From: "milton_aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: March 8, 2012 1:58:09 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Astro IIDC 4.08.00 Alpha 01 Available

Hi Folks;

I have just posted Astro IIDC 4.08.00 Alpha 01 (1.1 megabyte download):

http://www.outcastsoft.com/Prototype/AstroIIDC40800A_20120308.zip

The main improvement is the stacking speed for 8 and 16 bit movies, which will now use all available CPU cores on your Mac.

If you have a problem with the new release, please send it directly to me at "milton@outcastsoft.com". Please do not post it to the Yahoo Astro IIDC group list, as in 99.9% of the cases I will need all sorts of information that should not be posted to the group - and in many cases will not be included in your posting anyhow (like crash logs, tiff files, movie snippets etc. etc.).

The main changes are summarized in the included "4.08.00A AstroIIDC Changes.rtf" file and as listed below:

- Added support for IIDC 1.3.2 Cameras that have up to thirty two Format 7 modes. Pre 1.3.2 IIDC  cameras only support seven Format 7 modes.

- Adds support for 12 bit Monochrome or 12 Bayer video modes added in IIDC 1.3.2, which can improve frame rate and maximize bandwidth.

- Worked around an issue with not receiving the first frame for long exposures under some circumstances.

- Added Basler cameras to AVT as a Manufacturer that violate the IIDC Specification for delivering 16 bit video in little endian format as a default. So you need to check mark the "Endian Swap 16 bit Buffers for illegal cameras." check box in the Camera Preference window (see page 91 of the Astro IIDC Help manual for details).

- Re-wrote and re-threaded the 16 bit (i.e. Mono16, RGB48, ARGB64, AlphaMono32 and Bayer16) and the 8 bit (i.e. Mono8, ARGB32 types and Bayer 8) STACKING code to use up to 16 CPU cores concurrently, instead of just two cores. On multi core Macs, all real CPUs (and "fake" hyper threaded CPUs) will show up as being close to 100% utilized. Even with dual core Macs, you will see an 40 to 80% improvement in Stacking speed. Note that Intel's Hyperthreading (the key word here is "Hype" from both Apple's and Intel's PR departments) adds absolutely nothing to processing.

- Fixed a design flaw where when doing Batch Photometry, Asteroids that pass within 15 pixels of a star would fail to analyze or track because the code could not decide which object to use. The new limit is 3 pixels.

- Fixed a crashing bug at start up for cameras that don't support hardware Auto Exposure.

- Addressed some issues with RT scheduling of threads when unloading data packets.

- Cleaned up code that has any 32 bit  Pointer dependencies.

HTH..

Milton Aupperle