SGP seems really slow when completing an image, downloading, integrating with an autofocus -
I get the downloading - but others have solved this at least not to bog down continuing imaging.
NINA is getting a lot of attention really for the slowness of SGP. Is there anything in the works to optimize SGP? 20% time lost each night is a big deal when time is so valuable for us in poor weather locations.
I love SGP - I’m too invested with the learning curve and time sunk to jump to NINA but it is really tempting reading the experience others are having:
I had the same impression so last night I did run a short test to compare SGP with NINA as indicated below and, to my surprise, the total exposure time was similar for both softwares.
For 10 Dark frames, 60 sec each frame:
(No, this test did not include focusing time nor platesolving or anything to do with guiding)
SGP total time: 10.41 sec
NINA total time: 10.16 sec
(Total time = capture and downloading from start to end of the sequence)
Camera: ASI071 (USB 3.0)
Gain 35
NUC I3, RAM 8Gb, SSD
Connected to the same USB 3.0 port
Bin: 1x1
Format: FIT
SGP “Enable image history” disabled
SGP “Use high speed download” disabled
Temperature: ambient
Conclusion: Confused. Has anything to do with the USB 3.0 camera output?
I guess I should run a test with an USB 2.0 camera.
The slow image download speed is something that has taken on more importance for me recently. I have discovered that many very small PNs are quite bright, very similar to our planets where to reveal any level of detail requires the same approach we use for planets: take 1000’s of images of very short duration, 1 second or less to greatly minimize seeing issues. This is not really practical with slow downloads.
My latest test to get some very specific numbers is a 1 second exposure takes a total of 8 seconds per image with SGP. This is with my ASI1600mm running on a USB 3.0 extremely fast connection directly to my pc, no hub. This has been typical for the years I have used SGP. No history, I don’t know of anything else that could speed this up any.
So, 1 second exposure, 7 seconds overhead. Overhead being download time and whatever else SGP needs to do to collect an image. I am using a very fast, 3.4ghz 8 core pc. So in 80 seconds I have 10 images on my SSD drive.
I just purchased SharpCap to try to get my polar alignment much better. SharpCap can download from the same camera full frame images of 50ms duration (essentially no exposure time) in less than 1 second. So in 80 seconds it has taken and stored to my SSD about 90 images. Comparing 1 second to 7 seconds is 7 times faster for download and processing.
So there is room for a lot of improvement in image capture speed. Is there some process involved here that would allow you to speed this up dramatically?
Unfortunately there isn’t much SGPro can do. We don’t actually download the image… we just ask the camera driver to do it. As such, this is a better request to your camera’s manufacturer. In the case of ASI, we have actually written a native driver and there may be something here, but its usefulness will be limited to only ASI.
Also note that a lot of cameras have a “high speed” download mode that increases the download speed at the cost of image quality. Not sure if that’s what SharpCap is doing, but SGPro turns this off for any frame requested by the sequencer.
In SGPro 4, we will look at dithering during download. We did this years ago, but some cameras reported they were done before the shutter closed and this was producing pill stars. To cover all cases, we made everything serial… There are ways we can accomplish this and still allow for some amount of brief error in reported camera state,
