K3CCDTools3 - much angst with how it sorts frames... again.

[BG]

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[blinky]

I have not used K3CCD for stacking, for that I use Regsitax (It's free you know 8) ).

Anyway with that the frame that you draw the box for aligning on is used as a refrence frame and all others quality is based on that frame. I dont know is K3CCD works the same but it is worth a try. Manually choose the best frame then draw your aligning box on that one and see if it makes any diffrence.

[BG]

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[beamish]

I must say I have tried and failed to make sense of K3 stacking and now use Registax. I think it does a very reasonable job, though to be fair I haven't tried stacking in XS of 10,000 frames.

Karlo

[daz]

BG

Look into 'ninox'. Its a pre-processing tool that will crop, centre and quality sort the frames. You'll need VirtualDub as well to split the frames and then recombine when finished.

I can do a detailed step-by-step if you need it, along with how I use Registax (whether or not its better than anyone elses process is up for debate; however.....)

[Parallax]

FWIW, I remember on the QCUIAG forum around 2000/2001 someone (may even have been Peter K [K3]) noticed that there seemed to be a correlation between the size of a (compressed) file and the quality of an image - the larger the file size, the better the quality. This maybe the method that is still used in determining the quality. Don't know.

Just a thought.

Steve

[beamer3.6m]

I thought on Registax you could only run AVI files which were less than 2gb in size, however you can stack more than 1 2 gig file if that makes sense.

So use virtualDub to reduce the size to 2gb and then click the multiple AVI's to open in Registax.

I am sure this works.

[Trevor]

BG

Why not use Registax much easier. Registax can handle 10000 frames, if your imaging the planets/Moon take several Avi’s that are just under 1Gb of data I usually run a Avi of 2500 frames, depends on Camera Etc.

If you want to load a couple of Avi’s just hold the Ctrl button down and select.

Manually select the best quality frame by using the Go to frame button bottom right.

Make sure automatic processing is unchecked and select your alignment box, you will notice a box called FFT Spectrum pop up on the right, select an area of your frame and look at the orange shape in the FFT box ,you are trying to get as close as possible to a circle you can click Manual and adjust the size by pushing the button under FFT filter.

It doesn’t matter what quality you set because at the end of processing to can adjust the slider at the bottom for quality and frames to stack.

Click align.

When the alignment has finished move the slider at the bottom of the screen backwards and forwards until your happy with the stack size and frame quality then click Limit.

Click Optimise and stack button.

You then get the Wavelets Filters pop up, it pays to experiment switching between Default and Gaussian to see the different aggressiveness of the wavelets.

When your happy with wavelet section.

Click Do All then proceed to Final.

Here you can adjust Hue, Saturation and Lightness when happy click Resize.

You will see four filters experiment with these till your happy with the result then click save.

Trev.

[beamer3.6m]

I think Trevor is right I should of said 1gb, not 2.

[BG]

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[daz]

Will do BG - will be later tonight, but its straightforward.

[BG]

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[Trevor]

BG

When you have loaded you Avi into Registax at the bottom of the screen on the right hand side you will see a box that says GOTO FRAME it will have the number 1 in it this is the first frame onscreen of your Avi if you click automatic processing Registax will use the frame as a reference, so you click through the frames till you find a good quality one then align. I suspect that K3 works in a similar way, you will have to manually select the best frame as a reference point.

[BG]

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[Trevor]

BG 27000 Frames I think that’s to many because of planetary rotation don’t think you will get any better definition of the planets belts because they will be blurred and any detail of storms will be washed out, with my DMK I can only get 15 frames per second on Saturn for a luminance channel and 27000 frames would take 30 minutes.

If frame 6 was stacked to frame 26789 that’s some time difference good luck and post your results will be interesting to see.

[Trevor]

just to add i looked this up...

If there are any storms visible using a colour cam you should aim for a 3 minute capture at the most otherwise any albedo features will be washed out.

hope it helps some.

Trev.

[BG]

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[Trevor]

No worries BG sometimes it’s difficult to explain things I find it much easier to show people than try and type hundreds of words, I noted that you said that K3 had put your reference frame at 554 probably because after K3 had gone through all the frames it found that 553 were of a higher quality although judging by your images above this might not be the case, I have not used K3 in anger so I am not sure.

You could try breaking your Avi up and processing say 5000 frames at a time then save the resulting image and do another 5000 or so at the end you could combine the resulting images see if that works, I will try a run on a Saturn Avi in registax and stack 3 resulting images and post the result in this thread later.

Trev.

[Trevor]

Well it works, 3 Avi’s each of 2500 frames, 1000 stacked from each Avi.

Wavelet slider 2 set at 80% for all 3.

The 3 images combined in Maxim nothing else done just converted from BMP to JPEG in Photoshop.

(click to enlarge)

[daz]

Oops!

Sorry BG, I never did come back to you on this.....

So, for planetary, this is what I do (note: This may be good, too much, dunno, but its what I do!!)

1. Split AVI into BMP frames using VirtualDub

2. Run ninox to do initial quality estimation and sort

3. Recombine into VirtualDub

4. Remove worst 20-30% of frames in VirtualDub

5. Resave AVI

6. Load in Registax

7. Select favourite quality algorithm and % to 70-80 (this really depends on the overall quality of the frames, the better, the lower the setting can be used)

8. Align

9. Single run optimisation leaving all settings as default

10. Create reference frame using about 5% of total frames (up to 50 max)

11. Slight sharpening needed here, click Continue when finished

12. Optimise again, changing Search area up to 10

13. Stack - you can choose to further strip out poor quality, but after ninox, I find this unnecessary

14. Wavelet - cautious use of sliders to enhance, Align RGB if needed, Contrast and brightness

15. Save as TIFF

16. Load in CS2 for any further tweaking.

There are loads of settings to choose from for quality, optimisation and stacking - these are a question of playing I think.

If anyone else has comments on the above and/or settings and their use, lets have 'em!!

[BG]

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[daz]

Yes, I'll dig it out - although I suspect I was supposed to do it anyway.... :oops:

[daz]

In fact, see here

I created a batch file that I run from the DOS command line, and I just then modify the input / output folders.

When I get home, I'll post the line I've used

[daz]

I should also say, that I use it very simply - its quite powerful, I've just not had a chance to get into it in more detail

[BG]

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