After running for a few hours, SC gets very sluggish. It is almost impossible to adjust the histogram without the program seizing up. At first, I thought it was a RAM issue. But after 5 hours of stacking multiple target sets, it still only uses 15% CPU, and about 1500mb (out of 16gb) RAM!
Restarting live stacking or the camera does nothing. The only way to cure it, is to restart SC completely.. Then everything is fine again.
Is it a bug?
Im using Win10, an SSD and SC 4.1.11757.0.
Thanks!
- Chris
SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
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Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Hi Chris,
nothing much obvious comes to mind, but anything that builds up continuously over time could be a candidate. Can you share a log from a session that has gone slow so that I can see if anything is recorded that might be a give-away of what is slow. It also gives me some clearer picture of what I need to be testing here if I want to reproduce the issue (resolution of camera, frame rates, etc).
cheers,
Robin
nothing much obvious comes to mind, but anything that builds up continuously over time could be a candidate. Can you share a log from a session that has gone slow so that I can see if anything is recorded that might be a give-away of what is slow. It also gives me some clearer picture of what I need to be testing here if I want to reproduce the issue (resolution of camera, frame rates, etc).
cheers,
Robin
Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Strange. Here are the logs from the last session. I had to zip it, as the 1st log file was too big 
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Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Hi Chris,
no 'smoking guns' in the logs - I will have to leave the program running on live stack for a few hours to see if I observe the same slowdown and then take things from there. I will try similar settings (10s frames, ~8 megapixel images, etc)
cheers,
Robin
no 'smoking guns' in the logs - I will have to leave the program running on live stack for a few hours to see if I observe the same slowdown and then take things from there. I will try similar settings (10s frames, ~8 megapixel images, etc)
cheers,
Robin
Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Excellent! Cheers Robin
- Chris
- Chris
Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Just to comment that it can't be a general problem because I am also using win10 and the latest SC4.1 and routinely capture via live stacking for several hours of an evening but am not seeing any slow down?
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Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Hi,
well, interesting progress to report...
I left SharpCap live stacking from the test camera at 1 frame per second for an hour or so last night and I did indeed find a slowdown that made things like adjusting the histogram stretch much less responsive. After a good deal of digging, I worked out that it was coming from an odd interaction in the user interface components that SharpCap uses between having been to at least one of the SharpCap menus and showing a box with a large amount of text in that was having new text added.... I even found a workaround for the problem... Unfortunately the issue only shows up if you have displayed the SharpCap log window, and from what I can see in Chris's logs, he hadn't done that
I will have another go later using a real ZWO camera this time to see if that makes any difference.
cheers,
Robin
well, interesting progress to report...
I left SharpCap live stacking from the test camera at 1 frame per second for an hour or so last night and I did indeed find a slowdown that made things like adjusting the histogram stretch much less responsive. After a good deal of digging, I worked out that it was coming from an odd interaction in the user interface components that SharpCap uses between having been to at least one of the SharpCap menus and showing a box with a large amount of text in that was having new text added.... I even found a workaround for the problem... Unfortunately the issue only shows up if you have displayed the SharpCap log window, and from what I can see in Chris's logs, he hadn't done that
I will have another go later using a real ZWO camera this time to see if that makes any difference.
cheers,
Robin
Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Robin,
No, I don't think I entered the log. I might have been in the Smart Histogram menu or used FWHM measurements, but I can't remember if I did it during that session.
No, I don't think I entered the log. I might have been in the Smart Histogram menu or used FWHM measurements, but I can't remember if I did it during that session.
Strange. SC gets sluggish, but I can live with that as I usually run the same settings all the time. What forces me to restart SC, is the none-responsive/jerky histogram sliders. It feels very similar to running out of memory. How many frames do you stack? I usually end up between 300-500 images per target.
Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Hi Chris, Robin
Just checked and on 12/02 for example it was 312 frames captured in total but that was split between 3 objects. Quite a few frames --maybe as many as 200 were rejected over this time --either brightness or FWHM filters.
I always like to do EEA while capturing so I was using the live stack controls --using the auto button to reset the colour balance occasionally --zooming in and out and shifting the sliders on the histogram. No problems obvious over the 3 or 4h period
Tim
Just checked and on 12/02 for example it was 312 frames captured in total but that was split between 3 objects. Quite a few frames --maybe as many as 200 were rejected over this time --either brightness or FWHM filters.
I always like to do EEA while capturing so I was using the live stack controls --using the auto button to reset the colour balance occasionally --zooming in and out and shifting the sliders on the histogram. No problems obvious over the 3 or 4h period
Tim
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Re: SC gets slower and slower when live stacking
Hi,
I got to over 3000 frames in my testing yesterday without noticing a slowdown except for the log window related one. There is a separate log in the live stacking area, but that is limited to 1000 lines of text, which shouldn't be a problem.
Keep an eye on the timings in the 'Status' tab of live stacking, particularly the 'Render time' - that's how long it takes SharpCap to convert the stacked data into an image ready to display, so it limits how responsive the slider will be (ie a render time of 500ms means that the display can only update 2x per second in response to slider movements). It would be interesting to know if that is high (or gets higher while stacking).
cheers,
Robin
I got to over 3000 frames in my testing yesterday without noticing a slowdown except for the log window related one. There is a separate log in the live stacking area, but that is limited to 1000 lines of text, which shouldn't be a problem.
Keep an eye on the timings in the 'Status' tab of live stacking, particularly the 'Render time' - that's how long it takes SharpCap to convert the stacked data into an image ready to display, so it limits how responsive the slider will be (ie a render time of 500ms means that the display can only update 2x per second in response to slider movements). It would be interesting to know if that is high (or gets higher while stacking).
cheers,
Robin