From: "Stephen W. Ramsden" <sramsden@natca.net>
Date: July 6, 2012 3:25:17 PM MDT
To: "Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com" <Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Astro IIDC 4.09.00 Beta 0 Up
the chunk sounds great for making time lapses of solar features..
Stephen W. Ramsden
On Jul 6, 2012, at 4:48 PM, "milton_aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com> wrote:
Hi Folks;
I have just posted a Beta 0 version of Astro IIDC 4.09.00 (1.1 meg download):
http://www.outcastsoft.com/Prototype/AstroIIDC40900B0_20120706.zip
The changes are listed in the "4.09.00Bx AstroIIDC Changes.rtf" file and summarized below:
- Testing has been done on PowerPC under 10.5.8 and under x86 under 10.6.8. No testing has been done under Lion and won't be until I am nearly done the beta testing on "stable" systems.
- Made a small adjustment to Grab Frame timing out when doing shorter (< 5 second) exposures. If the camera frame rate is set low, then the time needed to transfer the frame could have exceed the time out.
- Under the Processing menu is the "Movie to FITS Files..." menu item. After choosing it, you will be prompted to select the source movie (.mov, .avi, .mp4, mpeg) file to open and then a second window will appear and ask you to select the folder to save the FITS files too. If your movie is color, then it will export out a Red, Green and Blue FITS file for every color frame in the movie. A progress window will indicate how far the processing has completed and you can stop the process by clicking in the red "gum drop" in the window's upper left corner.
- Under the Processing menu is the "Chunk Movie to Ref Movies..." menu item. This will cut up a movie into a series of Reference movies - based on a user specified amount of time. So if you have a 31 second source movie and enter a 5 second "chunk" interval, it will create 7 reference movies from it (6 movies of 5 second durations and one movie of 1 second duration). Reference movies contain only a reference back to the original movie, so they use up very little disk space. The down side is that if you move or delete source movie, the References will not be able to find the parent and will not be playable / stackable / processable etc. After choosing "Chunk Movie to Ref Movies...", you will be prompted to select the source movie (.mov, .avi, .mp4, mpeg) file to open. Then a second window will appear and ask you for the duration to make each Chunk Reference movie. Lastly a third window will appear and ask you to select the folder to save the reference movies too. Once you click the final "Okay", Astro IIDC will create "N" reference movies from the original movie, each reference movie being up to your specified chunk duration and save them in the specified folder.
- Moved the Flat Frame Correct, Dark Frame Subtract, Field De-Rotate, Relative Photometry and measure Astrometry movie code into background Cooperative threads and added a Progress window. To stop these processes when running, click on the red "gum drop" in the Progress window's upper left corner.
- When selecting a Selection Area the "Show Pixel Variance" checkbox starts off as being check marked now. Previously it was not checked.
- When choosing a Selection Area, the "red off limits zone" is effectively gone. Now it's just a 4 pixel red edge along the outside of the selection image - regardless of selection area size. So if you use larger sizes (i.e. 64x64 to 256x256) then you can move it right up to the edges now. I still have a lot more testing on this to make sure I caught the edge cases for both PowerPC and x86, but it seems pretty solid so far.
Have a nice weekend..
Milton Aupperle