Video Tutorials posted

[Stef]

Hi All,

I'm a member of the RASC (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada), and together with other imagers across Canada have a small group dedicated to astrophotography.

I've been trying to get the other members to try to adopt PixInsight into their processing arsenal for the better part of a year but have met with resistance with complaints of an un-orthodox user interface. To that end I decided to create some video tutorials to illustrate various features of the program. You can download and view them from these links. Total running time is about 24 mins and each segment is about 4 megs. It requires Windows Media Player v7.1 or later to view:

Part1
http://www.savefile.com/files/4158170

Part 2
http://www.savefile.com/files/5007855

Part 3
http://www.savefile.com/files/8214071

Part 4
http://www.savefile.com/files/6915257

It's an introduction to the user interface and workflow methodology in PixInsight. I based it on the Basic Histograms and Curves Adjustments tutorial by Vicent Peris.  Although it does not follow the tutorial exactly, I use the JPEG image in the tutorial to illustrate various facets of the program. Hopefully there aren't too many inaccuracies in there.

Hope you enjoy and find it useful.

Cheers,
Stef Cancelli

http://www.astrogarage.com

[davenash]

Hi Stef, that's really great.  I learned something about the process icons!

I look forward to the next installment  :wink:

By the way, I know what you mean about people complaining about user interfaces.  Besides PixInsight I tend to use The Gimp.  I think people think they don't like it because it's not Photoshop.  The same probably applies here.

Dave

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Stef,

I just finished watching the four videos, and wow! You did a very good work. Thank you so much for an excellent training material.

I can't wait to see the next issues. Of course I am at your disposal if you need additional information or any kind of help.

I especially like how you used process icons, previews, and processing histories. These objects play fundamental roles in PixInsight, so it is very important to emphasize their usage in tutorials, demos and training videos. In the next version of the application, process icons and previews will be much more powerful objects. We like the icon concept as a flexible and versatile way to encapsulate data and functionality in our user interface, so expect to see icons everywhere in PixInsight, including image icons, process icons and trashcans  

Thank you very much for your support and fine work.

Juan

[Stef]

Juan and Dave,

Thanks very much. I'm glad you enjoyed the videos.

I'm happy to report that at least among my fellow RASC members,  some are now taking a new closer look at PixInsight and realizing its immense power.

We had a local RASC chapter meeting last night and one of our most prominent and talented imagers did a presentation on the work that he has been doing in the last year or so. Although he had his presentation completed, since I posted the videos a few days ago, he went back and tweaked a couple of his images using PixInsight's wavelets after viewing my tutorial and updated his presentation.

Hopefully more will come around and not be intimidated by this great software.

Cheers,
Stef Cancelli

[Carlos Milovic]

Hi Stef!

Congratulations for your videos! They are absolutly great. I really enjoyed them. I hope to see more in the future :-)

BTW, a few suggestions for those videos:
- Make use of more previews. They are very usefull with large files.
- Show how to create some basic masks and how to use them.
- Make use of the different "display channels" modes.
- Explore a little the different readout options.

Another thing that I like in PI is the independency of process objects with images. They can be opened, many of them, changed, without a single image opened. Also, a process do not take ownership of a image, so we still have full capability of opening other processes, navigate through images/previews, etc. This object oriented interfase needs to be a bit further emphatized. At last, related with this, remember the users that the process instances (the windows) have their own life; if you close them, and open it again, all the parameters will be remembered.
Continuing the topic of process icons, when you double click them you call a instance of the process they encapsulate. The window is not the process icon. It means, changing the parameters in the window doesn't change any parameters at all in the icon. You have to replace the icon with the new contents of the image to update this information.

Well, having said that I'll repeat my congratulations to you for these videos. They are an excelent way to show the new users how PI works. You managed to show the basic in a simple and very undestandable way. I really liked that.

[Jack Harvey]

The videos are a great idea.  Have been using Pixi for a few months but still learned some neat tricks.  Hopefully more to come especially for wavelets and noise reduction schemes.  Jack Harvey

[vicent_peris]

Hi Jef!

What a great job! Thanks you very much for these works.

I'm glad you've found my simple tutorial so usefull!  


What I'm viewing is that, with this rather complex software, each user has his own tricks, so those videos are usefull not only for new users, but also for advanced users too.


Thanks you another time for your dedication. Keep up your great work.
Sincelery,
Vicent.

[Stef]

Thanks guys - I'm glad you are enjoying and finding the videos useful.

In my experience in other fields, instructional videos are a great way to jump start your understanding an application.  As a programmer/analyst I am always faced with new technologies and development environments - sometimes its a daunting task to keep yourself updated and current with what is happening. I've been a long time consumer of the Keystone instructional video series on everything from SQL server to .NET to Visual Studio....

Reference material is great for reference, but terrible to use when you are just trying to learn the basic fundamentals. User guides are much better but are often laborious and time consuming. Instructional videos on the other hand are great vehicle to an accelerated understanding and useage of a product, but are not and should not be used to explain every gritty little detail.  That's where the reference documentation shows its value.

I edited a bunch of stuff out of the videos because I found I had started to get sidelined into too many details. I realized that the audience would be overloaded with small details that would distract from the original intention - which is an introduction.

I'll try to introduce little tidbits and tips in upcoming videos. What I don't know about PixInsight LE is more than what I do know. It is full of advanced features and each function has a myriad of options and parameters that can be used in an infinite number of ways. I would encourage other users to follow suit if they feel so inclined. Even something as rudimentary as levels and curves can have many different perspectives from each individual user.  Extend that into wavelets and noise reduction strategies, and the possiblities baloon proportionally.

Let's share our knowledge. We all benefit!

Cheers,
Stef

[Anonymous]

Carlos, Juan: Muy buenos los videos.

Victor