BackyardEOS 3.1.0 Release Candidate 04 is ready for download.

[admin]

BackyardEOS 3.1.0 Release Candidate 04 is ready for download. 

 

I'm hoping this is the last RC before full production release... unless of course a major issue is found.

 

Free upgrade from 3.0.x to 3.1.0 to everyone as usual.

Change log (from RC03)

- bug fix: Image rotation when camera was on its side.

- bug fix: Images, specifically darks, are now properly displayed.

- bug fix: Histogram control not rendering properly on very rare occasion.

- bug fix: Planetary recording .avi files was not always copied to your download folder, it was left in the TEMP folder.

- bug fix: JPG image are now -always- created when AstroTortilla is used to capture an image for plate solving... even if you have selected RAW only.

- bug fix: If you had selected <sequence> in your file name template images were not copied to download folder.

- change: <sequence> in file name template now use in-camera image number for sequence when images are store to "PC+Camera", otherwise it starts at 1 between BYE restart.

- change: Box grid in Drift Align, removed inner circle.

- Testing on XP, Vista, W7, and W8

 

This Release Candidate will NOT overwrite your current v3.0.x installation.

http://www.binaryrivers.com/download/setup-BackyardEOS-v310-RC04.exe

 

PLEASE REPORT ISSUES using RC04 in this thread.

 

Thank you,

[PoppaChris]

So, Guylain, how are we coming on the schedule for full commercial release of 3.1.0?  Are all of these issues lately going to hold it up a bit, or are they going to be dealt with in 3.1.1?  No pressure.  Just curious.

[admin]

So, Guylain, how are we coming on the schedule for full commercial release of 3.1.0?  Are all of these issues lately going to hold it up a bit, or are they going to be dealt with in 3.1.1?  No pressure.  Just curious.

 

I will probably release RC05 next week.  Then I have a trip planned with my wife to Las Vagas so I'm a bit reluctant to release in prod then leave town for a week... so I will probably release 3.1 production early October when I'm back.

 

Regards,

[dts350z]

I had an issue with RCO4 and PHD2 dithering last night. Probably not a BYEOS issue but just in case...

 

PHD2 locked up after a meridian flip. Guiding had started but then when I looked a little later the screen was completely frozen. Had to kill the process with the task manager.

 

After restarting PHD2 and getting everything going again I noticed BYEOS was no longer dithering between exposures. I tried turning dithering off and on again, no joy. Also tried restarting BYEOS, still no joy, so I had to finish my capture plan without dithering.

 

Happy to send log files in case there's any chance it's BYEOS related, or BYEOS can be taught to overcome whatever the issue actually was.

 

 

 

[admin]

I had an issue with RCO4 and PHD2 dithering last night. Probably not a BYEOS issue but just in case...

 

PHD2 locked up after a meridian flip. Guiding had started but then when I looked a little later the screen was completely frozen. Had to kill the process with the task manager.

 

After restarting PHD2 and getting everything going again I noticed BYEOS was no longer dithering between exposures. I tried turning dithering off and on again, no joy. Also tried restarting BYEOS, still no joy, so I had to finish my capture plan without dithering.

 

Happy to send log files in case there's any chance it's BYEOS related, or BYEOS can be taught to overcome whatever the issue actually was.

 

 

 

Send me the log files and I'll check.

 

 

[Ron Hillstromb]

Problem with 50D and Bulb whith Noise Reduction turned on.

 

  I reported this before but didn't follow-up when 3.1 RC XX were released.

 

    When I am using Bulb with the 50D and Noise Reduction is turned on and shutter Delay is on BYE begins downloading as soon as the shutter closes.  Download is complete within 5 seconds.  When I set the shutter to 30 sec (TV) the process is completed as expected.  If I set Bulb on and use 30 sec It downloads as soon as the shutter closes. 

 

  If I turn shutter Delay off then noise reduction is applied in Bulb.

 

  Logs will be sent.

 

Is this a limitation of the 50d set within the SDK?

 

Ron

[astroman133]

I am confused by your post.

What do you mean by "noise reduction is turned on".  Do you mean the in-camera noise reduction? Long exposure noise reduction or high ISO noise reduction? Which one?

What do you mean by "shutter delay"? Do you mean the Delay control in BYE's Capture Plan Center?  That only puts a one-time delay at the start of the capture plan.  It does not cause a pause between exposures and it is not supposed to.

What do you mean when you say "When I set the shutter to 30 sec (TV) the process is completed as expected"?  This is vague because we don't know what you expect to happen.

If you turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction in the camera's menu, the camera will take a dark exposure after each light exposure.  This should cause a 30 second exposure to take a bit over a minute to download to the PC from the time the shutter opened at the start of the exposure.  This behavior is controlled by the camera, not BYE. BYE starts the exposure, in the case of Bulb, stops the exposure, and waits for notification that the image is ready for download.

Please clarify your issue.

[Ron Hillstromb]

 Sorry for the confusion.

 

  I have both High ISO and Long exposure noise reduction turned on.

 

  The shutter delay is the anti-vibration feature where the mirror is raised for a set time before the shutter is activated.

 

  Any time I have Bulb set in the capture plan and the anti-vibration feature enabled in the capture plan the 50d only takes a picture for the time set in the capture plan and the Noise reduction frame is not taken which is what I expect.  My 7D and 60Da works this way.

 

  When I do not use Bulb on the 50D then the Noise reduction frame is taken when the Anti-vibration feature is used or not.

 

  When I use bulb but do not set a delay for the Anti-vibration feature the exposure time for the picture and the equal time for the noise reduction frame is taken.

 

  The  (my) 50D does not apply the noise reduction frame when in bulb and a time for the Anti-vibration feature is set.

 

  I did a few more test and this holds true even for 10 second and 7 second exposures.  7 seconds is about as short an exposure I can use and still determine that the noise reduction frame is not taken.

 

  I hope this clarifies what I am experiencing.

 

Ron

 

 

[astroman133]

OK, so what you are saying is that with mirror lockup enabled, the automatic dark frame is not taken.

 

The conventional wisdom for astrophotography is to turn off High ISO noise reduction because it changes the raw data in ways that you cannot control, and was not meant for astrophotography.  The thinking is that you can be a better judge of how to reduce the noise in your images, after you have increased the SNR as much as possible by stacking the raw subs.

 

Long exposure noise reduction (LENR) may help reduce noise in raw images, but it cuts your productivity in half.  You will get better results if you take your own darks separately and apply them during image calibration.

 

People may be able to re-produce the behavior that you are reporting, but it probably affects only a very small percentage of users because most people turn off the in-camera noise reduction features. 

 

Finally, for long exposures of deep sky objects, whatever vibration may be caused when the mirror flips up is not noticeable in your images because the vibration is very short lived compared to the entire exposure.  Conventional wisdom here is to turn off mirror lockup for long bulb exposures.

 

That said, the behavior that you are reporting may not be what Guyain intends and may be something that he can change.

[Ron Hillstromb]

  With the addition of it only happens in bulb.  A note is that bulb is invoked through BYE using the M setting on the camera.  I believe the same is true for other models.

 

  I can only report it as a user.  If the 50d is not capable of  that mode then that is how it is.

 

  Ron

[astroman133]

OK, now I get it.  When you said that it also occurred for exposures shorter than 30 seconds, I did not realize that you were still using Bulb, since it is typically used only for longer exposures.

 

Guylain is often away with family on the weekends.  I am sure that he will respond soon.

[admin]

Ron,

 

It is quite possible that the in-camera mirror lock is not set.  Typically BYE can set that property when you set mirror-lock value to > 0 seconds, and is un-set when mirror-lock value = 0 for DIGIC 4 and up models.

 

This looks to me like the setting is not working (or not supported) on the 50D.

 

When you take pictures with mirror-lock value to > 0 and then = 0, do you see the mirror lock field in the camera information center change value?

 

Try setting the in-camera mirror lock manually and then make sure to use mirror-lock value to > 0... does it work?

 

Regards,

[admin]

Hi Ron,

 

Noise reduction is 100% camera feature... it seems like the camera is choosing not to run this feature with mirror lock on.  I'm stump, I've never seen this.  Is this a 50D thingy?  I dunno <_>

 

BackyardEOS does not poll the camera to download an image.  Instead the camera fires an event with a camera memory pointer where the images is ONCE the image is ready for download.  When long exp. noise reduction is on this takes double the time.  Meanwhile BYE is idling waiting the the image download ready event to fire.

 

In your case the camera fires the event, indicating the image is ready for download (and it do not run noise reduction for some reason)... so BYE downloads it.

 

Try a few things:

 

1) Use BULB, mirror-lock, and long exposure NS without it being connected to a PC.  Use the camera menus only.

 

2) Try EOS Utility, do you get the same behavior?

 

Keep us posted,

[astroman133]

I tried to re-create Ron's issue with BYE v3.1 RC04 and my T5i, but was not able to. 

 

I was able to use a mirror lockup delay along with the in-camera long-exposure noise reduction enabled and the in-camera dark was apparently taken and applied.  For example, with a 10-second Mirror Lockup delay and a 30-second Bulb exposure it took abut 75 seconds from the start until I saw the image.  The mirror lockup, shutter open and shutter close occurred at the correct times.

 

However, when shooting RAW, the displayed image has the same purplish cast as previously reported with RC03.  This does not happen when shooting JPG, or in Frame & Focus.  Any way for me to troubleshoot this further?

 

Also, I noticed that BYE did not automatically recognize that I had attached a lens while I was already connected.  I had to disconnect and reconnect.  This may be by design, but I thought that I would mention it.

 

Thanks!

[admin]

I tried to re-create Ron's issue with BYE v3.1 RC04 and my T5i, but was not able to. 

 

I was able to use a mirror lockup delay along with the in-camera long-exposure noise reduction enabled and the in-camera dark was apparently taken and applied.  For example, with a 10-second Mirror Lockup delay and a 30-second Bulb exposure it took abut 75 seconds from the start until I saw the image.  The mirror lockup, shutter open and shutter close occurred at the correct times.

 

However, when shooting RAW, the displayed image has the same purplish cast as previously reported with RC03.  This does not happen when shooting JPG, or in Frame & Focus.  Any way for me to troubleshoot this further?

 

Also, I noticed that BYE did not automatically recognize that I had attached a lens while I was already connected.  I had to disconnect and reconnect.  This may be by design, but I thought that I would mention it.

 

Thanks!

 

Hi Rick,

 

Are your sure about using RC04 for the red cast image?  I ask because is RC4 displays the embeded jpg inside the .cr2.  I still use DCRaw to extract it but it is the embedded jpeg produced by the camera so it should be 100% as-is the full downloaded jpgs .

 

Keep me posted,

[astroman133]

Yes, I am sure.  Here is a screenshot.

 

 

 

The other RC versions were uninstalled, and RC04 was installed in a clean directory.  The same issue does not occur with 3.0.3.

 

 

[admin]

Rick,

 

Can you choose RAW+JPG, take a picture, then send me both files.  I'll run a few tests.  This are the kind of issues preventing me from releasing 3.1 in prod right now so it is high on the priority list.

 

Thanks,

[Ron Hillstromb]

Thanks to both for  your thoughts on my 50D problem.

 

  Rick, I went to short exposures to save time and see if the length of exposure was a factor.  Apparently it isn't.

 

  Guylain and Rick for information,

 

   I found that using EOS Utility that when Mirror lock is enabled in camera that the timer is disabled(greyed out and doesn't respond to attempts to click on it).  This is true for the 50D, 7D and 60Da.

 

   For the 50D,  BYE does set the  Mirror Lock with software and the mirror lock works in BYE but there is no change in the 50D Menu for Mirror Lock.  This is true also for the 7D and 60D.

 

   If the mirror lock is enabled in the 50D menu but BYE is set to 0 the Mirror Lock is not triggered

 

   If mirror lock is disabled in the 50D menu and BYE is set to 1 or greater the Mirror Lock does trigger.  

 

  EOS Utility will not take noise Reduction Frames when the Mirror Lock is enabled either in EOS Utility or BYE.

                      

 

  For the 7D and  60D.  The EOS Utility has an additional icon in the display for Mirror Lock but I had to enable Mirror Lock in the camera menu for it to be used.  It is also manual operation.  I had to use the EOS Utility like a remote cable, click on the button to lift the mirror wait until I felt the camera shake had quit then click on the button again to open the shutter.  I had to watch the count-up display and click on the button again to close the shutter and release the Mirror Lock.  Then the camera took the noise reduction frames and applied them and saved them as directed.

 

  When Mirror Lock was disabled I could use the timer(and Noise Reduction) which I did before I found BYE.

 

  It seems that the 50D is not engineered through hardware and/or firmware to activate both Noise Reduction and Mirror Lock for the same frame.  It is one or the other.

 

  Like the Rebel that only uses 10FPS in Live View this is something to remember for this Model.

 

Ron

 

 

[JTWaters]

What's "new" in this release?

 

Jim

[astroman133]

Jim,

 

First, there is no "release" yet.  There is beta testing of the changes that may be in the next release.

 

While I have not see a list of new features I do not believe that there is any major new functionality intended for version 3.1.  There are several "behind the scenes" changes to the way images are handled, however.  These are geared to improve usability and performance, and have proven challenging to get right for all cameras and use cases. There are also a few textual changes in labels on the screens, and a few bug fixes.  It also uses a newer version of the Canon SDK.  This usually means support for newer cameras, but I have not seen anything definitive. There is also an updated user manual.

 

As the release is finalized, it would be typical to see a change log with new fixes and features.

[dts350z]

Previews vs. Raw are inverted?

 

By that I mean my preview has a bright star in the upper right of the frame, then I was surprised to see it in the lower left of the first image.

[admin]

Previews vs. Raw are inverted?

 

By that I mean my preview has a bright star in the upper right of the frame, then I was surprised to see it in the lower left of the first image.

 

Really, is you camera oriented upside down?  I do not rotate the image 180 degrees so I'm confused.  I'll try a few different scenarios.

 

Anyone else seeing this?

 

Regards,

[admin]

Previews vs. Raw are inverted?

 

By that I mean my preview has a bright star in the upper right of the frame, then I was surprised to see it in the lower left of the first image.

 

Really, is you camera oriented upside down?  I do not rotate the image 180 degrees so I'm confused.  I'll try a few different scenarios.

 

Anyone else seeing this?

 

Regards,

 

Well, you are right <_>

 

If the camera is rotated clockwise 90 degrees the RAW image in capture mode is inverted, if counter-clockwise they are not.

 

I'll fix that.

 

In the meantime know that the raw data is not affected in the .cr2 file so your data is all good.

 

Sorry <_>

 

 

 

[dts350z]

Yeah, it didn't happen on my 2nd target, on the other side of the meridian so the camera was flipped relative to the 1st target.

 

 

 

[admin]

Yeah, it didn't happen on my 2nd target, on the other side of the meridian so the camera was flipped relative to the 1st target.

 

 

 

It is fixed now.  Download RC04 again and it should be fine now.  Sorry about that, it was too simple to catch during testing <_>

 

Regards,

[dts350z]

OK, I see this:

 

bug fix: JPG image are now -always- created when AstroTortilla is used to capture an image for plate solving... even if you have selected RAW only.

 

But I still get jpeg previews when I have RAW only selected.

 

How do I get CR2 files for previews (so the histograms are consistent)?

[dts350z]

Ah, re-read your email.

 

I need to set it to "in camera" and then set the camera to RAW?

 

Could we not have a setting for "RAW previews"?

 

Thanks

 

 

[admin]

Ah, re-read your email.

 

I need to set it to "in camera" and then set the camera to RAW?

 

Could we not have a setting for "RAW previews"?

 

Thanks

 

 

No, you do not have to set anything in-camera.  If a jpg is not available when going through AstroTortilla I save the BYE displayed image as a jpg and pass that along to AT.  Nothing has changed other than that.

 

Regards,

[admin]

Ah, re-read your email.

 

I need to set it to "in camera" and then set the camera to RAW?

 

Could we not have a setting for "RAW previews"?

 

Thanks

 

 

No, you do not have to set anything in-camera.  If a jpg is not available when going through AstroTortilla I save the BYE displayed image as a jpg and pass that along to AT.  Nothing has changed other than that.

 

Regards,

 

In fact that was the exact bug fix.  When you have image quality set to "in camera" and your in-camera setting was RAW, AstroTortilla would not work because BYE was passing along a raw file to AT and it was expecting a JPG.  This is now fixed.

 

Hope this helps,

 

 

[dts350z]

Ok I understand the bug fix, and I understand that the only way to get raw previews (currently) is to set raw in camera.

[admin]

Ok I understand the bug fix, and I understand that the only way to get raw previews (currently) is to set raw in camera.

 

Yes this is correct, and the only reason why I'm forcing JPG for preview is for image downloading/loading speed.  Loading a RAW image is CPU intensive and some have slower laptop for acquisition... however... my tests do show that DCRaw is very efficient at loading RAW image data so I may just have to revisit that.

 

Do you have a specific use case where you would want your previews RAW instead of JPG?

 

Regards,