Image processing bottle neck

[Dawson]

When processing data for planetary or lunar (video), what is the cause of the software say PIPP, Registax etc, not running faster? When looking at the taskmanager the CPU is only at 8%, memory at 30%, GPU at 3%, disc at 0%, wifi doing next to nothing. Why doesn’t the software run quicker? If there anything which can be done to make it run quicker?

James Dawson

[Grant Privett]

What is the memory of the system and what else do you have running?

What operating system?

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Grant Privett. Reason: Because I'm a moron

[Dawson]

Thanks Grant.

Windows 11, 32 GB RAM, nothing else major running. Task manager doesn’t suggest the bottleneck is CPU, RAM, GPU, disk, WiFi… so I wonder what is the limiting factor which causes software to not run quicker?

[Dawson]

Looking at this again on my desktop PC (rather than my laptop), I think the bottleneck is the software. Registax only seems to use one or two cores of the CPU and then the utilisation of these appears to be about 50%, whereas if I use Autostakkert it uses all cores and utilisation for each goes up to near 100%. This is despite altering Registax to use “8 CPUs” in its settings (this PC has 12 cores). I just need to now teach myself how to properly use Autostakkert and just use Registax for wavelets though their Wavesharp software seems much better at this.

James

[Grant Privett]

Surprising that Registax isn’t grabbing available CPUs. Wonder what its written in.

[David Strange]

I now use Astrosurface, which is faster since it combines the roles of Autostakkert & Registax into a single program.
The wavelets function is much more intuitively adjustable and overall offers a simpler and quicker routine.

David

[Robin Leadbeater]

Not sure how much Registax has been updated/rewritten over the years but its origin dates back over 20 years now, predating multicore processors in PCs

[David Arditti]

Registax became unusably slow for me several years ago. It was not designed for images of the size that modern cameras (or even not particularly modern ones) produce. I second the recommendation of Astro Surface, which is free.

One thing I wish is that there were a viable stacking program on the Mac, as Firecapture and ZWO cameras work very well on the Mac. As it is, I transfer back to PC to use Autostakkert!.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

SWarp (https://www.astromatic.net/software/swarp/) is the only stacking program I use most. It works exceedingly well.

I believe that SWarp is available for the Mac. (I have never needed to look for it before but here it is: https://ports.macports.org/port/swarp/ )

I use a local installation of astrometry.net to put the WCS on my images. Toddle over to https://astrometry.net/ for links to both the on-line plate solver (“use”) and how to drive the local installation (“download”). I already knew that a MacOS version of the local installation exists.

FWIW, I use “ANSVR” to put a WCS on images taken with Maxim DL under Windoze for the purpose of a rough and ready indication of the centre of teh field for synchronizing the mount’s idea of its pointing location to the telescope position. Never tried stacking with SWarp under that OS but often use Maxim DL’s stacker to see when enough subs have been taken to give a good enough SNR for photometry. AN and SWarp are used subsequently to do a proper job.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Dr Paul Leyland. Reason: Minor clarification
• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Dr Paul Leyland. Reason: Fix ltyop

[Dawson]

Thanks for all the comments.

I will download Astro surface and have a play with that but in the meantime I’ll stick with AS!4 and Wavesharp which both appear to process very quickly and seem to use all available processing power.

James

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