOS: \Users\user\  (check with ls -all, the log files start with a dot.)

Linux: \home\user\    (check with ls -all, the log files start with a dot.)

If you login, you’ll also have read access now to the forum at my site. If you don’t login, you can’t see the messages in the forum yet.

All release information will be there from now on.

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/release-information/

This is the last version for which I’ll post the release information here:

Astro Pixel Processor 1.038

• IMPROVEMENT, NEW all buttons will start to get new and improved tooltips from now, to help in which setting you should use in which situation. I have set the time for the tooltip to display at 60 seconds. If you move the mouse over the button, the counter restarts. The tooltips can be enabled/disabled in the CFG menu
•  FIXED prevent files from opening when they are locked by another process, now gives a null pointer exception (Rob)
• ADJUSTED default is that images in the image viewer are now saved using the preview filter with the stretch parameters applied, like you see the image in the image viewer. So when APP starts, the “stretch” selectbox is turned on by default.
• FIXED if, for some reason, the registration engine makes an error, and the calculated composition parameters  have negative image dimensions, the exception is properly caught and reported to the user.
• FIXED, after presing calculate (and not create) in Combine RGB and then save image on the right panel a java error is generated. (Rob) Solved by disabling the save and apply buttons whenever a new image is loaded and sent to the image viewer. Once loaded, the buttons are activated again.
• FIXED instability and error in initial parameter for Multiple View, not “same camera and optics”, “dynamic distortion correction” algorithm which is used in both mosiac and normal registration mode.
• FIXED error is caught properly in the multiple view registration engine when no frames could be registered.
• FIXED setting new reference should disable all buttons temporarily (Mabula)
• CHANGED, FIXED file size in the file list is now reported in MegaBytes and for FITS images shows the size correctly for images larger than 2GB.
• IMPROVED, FIXED image composition calculation now has extra checks for memory requirements and technical image size limitations. User gets a warning when a limit is reached, solution is that APP downscales the result.
• CHANGED, at start-up the filelist window is now at roughly 4/5 of the application window, so near the bottom, instead of halfway. Fixed for small and large resolutions.
• IMPROVEMENT, ADDITION registration engine, you now can select the scale on which descriptors are created and compared between the reference frame and the frame to be aligned. For Mosaic mode with frames with little overlap, you can use big scales to get good registration for frames with little overlap. A scale of 10 would be needed is the frames have only 10% overlap. Scale of 12 is overlap of only 8%.
• IMPROVEMENT,ADDITION registration engine, for the mosaic registration with “dynamic distortion correction” enabled and “same camera and optics” disabled, you can set a number for the times frames will overlap with oother frames. If you set this value low, registration time is less, but the result possibly not optimal. Settting it higher could give a better results. Previously, this was fixed at three. For big mosaics (larger than 6 panels) the value of 3 is too little in most cases.
• FIXED CHANGED, client logging with server is set at finest level to check if license verification takes long for Wei-Hao and the log file is now properly closed once APP is stopped.
• IMPROVEMENT, FIXED, the maximum amount of stars for registration between two frames is now limited to prevent out of memory errors. The more memory APP can use the more stars will be detected and possibly used for registration. (With 2GB of memory reserved for APP, the limit is 2000 stars, which is  already more than needed in most cases.)
• IMPROVEMENT, registration engine is now dynamically scaled for both memory and processor usage depending on the amount of star pairs between all frames that are being registered. If the total amount of star pairs gets above 5000 this is really needed. The complete engine, including RANSAC and the expansion of the registration hypothesis for good registration into the extreme corners of your images,( using Artificial Intelligence) has undergone a lot of optimization to reduce memory overhead and increase speed.
• FIXED, when you have already registrated your frames and would restart star analysis, then when you cancel star analysis, you can’t start registration or normalization directly. This is now fixed. Bug was error in data backup of the previouse star analysis & registration results. This bug is now gone. So whenever you cancel a task, your old results are always restored properly. Applicable to the processes 2) CALIBRATE to 6) INTEGRATE

I have some minor issues to fix with the security and posting images at my platform, once it is fixed, you’ll have normal access on my forum as well. The login details at my forum are the same as your customer login which gives you access to your member’s area.

I am creating new and improved Tool Tips in APP, so be advised most Tool Tips aren’t correct yet and will not show correctly yet. The top left panel, the Top panel and menu 0) RAW /FITS are correct now. Let me know what you think of these tooltips. You can disable/enable them from the CFG menu.

And, in your member’s area, you’ll find a first version 0.1 of the Quick Reference Guide.

Both the Tool Tips and the quick reference guide will be among my highest priorities, so I’ll be updating these quickly from now on.

Finally, I have upgraded the security for your login with google recaptcha “I am not a Robot”. Let me know if this works well. If you previously set a weak password, my site will ask you to update your password with a new and stronger version. The combination of a strong password and the Google Recaptcha together with permanent SSL enabled traffic is in my opinion adequate security for your customer login at my site. If someone disagrees or has tips suggestions, let me know ?

Cheers,

Mabula

[KeesScherer]

Wei-Hao experienced very long start-up times. Has anyone else experienced this?

Installed 1.038 (Linux 64 bit DEB) and start up time is 8 seconds. The Tooltips are great!

[Groenewold]

My startup-time was about 10 seconds and I noticed downloading of APP was 100x faster. ?
One issue with the tooltips, they are in black text over dark-grey background, which is hard to read.

[Haverkamp]

Thank you @keesscherer and @supernov,

Wei-Hao, experienced a start-up time of several minutes. 10 seconds is still long though. Should investigate this further.

@supernov, see my initial message, most tooltips are still wrong and still need to be changed.

Top left & top panels are fixed, and menu 0)Raw/fits is done. The rest still needs serious work ;-)

[MauriceToet]

Start-up time was 2.5 seconds. Haven’t removed the log files (red about it just now).
System: MacBook Pro; 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7; 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3; 251 GB Flash Drive.

[Haverkamp]

You can still remove the log files that are currently there, no problem ;-) APP will create a new one for a fresh start.

[Groenewold]

Ah cool, that message didn’t specify exactly what would be wrong, I assumed the text not the layout.

[Rosen]

Mabula – I’m not sure if this is new with 1.038, but I’ve been seeing a few processes that I would expect to be CPU intensive that don’t appear to be using all cores.  I’ve been working on a 14 panel mosaic, and when I was having it create a distortion model, the CPU usage was pegged at 25% on my quad core machine.  The same thing appears to be happening when it’s doing LNC modeling.  I haven’t seen it rise above 25%.

Just thought you ought to know.

[Haverkamp]

Hi Scott (@srosenfraz),

Thank you for your feedback ;-)

In the case of distortion correction, at the end of the registration, when the multiple view algorithm starts, a calculation is started that can’t be implemented using multiple cores. So you will only see 1 cpu core working, that’s correct. I don’t think I can make these algorithms multi-core. They are regression algorithms which will find the distortion parameters for all frames simultaneously. So 1 calculation calculates all parameters at once. This ensures that all panels are correctly related to each other. Especially when they have multiple overlaps with different frames. Maybe after more algebra courses, I can find a way to fasten them up ;-) I will also work on console output so you can better see that the algorithm is working and that the RMS error  of the regression solution keeps improving.

The same holds for the LNC calculation. The normalization correction is calculated for all frames at once, so all frames are compared simultaneously in the calculation and the result will therefor be the set of correction parameters for all frames. Applying the correction to each frame is done using multiple cores already though. And the analysis of all frames before the LNC calculation starts is also done with multiple cores.

How is the mosaic working out? Let me know if you need assistance ;-)

[Rosen]

Thank you for that info, Mabula.  I wasn’t sure if the 1 core was correct, so I’m glad it’s working as designed.  From what I know about you, I’m not sensing that you’re particularly slim on algebra courses, though!

Well, I’m having some issues trying to get it all to work, but I want to try a few more possibilities before I come to you to resolve any problems.  I’ve been using some of the information you gave to Wei-Hao when he was having problems with his large mosaic.  Mine isn’t near as large as his – it’s 14 panels from the Canon 6D and the same 50mm lens that I used for the North cirumpolar data.  This one will end up having the panels side by side, so they should create a mosaic of roughly 210 x 40 degrees when I’m done.   I’ll let you know if I can’t solve my problems.

Thanks as always!

[van Overzee]

Everything looks fine!

Starting up time was 4 sec.

HP ProBook S-serie 4GB Windows 8

Cheers,

Hans

[Haverkamp]

Excellent @hansvanoverzee, thank you for your feedback ;-)

[Rosen]

My startup times for APP are fine – usually around 5 seconds.  However, I have had some occasions when I receive a message that my license could not be verified.  If I had to guess, these usually seem to coincide with times when I’ve shut down APP and started it up soon thereafter.  If it helps, the most recent time I had this trouble would have been within a few minutes of 18:08 UTC on 5/17.

Also, I tried shutting off my wireless on my laptop and opening APP.  I received a message telling me I didn’t have an internet connection (which would have been correct).  I still think it would be worthwhile to have some method to allow users to run APP when they don’t have an internet connection – perhaps only verify licensing every few days or maybe even as long as a week?

[van Overzee]

Ha Mabula,

I noticed, that the maximum amount of RAM memory used is now 3 GB instead of 4 GB

Is there a reason for that?

Thanks,

Hans

[Haverkamp]

Hi @hansvanoverzee,

Indeed, that’s right.

I have capped the maximum amount of memory that APP can use to:

System Memory in GBs – 1GB

So for a 4GB system, this is 3GB

For an 8GB system, this is 7GB.

The reason being, it is best to leave at least 1GB available to the OS. If APP would be allowed to use all 4GB on a 4GB system, the OS would need to start swapping, which would degrade performance significantly of the entire system. (for systems wit the OS on a SSD drive instead of an older type drive, the problem is less big)

Do you think this is reasonable?

I could remove the cap along with a big warning and leave it to the user off course.

[Author]

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