Well at last I have got the DFK working. Unfortunately the conditions are not good but I am happy with the DFK results after using a Neximage. I am capturing at 30fps to get maximum of 1700 frames= just under 1 minute. Any longer and Registax will not stack the avi. The avi must be kept to less than 1gig in size. Gain is kept at about 75% any less in bad conditions and in come the onion rings. It is an easy camera to use. The image was processed in Astra Image.
Lester, that's a very good result considering the seeing - very promising for the future. I couldn't get anything worthwhile at all tonight. I believe the way around the frame limit of long AVIs in Registax is to divide them into smaller sections with VirtualDub and then load them all into Registax. I seem to recall doing this successfully on some longer Mars AVIs last year.
Here's a reference to this workaround from the authour of Registax.
I've used > 1 gig AVI's in Registax before.. what version are you using?
Did you try opening in virtualdub and then re-saving as avi?
If you can work around that problem, you'll be able to capture for 2 minutes and get even more frames to work with - more possibility of finding good frames and reducing the grain.
You could also save the avi as BMP's, run them through PCFE and then drag the BMP's into registax. My tutorial explains how to do that.
Great to see some output from the DFK - look forward to the next lot! Looks promising already. Nice job!
Nice one Lester Mike is 100% right. Once you get the hang of splitting the avi into bmps, running them through PCFE to center, crop and initial quality assess and then dumping them into Reigistax, you'll never want to go back to the old avi processing in Registax. It's a little bit of extra work (not much because you can batch process all your avis/bmps in bothe Virtual Dub and PCFE) but definately worth it.
Man I am slow at this. I have loaded Virtual Dub and managed to add 2 avis together=3313 frames. But from reading your instructions, sounds to me like I have to go through them all manually next and delete the bad frames. Is that correct?
I also loaded PPM centre from your tutorial but when I came back here saw that you didn't mention PPM centre, but PCFE= is that a different program?
Where is the instructions for absolute dumbies to explain all this, coz that is what I would need?
But from reading your instructions, sounds to me like I have to go through them all manually next and delete the bad frames. Is that correct?
Not for 3000 frames I wouldn't. I drag the slider through the avi and delete any frames where the planet drifted out of the FOV. I imagine your tracking is very good, in which case you can skip that bit.
One you've appended the avi's together, save image sequence to save them as BMP's. For 3000 frames it might take about 4-8 minutes depending on the speed of your computer and what else you're running at the time.
You need ppmcentre *and* PCFE. PCFE is the "front end GUI" for ppmcentre. You can download both from the links on the tutorial - ppmcentre is on Bird's site, and PCFE is in the IceInSpace Files section.
Install PCFE by running the EXE, and then save ppmcentre to the same folder where PCFE gets installed.
Wow your in for some fun mate! PPM centre? have fun, lol. I'm totally brain dead in command line stuff.
I once had an AVI that was too big & got the 'can't decompress AVI, so bugger off'. So I split it in half using virtualdub & ran them thru separately & then stacked the 2 finals derived from them. This doesn't solve your problem though I know. You have not got the maximum 2 mins of AVI to do this with...
yep I got 2 avis taken in quick succession, well within 3 minutes anyway. Just be good to try the exercise, don't care if there is a bit of image smear for starters.
Computer literate, I Am Not. I am only where I am today because of hours, and days spent with Asimov. His hair is greyer now than it ever was thanks to me. At least he didn't go bald.
Hi Mike,
This is in Virtual Dub.
another question=I am trying to save image sequence as BMP I have to enter filename prefix ? Filename suffix,including extension ? Directory to hold images = I think I can do this one. But the other 2 I have tried putting in the name of the avis but with no luck.
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Mike is 100% right. Once you get the hang of splitting the avi into bmps, running them through PCFE to center, crop and initial quality assess and then dumping them into Reigistax, you'll never want to go back to the old avi processing in Registax. It's a little bit of extra work (not much because you can batch process all your avis/bmps in bothe Virtual Dub and PCFE) but definately worth it.
