Stacking DSLR moon - software that can handle it?

[rogerg]

Any suggestions on alternatives to Registax which can stack large DSLR movies and/or still frames? It seems Registax can't really handle the weight of a series of DSLR frames of the Moon?

Regards,
Roger.

[luigi]

You can pre-process the images first with PIPP (https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/)
See this tutorial for the Moon:
https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/example-uasge/example5

Then Registax should be able to handle about 100-200 images without problems.
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There's another method if you use PtGUI you can first align the images and load the aligned stack into photoshop to merge the images for the final result.

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[rogerg]

Thanks Luigi.

PIPP runs quite well and produces the appropriate TIF files. However I'm still having trouble with the next step - Registax. Opening any number of the TIF, or JPG batched from the TIF, results in out of memory error.

I'm quite sure after having tried TIF and JPG that it's not the file format. And it's not the number of files, because two or more causes out of memory. I wonder what I need to do for Registax to be able to load these large files?

I'll try the photoshop option next.

[Astro_Bot]

I'm stil learning and my results are in an "improving" stage, but ...

I have used AVIs in Autostakkert without problems. I've also loaded AVIs directly into Registax, and that worked, too.

Maybe movie length/frame rate are different - I have only DSLR movies of the moon up to a minute long with frame rates around 11-19 frames/sec. Perhaps yours are much longer?

[rogerg]

Hmm, well I've tried some more AVI options now (converted MOV to AVI then loaded the AVI instead of individual 20MP frames as JPG) and no more luck than before. With the AVI's Registax is seeming to hang loading them (left it for 10 minutes).

The AVI is 15.8mb, 61 seconds long, 25fps.

Hmm. I must have something wrong with the formats.

[Sarge]

Roger,

This is from Michael Covington's site, might be helpful.

Clear skies

Rod
:D:D

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/NewDSLR/index.html

Now for the tricky part. Canon records .MOV files and RegiStax wants .AVI files. There are many ways to convert .MOV to .AVI, and most of them are wrong! The problem is that they recompress the image and lose fine detail. Eventually, this shows up as strange things in your image — mottled areas and even rectangles and polygonal shapes from nowhere!
The .AVI file format is a "container," which means it holds AVI files in many different formats, and the ability to play them depends on the codecs (coder-decoders) that happen to be installed on your computer. That's the cause of the maddening but familiar phenomenon that some video files will play on some computers and not others. .MOV is also a container, although the movies are almost invariably in QuickTime format.
Here's one way to do the conversion right: Use WinFF (http://winff.org/), which is a free video format converter — an exceptionally good one, not plagued by adware like its rivals! Tell it you want to convert to AVI, and specifically "MS Compatible AVI". Click "Options" and on the "FFmpeg" pane, add the additional command line argument "-vcodec rawvideo" (no quotes). You'll get large AVI files that are pleasing to RegiStax. Since you're going to do this conversion regularly, you can save it as a "preset."
Expect the converted .AVI files to be big. Since you can regenerate them at any time, you don't have to keep them.
You can also do the conversion through the excellent, free VirtualDub (http://www.virtualdub.org/) video editor. Download, unzip, and install the appropriate version of VirtualDub (32- or 64-bit). To do this, manually make a folder on your desktop and copy the files into it. (There is no installer.)
You'll see that VirtualDub doesn't open .MOV files. To fix that, get the FF Input Driver for VirtualDub (http://code.google.com/p/ffinputdriver/). It unzips to make a folder named plugins or plugins64. Copy that folder into your VirtualDub folder (that is, make it a subfolder of the folder that VirtualDub is in), and now VirtualDub can open and edit .MOV files. When you save the file as AVI, it is uncompressed and suitable for RegiStax.
Of course, the best thing is that VirtualDub can edit video files, not just convert them. You can trim off any part of the video where the telescope was shaking or the image is otherwise useless.
Further, VirtualDub produces 24-bit output; WinFF produces 12-bit output. Since the 60Da has a 14-bit sensor readout, I don't know whether WinFF is losing something or whether the .MOV file was already limited to 12 bits.

[mithrandir]

Roger, I've tried Hugin and ICE to stack DSLR moon frames, but AutoPano rules. "Pro" will probably cope with the number of frames most people have. I haven't managed to kill "Giga" in 64 bit mode, but another 56GB of RAM would speed things up.

[Astro_Bot]

I use Backyard EOS with a Canon EOS 600d but I'm pretty sure I didn't change any defaults for video codecs/container formats. Mine comes out as AVI with RV24 (24-bit RGB) video codec in 1056x704 size - frame rate is variable and depends on exposure settings.

[rogerg]

Thanks Rod. Looks like useful info if I go down the MOV path. At this stage I'm primarily attempting a sequence of full frame images.



Interesting. So, Giga will "stack" them (perform the avg/median/? algorithm, not just align and "blend edges")? I had a look over their site but don't see the feature.



Ahh yes, I should use Backyard EOS to record the images, that has worked for me in the past now that you mention it. That worked for recording it's AVI format through the live view movie feature if I remember right. Not quite the full frame JPG images I'm trying now but it would work for producing a lower res image (where "lower" is a mere 1920x1080 I guess).

[rogerg]

I've been giving Autostakkert a shot with some success. It runs in to memory limitations on my aging laptop though :(

Looking like I need to upgrade to 64bit and newer hardware for this job.

[jjjnettie]

I capture my moonage as single images, in lge jpeg.
Registax has no problems stacking 50 or 60 of these.

[rogerg]

I am thinking I must have some cause of my problems which is unique to my PCs. Perhaps it is that everyone else has newer OS and hardware. Thinking I might try it on my 64bit machine at work.

My only end result so far has come via RegiStar, which on this occasion managed to identify bright points on the moon as "stars" and align the images successfully.

RegiStax is still grinding to a hault and/or crashing.

[mithrandir]

Roger, you can try before you buy. It will watermark the image. Pro and Giga are essentially the same, Giga can handle much bigger panos. There are multiple stacking options as to how to merge overlapping areas.

If you put a an overlapping subset of images online I'll run them through Giga. I'm supposed to get out of hospital tomorrow.

[rogerg]

Thanks for your generous offer Andrew.

I previously downloaded the trial of giga and found my laptop just couldn't handle the requirements. It worked, but was painfully slow.

I think I'll just give my work computer a go and consider a new laptop. (Edit: this is one of a few recent things pointing to the need for a new laptop which is 64bit and faster)

[rogerg]

It's a bit disappointing that having a new i7 laptop with 16gb ram both RegiStax 5.1 & 6 seem unable to process my sequence of 86 images of the Moon AVI. 5.1 does the best, loading and aligning most of the images but at the end of optimising complains about being out of memory.

Back to the drawing board. I was hoping to use Registax so it would rank the image quality etc. not just stack.

[Edit: tried 40 frames and that's failed too. Hmmm.]

[67champ]

Roger, I was thinking maybe it was PC related... Hate to hear your issues with memory as I just purchased i7 with only 8Gb, but haven't used yet....
Interesting... (not in a good way) ?

Good luck.

dana t

[Troy]

Hi Roger, AutoStakkert can do mov files. Here (http://www.astrokraai.nl/software/latest.html) is a link to the beta site download the 2.2.0.12 (MOV) version and all should be well. Don't worry about large file size because AutoStakkert is really fast at processing large files. The amount of memory shouldn't matter with this slick program.

Cheers
Troy