Dither optimization

Sequence Generator Feature Requests
1

Ordinarily I do not think too much about dither settling time since it is such a small fraction of my imaging time. However, tonight I was just imaging a series of short exposures rotating through L-R-G-B and it occurred to me that it is unnecessary for SGP to dither every frame. The dithering is important between subs of the same filter, but not between filters!

Today SGP does this when “Rotate through events” is selected:

L
Dither
R
Dither
G
Dither
B
Dither

but all it needs to do is this:

L
R
G
B
Dither
L
R
G
B
Dither
…

My actual sequences often look like this: L R L G L B. In that case SGP should do:
L R dither L G dither L B dither …

I know some folks have very long dither settling times, and this optimization could make an imaging session much more time-efficient.

Andy

2 Likes
2

Two days ago, I thought about the same - so I would like to support this feature request.

Would it be possible to handle the dithering as a pre- or post event option?

Best regards

Reinhard

3

That seems like a good improvement Andy.

4

I don’t think so. We can look at “smart dithering”, but I think that event based dithering is too complex and not necessarily something we would like to support.

5

Ya… we can take a look at this, but it is more complex than it might seem at face value, especially since SGPro allows real time modification of events. It is certainly possible, just invasive. For instance, what if the L event suddenly disappears from the rotation? It is certainly possible to code up a whole rule set around when to dither, but it will probably be a bit of a chore to implement correctly.

6

In my mind “smart dithering” doesn’t need to be more complicated than:

  • Keep track of exposures (specifically, their filters) made since last dither
  • When you are about to dither, skip it if the filter for the next exposure has not yet been used since the last dither.

I’m not sure if you can reorder/edit events during dithering so that you could miss a dither, but I’d classify that as a “feature”.

++ Jari

1 Like
7

Hi

Can’t we have a option in event settings for dither or not dither , would not seem too hard
default could be dither and its up to the user what option he requires , would also get round altering the sequence
mid flow

Harry