Star Analysis is suddenly taking a very long time

Tricky to say, are you using a different location for your data perhaps?

Fair question, short answer is no, same location and its an NVMe drive so not like read/write is an issue, I should say all the other steps are lightning quick

Interesting, I wouldn't have a good idea as to why that happens other than a hardware IO issue somehow. Very silly question, but does a restart of the system have any influence?

Nope no change and I have fast boot disabled (I have another application that hates fast boot being on) 

I am a bit stumped as to what is causing it, I can see the CPU spikes dropping massively in between and during each sub run during the star analysis phase where as before it would stay at 100% until it was done. It feels like I have bumped a setting somewhere in APP but the Star Analysis tab basically has one option the star detection is set to auto and 500 stars. I wonder if thats too many perhaps. Though I dont recall having changed this or had it at a different number previously..

Yes, me too, maybe I can check your files if you want to see if star analysis is fast on them or somehow cause an issue? I think that's very unlikely though. Do you have the possibility to test it on another fast drive?

aaaand now it's fine, well different data set, from Cygnus rather than Cassiopeia but the Star Analysis for this data took 2 minutes like normal. Must be something to do with the sould neb region! Oh well at least it's ok for now!

and the issue has returned! Can I get some test data to someone to see if they have the same issue as me? Its not going to take 3 or so hours to run 145 frames through Star Analysis!

Oh dear, that is very strange. Would you be able to try out the new beta 3 version of APP 2.0? Still don't think that will help, but just in case...

I am suffering from the same issue in one of my datasets... I have 196 lights that are now star analysed for over 24h now... It takes almost 5-6mins to analyse the sub... I will wait until it is done as the computer is running already, however I will check if new beta will solve that issue. I am using USB 3.2 portable hard drive and have not such an issue so far...

@sidiouss Hi! Even though you haven't had issues before, I suspect that the external HD is the culprit. APP is very I/O intensive and external HDs are notoriously slow in the respect. You may want to consider copying your data to the internal HD for processing or buying an SDD because those are MUCH faster.

@sidiouss & @wvreeven, and older APP version could enter a long loop trying to analyse the stars. The new 2.0.0-beta4 should not have this issue 😉 beta4 has improved star analysis which should not do this.

@mabula-admin Thanks, I will check that for sure. APP proceeded to the Normalization now which looks quite fast as usual, so I will check after the integration newer version of APP. (So far I am using beta 2.0)

@mabula-admin I'd like to confirm that the beta 2.0 was the cause of the slow star analysis. Beta 4.0 fixes this problem so far 🙂

I have tested beta 4.0 and it is faster than the previous releases. Unfortunately, however the star analysis should be more robust it actually cannot detect stars properly. It was able to detect stars in 96 from 180 subframes whereas downrevision to 1.083.4 could properly star analyse all the frames...

@mabula-admin I am having the same problem. This is an issue that surfaced perhaps a month ago or less. Never had the challenge before. I installed 2.0.0 Beta 6 with hopes that it would solve the problem. It definitely did not. What I realize is that when I do not do any calibration frames, star analysis zips through. The moment I enable the calibration frames, star analysis seems to hover around 5% for a few minutes and then trickles at best. Definitely frustrated at this point. APP has been my goto stacker for the past year. I would like to understand why this is happening. I am using an i9 processor, 16G on Windows 10 platform. Any updates to this thread would be appreciated.

Posted by: @sidiouss

I have tested beta 4.0 and it is faster than the previous releases. Unfortunately, however the star analysis should be more robust it actually cannot detect stars properly. It was able to detect stars in 96 from 180 subframes whereas downrevision to 1.083.4 could properly star analyse all the frames...

@sidiouss Can you upload your data so I can test it to see if we can again crank up the amount of stars detected?

Mabula

Posted by: @drexelg

@mabula-admin I am having the same problem. This is an issue that surfaced perhaps a month ago or less. Never had the challenge before. I installed 2.0.0 Beta 6 with hopes that it would solve the problem. It definitely did not. What I realize is that when I do not do any calibration frames, star analysis zips through. The moment I enable the calibration frames, star analysis seems to hover around 5% for a few minutes and then trickles at best. Definitely frustrated at this point. APP has been my goto stacker for the past year. I would like to understand why this is happening. I am using an i9 processor, 16G on Windows 10 platform. Any updates to this thread would be appreciated.

Hi @drexelg, can you upload the data on which this happens so I can test it as soon as possible?

Please upload it here:

https://upload.astropixelprocessor.com/

username: upload

password: upload

Please make a folder with your name and let me know once uploaded, I will prioritize this issue to be fixed a.s.a.p.

Mabula

Posted by: @mabula-admin

Posted by: @sidiouss

I have tested beta 4.0 and it is faster than the previous releases. Unfortunately, however the star analysis should be more robust it actually cannot detect stars properly. It was able to detect stars in 96 from 180 subframes whereas downrevision to 1.083.4 could properly star analyse all the frames...

@sidiouss Can you upload your data so I can test it to see if we can again crank up the amount of stars detected?

Mabula

Hello Mabula, sorry for the delayed reply. You can find the uploaded data at File Station under the sidiouss_StarAnalysisIssue_NGC7822 directory. All feedback will be appreciated 🙂

@sidiouss, excellent, thank you very much, I am now working on this particular issue so the data is very welcome !

Posted by: @mabula-admin

@sidiouss, excellent, thank you very much, I am now working on this particular issue so the data is very welcome !

 

Hi Mabula, any feedback regarding the files I have sent?

Hi @sidiouss,

I am working now on the reported issues with star analysis and have studied your data.

If we don't use calibration masters, all is fine with analysis and registration, fast, accurate and all frames are registerend with both 1.083 and 2.0.0-beta9.

If we start to use the calibration masters, things are very bad... so we need to have a look at your masters and how a calibrated light looks.

This is an uncalibrated light:

Now if we load the MasterDark and look at the calibrated light with the l-calibrated image viewer mode:

We immediately so a big data problem. Your MasterDark has a big problem:

I think you are having a light leak in your optical trainbecause this is not how a dark should look like...

If we try to star analysis your lights with this MasterDark loaded, things will not work because of a big data problem in this case. It will not work in either 1.083 nor 2.0.0.

Hope this solves your issue 😉

Mabula