DSS out of memory?

[Larry 1969]

Hi all!
I've learned quite a bit over the past few months and I finally had a beautiful night to get out there and give it a try.
I shot 180 X 15sec light frames, 100 darks and 200 bias. I went through all the lights and picked out the poor quality images and deleted them.
This left me with ~ 125 frames to work with. These are the BEST subs I've ever seen! I'm SOOOO excited!
I load it all into DSS and start the registering process and all is going well. SLOW but well. It FINALLY gets to "stacking image 90 of 90" and I get the out of memory error!!!!!!!!
I'm DESPERATE to see what I have!
Can I stack smaller batches and then stack those? If so, should I introduce my master dark and master bias into each group?
What output file format should I use? I have it set to fits now in order for it to work with StarTools. Will DSS stack fits files?

Any help GREATLY appreciated!

Thank you!

Larry

[Juno16]

Hi Larry,

Just a shot not knowing how much memory you have.

Possibly some memory was tied up from a running or previously running process.

Maybe reboot and try again?

Thanks,
Jim

[Larry 1969]

Hi Larry,

Just a shot not knowing how much memory you have.

Possibly some memory was tied up from a running or previously running process.

Maybe reboot and try again?

Thanks,
Jim

Thanks Jim!
Unfortunately, I'm having this problem on multiple computers.
I've broken up the process into 3rds. 1/3 of my lights, 1/3 darks and 1/3 bias.
I set my output to tif and I will try to stack the 3 tifs when it's over.

Larry

[Ozypic]

Sorry I have nothing to offer. Your pics all look great. You obviously know what your doing there. I love Santa and his reindeer crossing the sun .... best of luck with it all. Phill

[Larry 1969]

Sorry I have nothing to offer. Your pics all look great. You obviously know what your doing there. I love Santa and his reindeer crossing the sun .... best of luck with it all. Phill

OOOOOOk Phill!!!! :joking:

[Juno16]

Hi Larry,

I have only been using DSS for about a year, but I’ve never had any issues.

If you are interested, the link below points to my settings file for DSS. If you download it and paste a copy into the ProgramData DeepSkyStacker folder, you could load it when you open DSS and try to stack your images with my settings. I would be surprised if it has any issues. It also saves as a tiff, but I always re-save as a fits which I use with Startools.

Up to you if you want to give it a try.

Thanks,
Jim

[bobharmony]

Larry

The only time I have had trouble with DSS and memory is when I inadvertently checked one of the "Drizzle" boxes. There are on the "Results" tab of the stacking parameters "Enable 2x Drizzle", and "Enable 3x Drizzle" are the two boxes I am referring to. If I checked those for a full-size image I would always run out of memory on the PC.

A couple of questions for you: what version of DSS are you running? This appears in the title bar of the DSS window, and also by clicking the "About DSS" menu item under "Options". Also are you running the 32-bit version or 64-bit version of DSS, and which of those options does your PC support?

Bob

[Larry 1969]

Hi Larry,

I have only been using DSS for about a year, but I’ve never had any issues.

If you are interested, the link below points to my settings file for DSS. If you download it and paste a copy into the ProgramData DeepSkyStacker folder, you could load it when you open DSS and try to stack your images with my settings. I would be surprised if it has any issues. It also saves as a tiff, but I always re-save as a fits which I use with Startools.

Up to you if you want to give it a try.

Thanks,
Jim

Thanks Jim! I'll give it a try.
I think my problem is two fold. Since I'm using a Dob I'm required to take a bunch of exposures so I'm loading 400 images into DSS and my computer is slow with only 4G RAM.

Larry

[Larry 1969]

Larry

The only time I have had trouble with DSS and memory is when I inadvertently checked one of the "Drizzle" boxes. There are on the "Results" tab of the stacking parameters "Enable 2x Drizzle", and "Enable 3x Drizzle" are the two boxes I am referring to. If I checked those for a full-size image I would always run out of memory on the PC.

A couple of questions for you: what version of DSS are you running? This appears in the title bar of the DSS window, and also by clicking the "About DSS" menu item under "Options". Also are you running the 32-bit version or 64-bit version of DSS, and which of those options does your PC support?

Bob

Thanks Bob!
I learned my lesson with "drizzle".... My output fits file was 825Mb!!!!
I'm using version 4.2.0 because the kink to 4.2.1 (which just came out) doesn't work.
Also I'm using the 64 bit version as my OS is 64 bit.

Larry

[bobharmony]

I'm afraid I don't have any answer to the out of memory condition. I'm still running one of the 4.1 versions.

Last question - are you set up to use all processors for DSS? If not, give that a whirl. (See, I didn't ask how much memory or how nany cores your PC has. These days they all seem to come fully loaded.)

Bob

[Larry 1969]

I'm afraid I don't have any answer to the out of memory condition. I'm still running one of the 4.1 versions.

Last question - are you set up to use all processors for DSS? If not, give that a whirl. (See, I didn't ask how much memory or how nany cores your PC has. These days they all seem to come fully loaded.)

Bob

Thanks again Bob!
How might I go about setting that up? Is it a setting in DSS?

Larry

[bobharmony]

Thanks again Bob!
How might I go about setting that up? Is it a setting in DSS?

Larry

I'll have to look it up. It is a setting in DSS, but I am not at my imaging laptop at the moment, and don't recall the details.

Bob

[Graeme1858]

When I had similar problems with DSS crashing and returning out of memory errors the cause turned out to be due to image size. I can't remember if I solved the problem in DSS (PIPP will crop images prior to loading into DSS) But I had a similar problem with SER file videos in AS2! With AS2! it is possible to crop from within the programme directly. Sorry for my vagueness but I'm a newbie using these packages myself!

Regards

Graeme

[bobharmony]

Larry - the "Use all available processors" checkbox is on the "Results" tab of the Stacking parameters.

When you set the Star detection threshold of the advanced register settings, how many stars does DSS count? A number between 75 and 100 is usually enough to get all the lights lined up. Higher numbers of stars will require additional memory, so adjust it if you are getting 300-400 or more stars.

What size are your individual lights? I assume you are using RAW (.cr2) frames from the Canon?

Bob

[Larry 1969]

Larry - the "Use all available processors" checkbox is on the "Results" tab of the Stacking parameters.

When you set the Star detection threshold of the advanced register settings, how many stars does DSS count? A number between 75 and 100 is usually enough to get all the lights lined up. Higher numbers of stars will require additional memory, so adjust it if you are getting 300-400 or more stars.

What size are your individual lights? I assume you are using RAW (.cr2) frames from the Canon?

Bob

I will look into that. Thanks again Bob!
I try to get my star detection to around 100 stars.
I believe my raw images (yes. .cr2) are 18Mb.
I just got a new computer and hope to have it all set up over the weekend.
I'm sure my old (2 core, 4 gig ram, win7 upgraded to win10) POS computer is the culprit!

Larry

[Larry 1969]

Hi Larry,

I have only been using DSS for about a year, but I’ve never had any issues.

If you are interested, the link below points to my settings file for DSS. If you download it and paste a copy into the ProgramData DeepSkyStacker folder, you could load it when you open DSS and try to stack your images with my settings. I would be surprised if it has any issues. It also saves as a tiff, but I always re-save as a fits which I use with Startools.

Up to you if you want to give it a try.

Thanks,
Jim

Juno,

I used your settings with the exception of star detection. I had to alter that to get it down to 100 or so.
I produced a VERY nice image (for me) that I'm looking VERY forward to processing!
Thanks again!

Larry