Option to save planetary images as PNG

[gfunkernator]

Currently BYE saves captured planetary frames as JPEGs.  Can there be an option to save them as PNG files?  For some reason PIPP won't combine jpeg files and says that 0 of x amount of frames were processed.  PNG files however work fine.  Would be nice to have that option.

[s3igell]

Of curiosity,  these are PNG files which you converted directly from the JPGs which "would not stack"??  Or a different set from a different Imaging Session, or different Capture Software??

Also, which version of PIPP??

[gfunkernator]

22 hours ago, s3igell said:

Of curiosity,  these are PNG files which you converted directly from the JPGs which "would not stack"??  Or a different set from a different Imaging Session, or different Capture Software??

Also, which version of PIPP??

No, PNG files from a different session.  I guess I could convert the jpegs to PNGs.  I'm not sure the exact version but fairly recent.  I downloaded it back in May of this year.  It would be nice if BYE could just capture uncompressed frames and then I could combine them later into an Avi instead of waiting for BYE to do it and putting a strain on my computer.  I have to wait because if I start capturing while BYE is compiling the Avi, the framerate drops.  It's my understanding that the jpeg format is inherently lossy.  

[astroman133]

So you have two issues???

1) your PC is underpowered and cannot capture new images, while assembling the AVI, without dropping the frame rate? I am not sure how the code is currently written, but it may be possible for Guylain to increase the priority of the capture thread to keep the frame rate up. You could also only capture JPGs and some other tool like dcraw or libraw to create the AVI file later. But, both RegiStax and AutoStakkert can process individual JPGs as easily as they can process an AVI.

If I remember, even your "low" frame rate is still 30+ fps because you are using a solid state disk. That is way better than most people...I typically get about 15 fps even with a quad core i7 laptop with an SSD, but the frame rate does not vary when the background thread is working to combine queued images into an AVI. When stacking images, there is a point of diminishing return when increasing the number of images. At the far end, you can increase the number of frames by hundreds but not appreciably improve the resultant image. If you use a program like RegiStax, what percentage of frames to you stack? 10%? If you choose 5% does the image get worse? If not, then it seems as though could have captured half as many frames and stacking 10% should give the same result. Of course the quality of the result also depends on the focal length of the telescope and the atmospheric stability.

2) JPG images are lossy, and the compression is achieved by reducing the number of colors. I don't know how lossy a typical planetary frame is, but I would imagine that you do not lose very much because most of the pixels are nearly black. Also, capturing LiveView frames as JPGs is the only option for BYE because JPGs is what the Canon SDK provides to BYE. This means that whatever "loss" there is due to the design of the camera. If this is not acceptable, then you may need to consider using a different type of camera for planetary imaging.

[gfunkernator]

Framerate only drops while BYE is processing the AVI in the background.  I didn't know autostakkert and Registax could process individual jpegs.  If the canon SDK can only output jpeg then that's understandable.  I would like to keep using the canon since it was a pricey purchase and don't want to spend more money on another camera.  

[admin]

Try virtual dub, it's less cpu hungry.

 

 

[dkerber]

It would be nice to be able to generate .png files, simply because they're lossless, too.

 

[gfunkernator]

On 8/4/2020 at 11:42 AM, admin said:

Try virtual dub, it's less cpu hungry.

 

 

So I understand this correctly, if I put the executables in the BackyardTEMP folder, BYE will automatically use virtualdub to encode the avi files?  Also, will it take lest time to encode?

[astroman133]

The problem is that BYE does not generate the JPG files. This is what the camera provides, so however "lossy" they are is determined by the camera.

Do an internet search for "bulk convert JPG to PNG". There are several free options that could be used after the imaging session that would not impact the PC resources available during capture.

[gfunkernator]

I have seen several online converters and tried the freeware downloads that don't always work right.  Sometimes, because they're free, wont do multiple files at a time, or only do five at a time.  The weird thing is, and this is probably the jpeg mode set by the camera (will have to investigate this camera-side), I recently used a set of 2000 jpeg frames in PIPP in Join Mode and it worked fine but in the past it didn't.  So I am thinking it could be the S compression mode in the camera that encoded them in a way that may or may not work in PIPP.  If anything I rather just capture the individual frames and compile them later.  Will save a bunch of time during my imaging session.