What parameters do you use in ppmcentre?

[Hitchhiker]

I have attached a sneak preview of a VB front end for ppmcentre.

The parameters I use regularly for ppmcentre are outdir, width, height, qestimator, and renumber. I have sometimes had to use the threshold parameter when I had some noisy images. These are the parameters I have allowed for in the front end. I have also experimented with upscale but don't use this parameter regularly.

ppmcentre allows you to set some other parameters for qestimator and renumber, but I have only allowed for use of these features with the default behaviour (ie no min,max, first, last).

For height and width I always use a square shape eg 300x300, 200x200, 400x400 so I initially thought I would lock width and height together but it is possible to output a rectangular bitmap eg 300x200, 400x300 - does anyone use ppmcentre this way or see a need for anything but square output?

For those who use ppmcentre, what parameters do you use? Have I covered the essentials or are there other parameters you can't live without.

[Astroman]

Geez the only param I have ever used was -overwrite, not sure what the rest mean, hope there are some detailed instructions coming out with this :D

[[1ponders]]

Your a champion HH. Can't wait to give it a try, being a techno-neanderthal for non-GUI "stuff" :P

[Hitchhiker]

There are detailed explanations of all the parameters on bird's website here:

http://acquerra.com.au/astro/software/ppmcentre/

[davidpretorius]

-cutx=440 -cuty=440 -width=480 -height=480 -qestimator -renumber=last -outdir=out -forceprocess

at f38.5 or 1600x, my jupiters are bigger than the default 400 x 400.

my tracking is fine, but not fantastic, so i have -forceprocess to keep it going even if it goes off screen

[Astroman]

Yup I was thinking the same too David :shrug:

Okay off to read birds page.... :whistle:

[iceman]

I use:

-width=400 -height=400 -cutx=400 -cuty=400 -overwrite -inputfilter -qestimator -renumber $image_dir

However at times I've also used -threshhold=40 or 80 (for noisy blue channels) and I've also used -minpixels=80 for a small target (like Uranus).

I also don't write to a new directory, so I don't use outdir but I do use overwrite.

I'd need the frontend to take those into account.

[Hitchhiker]

Here is another sneak preview of the ppmcentre front end.

For those who are familiar with RGBSplit the folders tab will look familiar - in fact it works in the same way (press the 'Add Folders...' button or drag and drop folders from Windows Explorer)

The 'ppmcentre' tab contains all the parameters for the ppmcentre run. I have included all parameters that people felt were important. The initial values for these parameters are per the ppmcentre defaults or, where there are no explicit defaults, what I thought was a reasonable number.

When you click 'Process' a DOS window is opened and ppmcentre is run with the parameters you selected (you actually get to watch ppmcentre do its stuff).

You will need to have ppmcentre.exe somewhere on your PC - the first time you run the front end you will need to tell it where ppmcentre is (I might make it look in C:\Program Files\ by default so you don't have to do this if it is already there in this directory).

I have a little more work to do on this - I'm hoping to have a beta out by next week.

[davidpretorius]

nice work adam!

[iceman]

Looks great Adam. Though I would've thought "overwrite" checkbox should be above the "Output Folder" edit box, and if overwrite is checked, then output folder should be greyed out.

[[1ponders]]

Good on you Adam. I'm looking forward to this. It takes forever to use ImagesPlus' planetary alignment utility, and you can't batch the jobs, and then you have to go back and crop, and it doesn't do a quality estimate and....:P all the other things. For the command line challenged this will be a godsend.

thanks

[Hitchhiker]

My thinking is that you will always write the centred bitmaps to a new directory (well, I've imposed that on you). The -overwrite flag comes into play if you run again into the same output directory. Maybe I've got my blinkers on,though!

What works in best with the way our planetary imagers currently do things? When I run ppmcentre I always output to a different directory and never overwrite my original bitmaps - maybe that's the difference, for you ToUcam guys the avi's are the 'originals', for me the bitmaps are the 'originals.

[iceman]

yeh Adam, that's the difference.

I keep the avi until I'm happy with the way it has been processed, then I delete the avi, and I delete the R/G/B directories. I keep the "ppmcentered" bitmaps as my "originals" from then on.

I currently don't write my ppmcentered bmp's to a new directory, as it will take up more space on my space-limited laptop :)

If I stuff it up, I just run it through virtualdub again to create the bitmaps.

I'd prefer to not have it imposed on me to write the output to a new directory.

[Hitchhiker]

Thanks Paul, with the number of people on IIS lately who have faced their fears and used ppmcentre at the command line, I was thinking there will be no need for my front end. ;) :D

Happy to do it, though, of course, it always turns out to be more complex than I think it will be. More importantly, this is cutting into my IIS reading time, so I'm keen to get this done and go back to sleep.

A couple of things I forgot to mention were some options that Mike uses that may not be familiar to others - Min Pixels is used when imaging small objects (eg Uranus). By default ppmcentre wants to see 250 pixels in an area before it will recognise it as an object - it will completely miss an object like Uranus because it is not 'big' enough. Input Filter only works on black and white bitmaps, so this is an opton that I have turned off by default but someone may need in the near future.

[Hitchhiker]

The blinkers are off! :rofl:

The -overwrite flag is more an 'overwrite the originals' flag.

That makes a lot of sense - I will make the changes you suggest. Isn't it funny how we use the same software but use it in completely different ways (all valid)

[iceman]

Sounds great. Send it through if you'd like me to beta-test it for you!