Sequence Planner questions.

[admin]

Hi Roger,

the trick is to take the dithering out of the sequence and to just set it up in the live stacking user interface (run live stacking manually to do this). Those settings should be used every time live stacking is activated from then on, including via the sequencer. Essentially the sequencer doesn't need to worry about the dithering in this case because live stacking already has code to handle all that.

cheers,

Robin

[rockenrock]

Hi Robin,
I read your post several times and read instruction manual- User Interface- Guiding Tab. In this tab I can only set dithering by time. I know this will dither because it happened during (messed up) my live stack (first time I used it) because I am not going to debayer and align during live stacking.

So are you saying to use something like this?...

• Edit my sequence to run (example) 20 sets of 20x30s = 600s live stacks.
  Use no dither instruction via editor.
  In the live stacking guiding tab set the dithering interval to 600s (plus some dithering/settling time).
  Edit the sequence to pause live stacking after each live stack is saved to make the total time between saved live stacks to be equal to the dithering interval.
  Figure out how to start the timing of dithering and running the sequence.

I would like to understand something better, and please don't get me wrong... SharpCap is an amazing program that can work over a huge range of equipment and has many processing and control capabilities.
What can the dithering commands actually do in an edited sequence? I see these
-- Guiding dither every < > frames
-- Dither every <Dithering Interval> seconds
-- Request a single dither from Guiding Application

Do they work for some mount/PHD2 setups, so you keep them there? Does my system have some kind of bug preventing them from working?

Thanks,
Roger

[admin]

Hi Roger,

if you are not seeing the option to dither by a number of frames then you may have quite an old version of SharpCap 4 and need to update - you should see this (the documentation is out of date in this area).

Capture.JPG (36.23 KiB) Viewed 213 times

Obviously you should not dither during live stacking if you are not aligning, but then you should not really use live stacking without aligning/debayering as it will give you worse results than just capturing the individual frames and processing later.

If you are set on doing things without aligning then you will have to go back to having dither steps in the sequence via the 'request a single dither' step, with this step running after you get to the end of a live stacking chunk.

It's kind of complicated, but that is at least partly because you are using the non-align stacking, which means you are fighting against the way that SharpCap has been designed to work, rather than working with it.

cheers,

Robin

[rockenrock]

Hi Robin,
Thanks for your clear reply.
I am at ver4.0.8973.0 5/23/2022. 'Check for updates' says I am up to date.
But I see ver4.0.9132.0 on your downloads page. I will update.

Yes, I now realize am approaching the software differently than it was designed. I did not know that until very recently. It is just that I learned Pixinsight for processing first, and have a lot of confidence in it's methodology, and also with the NSG script of John Murphy. I am not ready to just give it up (yet!). I am open to come full circle, but I am close to going the non-align method going for a comparison to my old 1x600 sec sub (with noisy and overexposed results).

My premise for non-align is that if I stack subs for a total of 600sec, then I will get the same tracking as I have had with one 600sec sub. My guiding has been quite reasonable compared to others on the PHD2 FB group. I may be wrong in all this, but I want to try.

Tonight I will check to see if my screen shows the Dither every XXX frames like you show.
And I will try the 'request a single dither'.

I know I have my work to do, and I enjoy doing it. Your sequence planner has really opened my eyes regarding at how you have made programming so simple, adjustable, and verifiable for each step. Thank you.

Roger

[rockenrock]

Hi Robin,
Everything worked last night.... My little script and dithering, and everything! Thanks for your help.
I have a 20x30s livestack image followed by a 1x600s file right after the first one. I started to compare, but not so simple to do.
Now I will start learning more of the many other things SharpCap can do.
Roger

[admin]

Hi Roger,

good to hear that it's working now

cheers,

Robin