Stacking in AS!2 Takes Ages - should it?

[PhotoGav]

Hi, as the title suggests, it is taking ages to stack my lunar images in AS!2. The avi files are 1280x1024. I have processed them in PiPP. They are 800 frames long and I am stacking 100 frames. The stacking takes well over 10 minutes... I believe that this isn't normal, but I have no idea what I am doing wrong to make it take so long...

Settings are:

Image Satbilization = Surface. Stack Size = Crop.

Quality Estimator = Gradient, Noise Robust = 2, Force Global Quality = not ticked

Reference Frame = Auto Size

Stack Options = TIF, Number of frames to stack = 100

Advanced Settings = HQ Refine

I'm using 8 Threads

I open the avi file, set the green square to max with Alt-9, Then click Analyse. It whirs for a couple of minutes. Then I do the Alignment Points with settings of Multiple (MAP), AP Size of 60 and Min Bright of 20. I click Place APs in Grid and it generates the APs. I then click Stack and it whirs through the first few processes relatively quickly, maybe a minute or so each, then when it gets to Image Stacking it takes 15+ minutes...

Any thoughts and help gratefully received.

Thank you.

[ArmyAirForce]

My laptop has just taken 15 minutes to process a 1280x960 2500 frame avi of the Moon and stack 100 frames ( 1 thread ). I don't enlarge the green anchor rectangle and only use half a dozen align points. It took me 40 hours solid processing to stack a 119 panel mosaic of the Moon. 4GB Ram, dual core 2.2GHz processors.

[David Smith]

I took a 1000 frame avi of the Sun this morning and stacked 20% of the frames on my celeron laptop in under 5 minutes, so it would seem excessive to take so long. My avi was mono rather than colour, have to admit I don't know if that makes a difference but to my mind it makes the stacking process less complex. What's your machine spec and OS?

[ArmyAirForce]

Just done another test with the same 1280x960 video, cropped in PIPP to 800 frames, and stacked 100. 5 Align points, and it took 6 minutes.

[Steve Ward]

Try making the align-box size bigger , this gives fewer align-points and speeds things up .

I just test stacked 80 full disc frames in an AVI at 2650 x 2650 with 300 align-points in about a minute .

[Steve Ward]

Also worth checking how much memory it's using at the top , if your computer's getting full up it'll be slow , my old laptop was decidedly sluggish if I let the HD get too full of data.

I now shoot directly to an external 3Tb HD to prevent this happening , keeps the laptop freed up for speedier processing.

[Sam]

Also worth checking how much memory it's using at the top , if your computer's getting full up it'll be slow , my old laptop was decidedly sluggish if I let the HD get too full of data.

I now shoot directly to an external 3Tb HD to prevent this happening , keeps the laptop freed up for speedier processing.

This is very true, I just freed up about 50GB on my laptop and its made a huge difference.

[PhotoGav]

Thank you for your ideas folks. I'm just off to work now, but will have a play with things when I'm back tonight. I think that the colour v mono fact must make a large speed difference and I'm processing colour avi files... My laptop has an Intel Celeron quad core processor, with 4GB of RAM and over 200GB of free hard disk space.

[PeterW]

I take 600frame files with a dmk41 and these take a min or two to fully process on a 4yr old quad core desktop with 6gb ram. The stacking takes the longest, but not very long. I use something like 30pixel blocks in the stacking and don't use the drizzle... Takes ages. I usually Registax and gimp one images while the next one is being used. You could try the latest autostakkert alpha version. If I use my old netbook then I am in 20min processing land though.

Cheers

Peter

[Bizibilder]

Here is a swift process to show what I get:

Running on an i3 processor with 8Gb memory.  This is a mono image - colour may well take longer??

[PeterW]

Looks like what I use, I use smaller boxes on the right and force global quality and I tend to keep only 5-10% of frames so I am only stacking really good stuff... Time seems about what I would get it I ha bigger files.

PeterW

[PhotoGav]

Well, I tried stacking a mono avi and..... It was ridiculously quicker. So, that really answers the question - it should take ages with an rgb file, but is loads quicker with a mono file.

Many thanks for your help folks, I'm learning a heck of a lot about this lunar imaging mullarkey.

I've now processed my attempt at a mosaic and have learned another lesson - make sure you take a pane of each bit of the moon... I have two nibbles out of the edge. Doh!

Next time, it will work!

[Bizibilder]

Welcome to the "missed a bit" club!!