DeepSkyStacker 5.1.8 Beta 1 is now available

[perdrix]

https://github.com/deepskystacker/DSS/releases/tag/5.1.8-Beta1

This release is all about finishing the conversion of the code to use Qt instead of MFC.  That said, there are a few bug fixes,
and a number of enhancements as well.   This isn't a complete list as many changes were made to improve code quality and
performance.

If you have the time to give this a thorough test I'd be most grateful.  If you use a non-English version (especially Traditional Chinese),
I'd much appreciate feedback on poor translations from English.

As usual, I'd prefer if you report any problems to the groups.io mailing list DeepSkyStacker: https://groups.io/g/DeepSkyStacker

Known problems:

1. When the image exposure is less than 1ms and double-click to edit is used, if the user clicks away from the editor, then the exposure is set to zero.
   This requires too much work to fix in this release, as we will need to implement our own edit control.

2. If you install DeepSkyStacker and it won’t startup, then it is likely that you have hit a problem caused by another application’s install
   procedure overwriting msvcp140.dll with a back-level version.

   If this is the case, then you will find that the log file in “My Documents\DeepSkyStacker” contains lines like:

00000030 2024/06/19 21:30:57.010 028564 00003520     >00007FFC81353020 (MSVCP140): (filename not available): Thrd_yield
00000030 2024/06/19 21:30:57.010 028564 00003520     >
00000031 2024/06/19 21:30:57.011 028564 00003520     >C:\Users\amonra\Documents\GitHub\DSS\DeepSkyStackerKernel\Workspace.cpp (456): Workspace::Workspace

   The solution to this problem is to download the latest version of the Visual C++ re-distributable (vc_redist) for x64 from:

    https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe

   and running it, selecting the “Repair” option.

   For more details of the issue please see:

      https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78598141/first-stdmutexlock-crashes-in-application-built-with-latest-visual-studio

Changes since the last release:

1. Bug fix: When saving the project to a file-list, a default file name is suggested which is equal to the name of the current directory.

2. Bug fix: The circles around the stars and the comet stayed even after clearing the file list.

3. Lower the minimum detection threshold for registering from 2% to 1%.

4. Bug fix: Crash caused by trying to de-bayer 32 bits FITS files with the method AHD.

5. Bug fix: AVX support to prevent Illegal Instruction problem on earlier CPU types (e.g. Xeon X5650).

6. Bug fix: Add check box to control display of Black/White clipping in Processing panel.

7. Bug fix: Custom rectangle produces a partly empty stacking result when the SIMD acceleration is turned ON.

8. Automatic threshold for star detection (default) and better image quality indication (Mean Quality) which is the
   mean star quality as compared to the score which was the sum of all star qualities and depended on the number of
   stars as well as their quality.

   The threshold will be in the range 0.05% and 100%, and the target number of stars is ~50.

   The new Mean Quality is primarily based on the average circularity ("roundness") of the stars in the image. It is
   largely independent of the number of detected stars.

   The background level, to which the star detection threshold is referring, is now calculated locally per 250x250 pixel square rather than globally over the entire image.
   This compensates for any background illumination gradients.

   All light frame sorting criteria have been switched to the new Mean Quality (e.g. for stacking the best x% light frames).

   The first light frame to register will be either the first in the frame list, or the reference frame (if one was chosen). If auto-threshold is used, the detected threshold
   of this light frame will serve as the basis for the threshold search of the following frames.

   We suggest that you ensure that the first registered light frame is not significantly darker then the other frames (brighter is no problem),
   otherwise the number of detected stars might be very high.

9. Bug fix: Computation of the final star centres has been corrected. The old version was slightly biased towards left/up of the real centre.

10. Finish conversion of code to Qt - there should be no MFC stuff left.

11. Upgrade LibRaw to 0.23.1

12. Upgrade LibTIFF to 4.7.0

13. Bug fix: Fix broken handling of Up-Arrow, Right-Arrow, Down-Arrow, Left-Arrow; Page-Up and Page-Down keys for the sliders of the gradient control.

Cheers, David

Edited 18 hours ago by perdrix
Add information about msvcp140.dll problem

[happy-kat]

thanks for this.

W11 I've noticed the main exe is not showing the DSS graphic just a generic file graphic in file manager or on the task bar when running

more virus alerts on installing/running about ransom ware then I expected, I'll review these

on first stack run popup 'sorry, libraw doesn't support your canon EOS 1100d camera' selecting ok and stacking begins

 

Edited 18 hours ago by happy-kat

[perdrix]

Hmmm

Icons: NSIS problem perhaps - investigating

1100D: Looks like an "improvement" to the code for checking the LibRaw camera support list wasn't quite as good as Martin though it would be.

I will look at this

[perdrix]

A bug has been found that prevents FITS files being loaded from the stacking panel's image list.    I have fixed it now and the fix will be in the next beta release.

The problem was introduced with Qt 6.8.0 which changed its mime types database.   FITS files used to return “image/fits” and now returns “application/fits”, and I missed one of the places that checked the mime type.

 David