15th Feb 2024: Astro Pixel Processor 2.0.0-beta29 released - macOS native File Chooser, macOS CMD-Q fixed, read-only Fits on network fixed and other bug fixes
7th December 2023: added payment option Alipay to purchase Astro Pixel Processor from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries where Alipay is used.
Am I missing a generic way to cancel the running program? There are some "cancel" options in the various areas, but I've also run into a situation where I couldn't find a way but killing APP to stop hours of program early:
I forgot the correct Dark, and I now get this question for every.single.frame where the dark is missing. "Cancel" just skips to the next frame, but I couldn't find a way to stop the program and add the missing Dark, so I killed it from the Task Manager ..... and started over from scratch.
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
I second what Chris says !!! I am trying to stop a 75 panel full milky way integration that is going to take 12 hours because of another major annoyance that happens far too often (where a single random frame decides to deselect itself and sometimes I do not realise until after the integration is finished). If I crash out of it I have to load all the panes again, set all the parameters and reinitiate the registration and integration. @Mabula-Admin & @Vincent-Moderator I think this needs some urgent attention.
Am I missing a generic way to cancel the running program? There are some "cancel" options in the various areas, but I've also run into a situation where I couldn't find a way but killing APP to stop hours of program early:
I forgot the correct Dark, and I now get this question for every.single.frame where the dark is missing. "Cancel" just skips to the next frame, but I couldn't find a way to stop the program and add the missing Dark, so I killed it from the Task Manager ..... and started over from scratch.
Did the checkbox at the moment not solve it? It clearly indicates "apply to all frames..." which should then have this warning popup only once. And this warning only pops up if the supplied calibration data is not matching nor logical for the supplied lights so the warning is valid and important I think.
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it. However when a regression is being calculated, like the mosiac calculation or a big Local Normalization Correction (LNC) task (with many frames) it can take a while for it to be cancelled, i realize that. We do want to revamp the whole registration module with better mosaic capabilities soon and we also are in the process op updating LNC as well. I have added to these tasks that even while performing a regression iteration the cancel button should be able to kill the process immediatley.
I will also add a pause button next the cancel button 😉
I second what Chris says !!! I am trying to stop a 75 panel full milky way integration that is going to take 12 hours because of another major annoyance that happens far too often (where a single random frame decides to deselect itself and sometimes I do not realise until after the integration is finished). If I crash out of it I have to load all the panes again, set all the parameters and reinitiate the registration and integration. @Mabula-Admin & @Vincent-Moderator I think this needs some urgent attention.
What version are you using? I think the current APP version 2.0.0-beta14 will not deselect a frame or change the reference automatically, will it? How are you processing the 75 panel mosaic? Loading all subs per panel or do you create the mosaic panels first? We are working on saving and remembering the setting and your project between restarts, that is the main feature of 2.0 stable that is coming.
@mabula-admin Agreed, the warning is important. I think is was beta12 at the time, but the checkbox didn’t speed this up if I recall - still brought up every frame …
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it. However when a regression is being calculated, like the mosiac calculation or a big Local Normalization Correction (LNC) task (with many frames) it can take a while for it to be cancelled, i realize that. We do want to revamp the whole registration module with better mosaic capabilities soon and we also are in the process op updating LNC as well. I have added to these tasks that even while performing a regression iteration the cancel button should be able to kill the process immediatley.
I will also add a pause button next the cancel button 😉
Mabula
Hi Mabula
Whilst I can see the cancel 6) INTEGRATE button now it was not visible to me yesterday. I suspect this may be another large screen resolution type problem. I know if I move the APP screen between my medium size and super large 4K monitor the screen takes a while to adjust itself.
@mabula-admin I am using 2.0.0 beta 14. I integrate all 75 panels first and now I am trying to create the calibrated mercator projective mosaic of the entire Milky Way (as much as I can see in a year from Australia) from those 75 panels. Regularly a single pane becomes unticked and therefore not included in the registration or integration run. It may be an accidental mouse or key click that is deselecting the panel but it happens far too often and I think I am quite careful with my mouse / keyboard actions. It seems to me the software is deselecting the panel for some strange reason. Maybe I should try a different wireless keyboard / mouse in case random clicks or button pushes are happening.
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it. However when a regression is being calculated, like the mosiac calculation or a big Local Normalization Correction (LNC) task (with many frames) it can take a while for it to be cancelled, i realize that. We do want to revamp the whole registration module with better mosaic capabilities soon and we also are in the process op updating LNC as well. I have added to these tasks that even while performing a regression iteration the cancel button should be able to kill the process immediatley.
I will also add a pause button next the cancel button 😉
Mabula
@mabula-adminThanks Mabula. Regarding your "As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it." There is no cancel button that I can see in my console pane. Am I missing something? Screen shot attached of my console while a star align process was underway, and I don't see a button there labelled "cancel"? If you meant the red close button at top right, that does nothing at all when I click it during a running process.
I am on the i think latest V 2.0.0 beta 14, on a Windows 64 bit HP laptop.
@mabula-admin Agreed, the warning is important. I think is was beta12 at the time, but the checkbox didn’t speed this up if I recall - still brought up every frame …
Okay, that is very weird, can you you duplicate the issue? If so, please share the data with us. It most likely indicated an incompatibility of your masters with the lights to be calibrated, but I can not exclude that you trigger a bug somehow of course.
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it. However when a regression is being calculated, like the mosiac calculation or a big Local Normalization Correction (LNC) task (with many frames) it can take a while for it to be cancelled, i realize that. We do want to revamp the whole registration module with better mosaic capabilities soon and we also are in the process op updating LNC as well. I have added to these tasks that even while performing a regression iteration the cancel button should be able to kill the process immediatley.
I will also add a pause button next the cancel button 😉
Mabula
Hi Mabula
Whilst I can see the cancel 6) INTEGRATE button now it was not visible to me yesterday. I suspect this may be another large screen resolution type problem. I know if I move the APP screen between my medium size and super large 4K monitor the screen takes a while to adjust itself.
Okay, the next soon to be released version 2.0.0-beta15 will have this improved 😉 The process console with the cancel button will be filling the entire area of the image viewer so it should always show clearly then 😉
@mabula-admin I am using 2.0.0 beta 14. I integrate all 75 panels first and now I am trying to create the calibrated mercator projective mosaic of the entire Milky Way (as much as I can see in a year from Australia) from those 75 panels. Regularly a single pane becomes unticked and therefore not included in the registration or integration run. It may be an accidental mouse or key click that is deselecting the panel but it happens far too often and I think I am quite careful with my mouse / keyboard actions. It seems to me the software is deselecting the panel for some strange reason. Maybe I should try a different wireless keyboard / mouse in case random clicks or button pushes are happening.
In my experience and tt my own knowledge, APP never deselects a frame by itself. To me it sounds likely that your mouse or keyboard then is misbehaving somehow, especially wireless keyboards can be a problem in this regard since I have experienced this myself frequently over the years. A wireless keyboard was responsible for repeated keyboard clicks while I was not doing anything on the keyboard... and it was so problematic that my computers's latency become very bad when the computer was on for many hours.
If you can try another keyboard and or mouse, that would be helpful. And please let us know if the problem then is gone. If it is not, then please try to find a way that produces the problem each time, so we can test this and solve this a.s.a.p..
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it. However when a regression is being calculated, like the mosiac calculation or a big Local Normalization Correction (LNC) task (with many frames) it can take a while for it to be cancelled, i realize that. We do want to revamp the whole registration module with better mosaic capabilities soon and we also are in the process op updating LNC as well. I have added to these tasks that even while performing a regression iteration the cancel button should be able to kill the process immediatley.
I will also add a pause button next the cancel button 😉
Mabula
@mabula-adminThanks Mabula. Regarding your "As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it." There is no cancel button that I can see in my console pane. Am I missing something? Screen shot attached of my console while a star align process was underway, and I don't see a button there labelled "cancel"? If you meant the red close button at top right, that does nothing at all when I click it during a running process.
I am on the i think latest V 2.0.0 beta 14, on a Windows 64 bit HP laptop.
The screenshot that you show if not the process console but rather the general console window. Whenever a process from 2) Calibrate to 6) Integrate starts a separate process console is shown in the metadata window to the left of the image viewer. That process console always has a clear cancel button. In the next release we have improved it's visibility as well. The image viewer is then gone and the processs console is filling up the entire area of the image viewer so then you can not miss it 😉 I realise that currently it can be difficult to see if you have closed the metadata window yourself.
I will try to release this improvement today or tomorrow 😉
Yes, to me its a very big and quite urgent omission at the moment to not have both a pause/resume and a cancel button in the console to stop or pause whatever process is running at the time. With regard to a cancel button, I've recently twice had to kill APP from task manager to cancel two large mosaic processing runs, with many subexposures, and it was VERY frustrating to have to reload all the subs again, from the multiple mosaic capture folders, and then have to set the runs up again completely, and I regularly need to do other things on my computer while APP is in mid-process that need me to pause the APP processing to have enough speed in the machine for the other thing I need to do, and again I've found it very frustrating that there is also no pause/resume button in the console.
APP is brilliant and I'm very thankful for it, but while it's great to have all the excellent new processing features we get in each new version/sub-version, I find myself regularly very frustrated by APP in terms of basic usability features, and I think it's well and truly time for a handful of those in a new version soon, such as cancel and pause processing buttons (in the console perhaps?), the ability to save and reload a whole project (a bigger change to implement no doubt which I can see might take a while) or in the meantime at least just the ability to save all settings, not just some. if we could even just have a cancel and a pause/resume button in an update very soon that would be a big improvement to usability for large datasets with long runs.
As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it. However when a regression is being calculated, like the mosiac calculation or a big Local Normalization Correction (LNC) task (with many frames) it can take a while for it to be cancelled, i realize that. We do want to revamp the whole registration module with better mosaic capabilities soon and we also are in the process op updating LNC as well. I have added to these tasks that even while performing a regression iteration the cancel button should be able to kill the process immediatley.
I will also add a pause button next the cancel button 😉
Mabula
@mabula-adminThanks Mabula. Regarding your "As you know, the cancel button is present during all steps from 2) to 6) in the process console window. It should kill the process when you kill it." There is no cancel button that I can see in my console pane. Am I missing something? Screen shot attached of my console while a star align process was underway, and I don't see a button there labelled "cancel"? If you meant the red close button at top right, that does nothing at all when I click it during a running process.
I am on the i think latest V 2.0.0 beta 14, on a Windows 64 bit HP laptop.
The screenshot that you show if not the process console but rather the general console window. Whenever a process from 2) Calibrate to 6) Integrate starts a separate process console is shown in the metadata window to the left of the image viewer. That process console always has a clear cancel button. In the next release we have improved it's visibility as well. The image viewer is then gone and the processs console is filling up the entire area of the image viewer so then you can not miss it 😉 I realise that currently it can be difficult to see if you have closed the metadata window yourself.
-- attachment is not available -- -- attachment is not available --
I will try to release this improvement today or tomorrow 😉
Mabula
Thanks so much @mabula-admin. I don't remember ever even seeing that ,in my case "hidden", process console, probably because I must have maximised the image viewer screen horizontally very early on in my usage of APP, which hid that other console panel. From other comments about a lack of a cancel button here in the forum, I suspect I'm not the only one who doesn't even know that process console exists and has always had a cancel button. Thanks for making that clear, and for the usability improvements you are also going to add. A pause button there beside the cancel button would be great to have, as even lowering the number of cores in use by APP to the minimum doesn't always free up the machine enough to be able to do another task in a useable way, but a pause of the processing does allow that. At the moment I pause APP externally when I need to do something else by using the process suspend option in Microsoft's Sysinternals utility, but that is a clumsy way of doing it and a pause button inside APP would be very useful to have for long processing of large numbers of subexposures. I and I'm sure others often have a lot of short exposures to stack, even from just one night, when I sometimes image at F/2 with an SCT with a Hyperstar lens, which works best with short exposures of only 30 to 60 secs even on faint objects. A single overnight 7 or 8 hour session of 60 sec exposures is 420 to 480 exposures, and with the large sensors and smallish pixels of modern cameras, that can be a LOT of data and quite long stacking .
@mabula-admin HI. I can confirm this problem is not related to the keyboard and mouse. I have replaced both ( a hardwired keyboard and and expensive wireless mouse) and still intermittently a single random frame will become deselected. It did it just now once again with only 11 Light frames loaded. (in this case it was the top frame). Thanks, Kelvin
Hi @kelvin-hennessy, could be caused by a space bar click? If a frame has a selection in the frame list, the space bar toggles select/deselect.
Mabula
The space bar was what I thought would be the most obvious reason. That is why I chose to use my 30 year old NEC keyboard I have used continuously on my various business computers since new. It needs a solid touch and makes a loud click when pushed.
Hi @kelvin-hennessy, could be caused by a space bar click? If a frame has a selection in the frame list, the space bar toggles select/deselect.
Mabula
The space bar was what I thought would be the most obvious reason. That is why I chose to use my 30 year old NEC keyboard I have used continuously on my various business computers since new. It needs a solid touch and makes a loud click when pushed.
Okay, but how often is this happening in your case? How many files do you load into APP for a typical processing session?
I have never experienced this issue and I use APP all the time, so it is not quite clear to me what is happening here. Any additional info is appreciated 😉
@mabula-admin 9 months later and I can still report that on about 30% of my integrations one panel gets deselected. Its not really a big deal as lately I have been integrating at least 100 lights. But I can assure you that it is not an accidental key push that's doing it. Currently on beta 29
I still have not seen this issue myself on any dataset, so please describe once more what you are doing and what I need to do to produce this problem. How do you conclude for instance that 1 panel gets deselected? Where do you see that a panel is deselected?
@mabula-admin its pretty obvious that one hasn't been selected as it shows up as a spike down to zero in one of the graphs (I think the analyse stars result ??). I then go to the frame list and sure enough a random frame is deselected. Next time it happens I'll take a screen capture.
@mabula-admin I have just worked it out - its when I am typing the file name - every time I press the space key in the name it is toggling the selection in the background 🤣
The reason the file is selected (sometimes) is that I occasionally like to view the calibrated image to get an idea of what it looks like before I perform the integration.
@mabula-admin this just happened to me again on a mosaic, whereby it has omitted a frame and I had to start over again !! It's incredibly frustrating. This plagued me when I was doing my big 90 pane Milky Way mosaic this time last year and now I am doing a 55 pane mosaic and I have the same problem. I will try and train myself not to use spaces in the file name (not easy having used the software several years) but there must be a large number of people this is affecting and maybe they arent realising it (or dont care to complain). Have you been able to replicate the problem and if so is it something easily fixed ? Thanks, Kelvin
@mabula-admin have you seen my above comments ? Do you have any response. This is getting to be really annoying !!! I'm trying to do another large mosaic 11x5 panes and I'm constantly getting plagued by this problem just because I'm typing spaces in the filename having previously selected a file for viewing. This is not acceptable !! Do I need to submit a formal change request to get this fixed ? I'm now getting to the assembly stage where the mosaic assembly takes many hours and I don't always check to see that all the mosaic panels are selected.
