Out of memory error when integrating exposures on MAC

[camoura]

Hello,
Anybody could help me?
I'm trying PixInsight for MAC to process my astrophotos.
I take RAW pics with a Nikon D90.
I followed the tutorials on DSLR_RAW Workflow PI 1.6.1 - 1.6.9 and did all the steps until the last ( integration ).
All processes went well until I tried to integrate the light frames.
After some working, I received an "Out of Memory error" pop up message and the process aborted.

My MAC has a 3.06Ghz processor, 4Gb RAM, more then 300Gb of free space on disk.
I'm trying to stack 17 frames.

What went wrong?
Does my MAC has not enought RAM do do the job?

Thanks,
Best regards,

Carlos Moura
Cotia Brazil

[Philip de Louraille]

Curious.
In the Global Preferences, Directories & Network, do you have /tmp in the Swap storage directories?

[Alejandro Tombolini]

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=1324.msg6712#msg6712

I think that you have to decrese the buffer size.

Regards, Alejandro.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Carlos,

Welcome to PixInsight Forum. Along with the advice you've received, you could try the 64-bit version of PixInsight for Mac OS X. Although it is still experimental (due to small GUI glitches), it will make a much better use of your 4 GB of RAM.

[pfile]

i'm surprised that only 17 frames causes this problem... i guess the files from the D90 are enormous? anyway i usually use the x86-64 version of PI to integrate, as juan has suggested.

[Nocturnal]

I was wondering about that too. Have you confirmed the pixinsight image gets to the maximum size allowed by MacOS?

[Juan Conejero]

D90 images are 12.3 Mpx if I have the correct information. At 32-bits per sample this is 12.3*3*4 = roughly 150 MB per image. Anyway it is indeed strange with just 17 images, as ImageIntegration works incrementally. Do you have other applications running?

[Alejandro Tombolini]

I work whit 12 mpx images and 3 disk and 32 bit version and with more than 15 images i need to decrese the buffer!
Saludos,
Alejandro.

[Cleon_Wells]

Memory Allocation
Carlos, on the Mac open a terminal window and see how your memory is allocated (the path is Application/Utilities/Terminal) at the command line prompt, type the word  TOP and hit return. This will show you all the processes running on your computer and how the memory is used.  I have MacBookPro with 8 gig of ram, PI 64 bit and work with 32 bit fit files generated from the Canon T1i CR2 files that are 181 Meg. Here’s a screen shoot of PI running, PID # 261, if you start another terminal tab you can quit processes by typing Kill PID # (kill 261) this will force quit PI. I would be interested to see your memory allocation.
Cleon

[Sean]

I'm running PI 1.7 64bit on a MacBook Pro with 6GB of RAM, and am easily able to calibrate, stack, and integrate at least 50 frames, 8MB each. As Juan said, the 64bit Mac version has a few UI glitches here and there, but it is fast and solid. I frequently have PI processing running while I'm busy browsing, listening to iTunes, and writing with MS Word - no memory problems so far.

Sean

[georg.viehoever]

It appear the Mac has the same flaws in memory management as Windows when running 32 bit executables. This kind of problem has been reported before for 32 bit windows versions as well. Or -maybe- there is a common problem in 32 bit PI executables?!?

Georg
 

[Juan Conejero]

32-bit and 64-bit versions of PixInsight share exactly the same source code base on all platforms. There are some significant differences on Mac OS X, which are only related to the fact that the 32-bit version is a Carbon-based application while the 64-bit version is Cocoa-based, requiring a lot of hacking to keep Qt behaving reasonably. However, there are no differences at all in any image processing routines. On Windows, 32-bit versions of the PixInsight Core application and all modules are linked with the LargeAddressAware flag enabled.

32-bit versions of PixInsight are completely obsolete on FreeBSD, Linux and Windows. We release them exclusively for compatibility with legacy hardware and operating systems. With reasonably contemporary hardware, there is no reason to use a 32-bit operating system on these platforms, even with less than 4 GB of RAM. Doing so is just calling for all kinds of problems.

On Mac OS X we have some problems with the 64-bit Cocoa port of Qt. This is the *only* reason that forces us to release a Carbon-based, 32-bit version. So far we have not been able to overcome these issues completely (and Qt is not cooperating). As soon as we have a Tier-1 64-bit version for the Mac, the 32-bit version will not be released anymore.

[camoura]

Hi,

Thank you all for the help!
I installed the 64bit version and it worked fine with no errors.

Now I'm dealing with the image processing.
I followed Harry's videos and went until the DBE but I took a look at the results just adjusting the screen tranfer function and saw a lot of noise at the background.
I processed the same images using DSS and PS CS5, and the results were much better.

Did I make any mistakes on the stacking or DBE processes?

Thanks,

Carlos Moura

[Sean]

Hi Carlos,

Glad your integration is working now.

A couple of questions that may help:

1) Did you use the Automatic setting of the Screen Transfer Function to evaluate the images? If so, note that it can produce very different results for different images, as it is automatically stretching the data. So, if the Automatic stretch is greater than what you were used to with other software, you may see more noise with STF. Remember that STF only affects the image display - it does not change the underlying data.

2) What Pixel Rejection algorithm did you choose in Image Integration?

3) Can you list all of your your process steps? PixInsight has several very powerful noise reduction processes, so it would be helpful to know if you applied any of them, and if so at what stage in your processing.

In general, I find that my PixInsight processed images have less noise than with any other software that I've used.

Yours,

Sean

[camoura]

Hi Sean,

My equipment is:
Explore Scientific 102 APO triplet, HEQ5-Pro mount, Nikon D90, Orion Starshoot autoguider.
The frames were took with dark clear skies ( but M51 was low in the north were threre was little PL.

As I didn't have a intervalometer, I took the pics using a infrared remote, so the pic exposure times variated from 120 to 170 secs, at 800ASA NEF RAW.
I did not take flat frames.
Took just 5 dark frames at the site ( about 2 min each ).

For the image integration I strictly followed the DSL_RAW Workflow from the forum, and I used Linear Fit Clipping.

I think that I have to learn a lot to achieve good results!  :-)

Thanks,

Yours, Carlos