Help please - Using Autostakkart.....

[GrahamD]

Hi, can anyone here help with an Autostakkart issue I've got ? I shot the Moon last night on the ZWO294 camera on my C8, 4 videos with the intention to stitch them together.

I shot 1000 frames of each section, and selected 10%. In AS the individual frames look fine, but when stacked they blur is some areas and I get a bad alignment on the edges - the shots here are representative but not necessarily the worst.

In addition the output image either as a .tiff or a .png is much darker than the image shown in AS, probably around 3 stops difference. (These were exposure increased in Lightroom by over 3 stops each).  I use a Windows Laptop for the AS stacking, and Post Processing on a Mac, but the output images look dark on both platforms.

Has anyone got any thoughts on this please ?

Thanks, Graham,

[GrahamD]

For completeness, here are the other two from the set.

Thanks

 

[CraigT82]

Alignment is going a little haywire!

Are you ticking the surface option on the left hand side, as opposed to the planet option? Are you placing  lots of alignment points (APs)?

On the tight hand side you can use the normalise function and set it to 70% ish to normalise the brightness of the output (experiment with the percentage value).

[Yawning Angel]

Would you be able to share a screen shot of AS!3, with the SER file loaded and AP's set, please?

[GrahamD]

1 hour ago, CraigT82 said:

Alignment is going a little haywire!

Are you ticking the surface option on the left hand side, as opposed to the planet option? Are you placing  lots of alignment points (APs)?

On the tight hand side you can use the normalise function and set it to 70% ish to normalise the brightness of the output (experiment with the percentage value).

Thanks, most of the time and those shown were with the Planet setting rather than Surface, as that gave me the option to place AP's - When I first ran it I got the message that it was out of memory, but I was using 1000 frames and asking it to select the best 25% so I reduced the number of AP's - What I'm trying now is to run auto AP's and let it choose how many it needs, but restricted the stack to 500 with 10% selected.

I also saw that the normalise stack option was set at 25%, so I've increased that now !

I'll let you know how it goes !

Graham.

Edited February 26, 2021 by GrahamD

[GrahamD]

1 hour ago, Yawning Angel said:

Would you be able to share a screen shot of AS!3, with the SER file loaded and AP's set, please?

I'll see what I can do when this finishes running !

Thanks, Graham.

[CraigT82]

24 minutes ago, GrahamD said:

Thanks, most of the time and those shown were with the Planet setting rather than Surface, as that gave me the option to place AP's

When the surface setting is used you can place APs after the initial analysis is complete and before stacking (in fact IIRC you have to, as the stacking button is greyed out unless APs are placed?)

[GrahamD]

Thanks all so far, well trying various methods the main issue seems to consist of the program crashing due to lack of memory.  I do use a laptop with 4gb of ram so this may be the culprits  as the .ser files were 22gb each ( 1000frames at full resolution ). I also had an older version of AS loaded,I’ve now upgraded to the latest version. 
I don’t use the laptop very often as I’m mainly a Mac and ASIAIR user, but the air doesn’t let you use the full video capability of the 294mc pro, so if you want high res and large video files, I’ve had to start using the laptop.  I now need to think of an alternative to a Windows programme to stack with.....

[Merlin66]

Yes, a PC with a bit of grunt helps....

I use AS! to process my solar videos, the attached screens shows my settings.

Decide when viewing the quality graph which quality level/ number of frames you want to stack. select an AP size (I use 48 for full frames and 24 for ROI).

click "Place the AP grid", and Stack......

Notice I also click the sharpening button - this gives a good first approximation of what minimal tweaking might achieve -  a good guide and starting point.

Use ImPPG to do the final "improvements".

HTH

 

[wornish]

One thing that stands out for me is that you have way too many alignment points and they are two small.

Try clearing the grid and then select the 200 AP Size  or manually pick a size.

[GrahamD]

19 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

When the surface setting is used you can place APs after the initial analysis is complete and before stacking (in fact IIRC you have to, as the stacking button is greyed out unless APs are placed?)

Hi, how do you get Auto AP's on the surface selection, I can only get 1 box, in order to get any AP's I have to use planetary ?

Thanks, Graham

[Yawning Angel]

Surface / Planetary is how it stabilises the image. You want surface, and ctrl + click the green box so it covers a high contrast feature - the edge works well.

Not getting any APs : This might be the minimum brightness setting, just above the Place AP grid button. Try lowering it to 10. You want the APs covering the lit areas. Dark low contrast features can confuse it - tune the brightness option until you get a good spread

[wornish]

There is a useful tutorial here.  Its for autostakkert 2 but it applies to 3 as well.