freeze/ crash

[OttoMann]

A friend recommended Star Tools..
I'm getting good data but my processing is lacking.. been using GIMP and need to upgrade..
So I d/l the demo if Star Tools .. StarTools 1.3.3.224 (stable) for Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, MacOSX, Linux 32-bit and Linux 64-bit
I couldn't launch it without turning off Avast anti virus..
When I did launch it it would freeze / lock up my laptop a few steps in.. the little processing wheel would freeze . Ctrl alt del wouldn't work.
Had to manually shut down.. happened twice so.. I know I'm at the lower limits of system requirements..

Win 7x64 , Intel Core 2 Duo 2.20 Ghz, 4 Gb RAM

Anything I can do to remedy? Or is my laptop just too old?

Thanks

[admin]

A friend recommended Star Tools..
I'm getting good data but my processing is lacking.. been using GIMP and need to upgrade..
So I d/l the demo if Star Tools .. StarTools 1.3.3.224 (stable) for Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, MacOSX, Linux 32-bit and Linux 64-bit
I couldn't launch it without turning off Avast anti virus..
When I did launch it it would freeze / lock up my laptop a few steps in.. the little processing wheel would freeze . Ctrl alt del wouldn't work.
Had to manually shut down.. happened twice so.. I know I'm at the lower limits of system requirements..

Win 7x64 , Intel Core 2 Duo 2.20 Ghz, 4 Gb RAM

Anything I can do to remedy? Or is my laptop just too old?

Thanks

Hi,

Thanks for letting us know!
System freezes are something we haven't experienced in a long time. The fact that Alt+Ctrl+Del doesn't work is also troubling - no application should be able to cause this and the OS should always be available. Was there any disk activity at all? The processing wheel should not freeze and should show signs of life even during heavy disk activity.
StarTools is extremely taxing on the CPU and memory (similar to a burn-in test), and any weaknesses in those components will show up very quickly. Was your CPU running hot?
Could you tell me the size of the image you were processing (in pixel dimensions?). Does it help if you 'Bin' the image before processing? (the latter will drastically reduce CPU and memory requirements).

Your system specs are at the low-end, but should still yield satisfactory results (especially when the image dimensions are moderate).
Again thank you for letting us know! I'd greatly apperciate any further information you could give us about your system.

[OttoMann]

Hi..
I'll do my best to recreate what happened..
Like I said I could not launch Star Tools unless I turned off my Avast anti virus .. It said it couldn't indetify it.. said it wasn't malware but not from a "trusted" host or something.. not a big deal.. I just turned it off..

When i did launch ST I only had your online pdf tutorial running at the same time.. figured I'd follow the steps.
I opened my 16 bit tiff.. and the first time I got 3 steps in I believe when ST gave me a screen about noise reduction.. I went out of order .. messed up.. anyhoo it was something like continue and denoise or continue and leave noise reduction alone.. I clicked go ahead and do a final denoise.. and after maybe 20 sec the progress wheel froze.. I was frozen.. ctrl alt del did nothing.. esc.. nothing.. I was stuck.. gave it like 10 min to see what would happen and still frozen so I did a hard shutdown..
I realize I messed up the first try and did some things out of order..

2nd try I followed the intro pdf to the t and was on the third step or so.. I cropped ok.. think it was the next step again the progress wheel froze.. and the progress bar was on 1 of 6 and froze..

I'm sure I'm doing a piss poor job of explaining..
I can try and recreate it tomorrow..
I couldn't see my task manager so have no clue what my CPU usage was.. all functions were disabled..
couldn't get out of or shut down ST.
my harddrive light on my laptop was solid light .. no flashing . so it was busy .. but again the little spinning icon your software uses froze..
I know I'm at the low end of system requirements.. I use a Canon T4i to image with so my images are 5184x3186
I stack in DSS and can load the tiff fine.. I cropped the stack distortions from the edges both times before the freeze..
I didn't try and bin the image.. was hoping to get the most out of it before "dumbing down"
Anyway.. I may just be sol with this laptop

[admin]

Hi..
I'll do my best to recreate what happened..
Like I said I could not launch Star Tools unless I turned off my Avast anti virus .. It said it couldn't indetify it.. said it wasn't malware but not from a "trusted" host or something.. not a big deal.. I just turned it off..

Thanks for this!
Not sure why your AV software would be complaining, but in the past some AV software lazily confused StarTools with a keylogger (which records your keystrokes for nefarious purposes) also called StarTools.

When i did launch ST I only had your online pdf tutorial running at the same time.. figured I'd follow the steps.
I opened my 16 bit tiff.. and the first time I got 3 steps in I believe when ST gave me a screen about noise reduction.. I went out of order .. messed up.. anyhoo it was something like continue and denoise or continue and leave noise reduction alone.. I clicked go ahead and do a final denoise.. and after maybe 20 sec the progress wheel froze.. I was frozen.. ctrl alt del did nothing.. esc.. nothing.. I was stuck.. gave it like 10 min to see what would happen and still frozen so I did a hard shutdown..
I realize I messed up the first try and did some things out of order..

The PDF tutorials are really quite old and do not reflect the current version of StarTools (it should say 'obsolete' next to the download). Try following the suggested workflow of the demo/welcome popup and have a look on the forums here for more up to date tutorials, or have a look at the videos.

2nd try I followed the intro pdf to the t and was on the third step or so.. I cropped ok.. think it was the next step again the progress wheel froze.. and the progress bar was on 1 of 6 and froze..
I'm sure I'm doing a piss poor job of explaining..

Not at all!

I can try and recreate it tomorrow..
I couldn't see my task manager so have no clue what my CPU usage was.. all functions were disabled..
couldn't get out of or shut down ST.

my harddrive light on my laptop was solid light .. no flashing . so it was busy .. but again the little spinning icon your software uses froze..
I know I'm at the low end of system requirements.. I use a Canon T4i to image with so my images are 5184x3186
I stack in DSS and can load the tiff fine.. I cropped the stack distortions from the edges both times before the freeze..
I didn't try and bin the image.. was hoping to get the most out of it before "dumbing down"
Anyway.. I may just be sol with this laptop

Try a binned version of your data - it may be that your machine is (literally) swapping its brains out trying to keep up with the memory demands. Contrary to what a lot of people think, processing at native DSLR resolution is often not advisable or necessary for two reasons which may or may not apply;

1. Due to the bayer filter in your camera, only 1 out 4 red and blue pixels and 2 out of 4 green pixels are real data for each frame you record. The rest is made up by the debayering algorithm. Therefore, reducing resolution to a quarter of the native resolution will get you 'real' 1:1 data for blue and red, with 2:1 data for green (halving noise for green).
2. Chances are that if you use your DSLR through any sort of scope, a combination of seeing, focus and scope characteristics mean that real detail is 'smeared' out over multiple pixels. In that case, the resolution at which your DSLR recorded the scene is just going to waste; there is a reason why the 'expensive' CCD cameras typically have a lower resolution that an off-the-shelf DSLR!

Let me know how you go!

[OttoMann]

Alright..
Thanks Ivo
I'll give it a shot tomorrow..
If I have more problems I may try and video it so you can see what is actually going on . I'm not good at wordy explanations obviously

Thanks for you help
Kurt

[OttoMann]

Hi Ivo
I tried again today and immediately after opening I binned at 70 whatever percent and that kept my from freezing/ locking up.
It was still a bit wonky. When I would press keep at the end of each step the program would say not responding for 10 or 15 seconds ..
but then it would snap out of it. On one of the steps it did that for at least a full minute and the screen went not totally white but the whole thing
brightened.. hard to explain. I took some pics.. not sure if you can tell much.

http://tinypic.com/r/2extqa9/5

and

http://tinypic.com/r/2vansi9/5

So . I know I'm on the low end of system requirements. I'll probably try it a few more times.. see what happens.
Thanks for your help.

[admin]

Hi Ivo
I tried again today and immediately after opening I binned at 70 whatever percent and that kept my from freezing/ locking up.
It was still a bit wonky. When I would press keep at the end of each step the program would say not responding for 10 or 15 seconds ..
but then it would snap out of it. On one of the steps it did that for at least a full minute and the screen went not totally white but the whole thing
brightened.. hard to explain. I took some pics.. not sure if you can tell much.

http://tinypic.com/r/2extqa9/5

and

http://tinypic.com/r/2vansi9/5

So . I know I'm on the low end of system requirements. I'll probably try it a few more times.. see what happens.
Thanks for your help.

Thank you for upoading those images!

If the freeze happens in between some modules, this is also StarTools swapping to disk and, in addition, performing a lot of calculations; it's 'Tracking' your processing and keeping track of how noise levels changed in your image, so that it can better keep noise under control than other applications. This typically doesn't take very long, but with huge datasets on memory and CPU-starved 64-bit machines, it can take some time.
By binning to 71%, you've reduced the amount of memory and calculation requirements to to 50%.
Binning to 50% (which is what I would recommend for DSLR data) will reduce the amount of memory and calculation requirements to to 25%, which should make your PC more comfortable, reduce noise grain and typically does not sacrifice any 'real' detail in DSLR data (unless the data is extremely wide field).
You could also consider using the 32-bit version of StarTools, which performs data manipulation in 32-bits precision (as opposed to 64-bits), saving on memory again.

All in all, it seems there is nothing wrong with your machine! (phew)
It's just that StarTools is can be extremely CPU and memory hungry with large datasets. The good news is that large data sets (such as those acquired through the latest DLSRs) are often oversampled, so that reducing them by binning only has benefits and no drawbacks.

[admin]

I just wanted to add - if you need a personalised tutorial, shoot over some data and I can take you through it. It takes me a bit of time, but I find it's the quickest way of getting someone up to speed with StarTools and what it can do it their particular circumstances.