Kalle
Posts: 15
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Registered: 12 Jun 2009
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33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 7:23 GMT
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I recently set PTGui to do a panorama of about 40 12 Megapixel images. It warned me that it needed 105 Gb free disk space and I only had about 90. But I couldnt free up any space at that moment so I set it to work anyway.
The whole process took over 30 hours!
I know that the limiting factor is disk space when rendering panoramas with PTGui and not cpu, ram etc.
How can you (and how have you) optimize your machine for panorama work, especially for high resolution panoramas?
I've been thinking of a couple of SSD drives in some RAID formation, but maybe there is a simpler and cheaper way? I probably can setup a dedicated machine to do all PTGui work from an unused computer and on that have a couple of ordinary SATA drives with alot of free space.
Any thoughts?
/Kalle
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Hans Nyberg
Posts: 2791
Location: Denmark
Registered: 28 Aug 2005
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 9:25 GMT
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Hej Kalle
If you have the latest PTGui 8.3.1 Ram is the most important.
Even if PTgui can not directly use more than 2GB on a 32 bit machine it uses it for caching.
What machine do you have and what version of PTgui.
The time you claim sounds like you have a 7-8 year old one with just 1gb Ram.
Even my 4 year old Mac G5 with 8GB ram would do your 40 images panorama in less than an hour even in 16bit.
Hans
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DorinDXN
Posts: 2853
Location: Timisoara, Romania
Registered: 14 Nov 2006
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 9:57 GMT
updated: 11 Nov 2009 at 9:59 GMT
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Hi Kalle, if you don't have enough RAM or have old machine, you can produce two (or three) equirectangulars instead of a big one
for example you can produce 2 equirectangulars of 185° then join in those in your graphic editor
185°+185°=360° cutting down the 5° overlapp
you can slice even in more pieces, e.g. for a gigapixel spherical pano I done I slice it down to 10 pieces and so I was able to produce it on my 1GB RAM machine
Dorin
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Kalle
Posts: 15
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Registered: 12 Jun 2009
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 11:58 GMT
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I run PTGui 8.2.2 at the moment but I downloaded 8.3.1 a couple of minutes ago. I def. will try it and see if it makes a difference.
The machine I run PTGui on at the moment is a dual core 2.67 GHz with 2GB RAM and win XP. Not the latest but not 7-8 years old either.
I know that we will go over to Windows 7 during 2010 and then I could put in some serious amounts of RAM for PTGui to use. But at the moment I'm stuck on a 32 bit Xp machine.
At home I have a quad core with win Vista 64 bit and 8GB RAM and a couple of TB of disk space on three harddrives. Maybe I can borrow a license and do some work from home, i don't know the limitations of the PTGui company license though, I have to check that first. And I probably have to go Pro to be able to use more than 2GB RAM as well?
/Kalle
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Kalle
Posts: 15
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Registered: 12 Jun 2009
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 11:59 GMT
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Dorin:
Thanks for a great tip! That's a good trick to have in your sleeve!
/Kalle
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John Houghton
Posts: 3487
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 12:54 GMT
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My PC is quite modest: 2.14GHz dual processor with 4GB RAM running Windows Version 7 32-bit. Using PTGui Pro V8.3.1, I stitched 40 10MP images (8-bit tiff) to a 360x180 equirectanglar (22400x1120) in 64 minutes.
John
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Hans Nyberg
Posts: 2791
Location: Denmark
Registered: 28 Aug 2005
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 11 Nov 2009 at 13:42 GMT
updated: 11 Nov 2009 at 13:44 GMT
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You should be aware that with 8.3.1 the default memory settings have changed. This means that you only get 35% of the RAM used by PTGui.
This used to be 50% as default.
You can change this in the Settings (Preferences on Mac)
Changing it to 50 or more can speed up the stitching by 100% for smaller output. It will help a lot for output up to 11.000x5750 pixels
Especially if you have 4GB Ram or less.
This is what happened on my MacBookPro dualcore 2.16 2GB Ram when I changed it from 35 to 70%.
Mac BookPro 16bit output 6+1 img 5D 12mp
These are timing for default memory 35%
7000 = 4.25
8000 = 7
11.500 = 19 min
And these are with 70% memory.
7000 = 1.50
8000 = 3
9000 = 4.35
10000 = 7.40
11.500 = 15.10
Hans
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Kalle
Posts: 15
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Registered: 12 Jun 2009
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 12 Nov 2009 at 8:51 GMT
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It sounds to me that 33h is extreme and maybe can't all be explained by too little RAM or disk space.
Can it be a problem with some of the individual images? Control points? optimization? They're all Jpegs and the output format is PSB with layers and blended panorama.
Another thing with this particular panorama is that it's centered on the nadir, i.e a "little planet" panorama. I don't know if that has any impact on rendering time though. The size is appr. 15000x15000 pixels.
Thanks for all your input!
/Kalle
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Hans Nyberg
Posts: 2791
Location: Denmark
Registered: 28 Aug 2005
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 12 Nov 2009 at 8:59 GMT
updated: 12 Nov 2009 at 9:05 GMT
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Yes that is for sure your problem.
You should never stitch a pano using any of these special projections.
You stitch to equirectangular and convert this equirectangular later to what ever you need.
Also read this thread
digg.com/u3GCvs
Hans
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Kalle
Posts: 15
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Registered: 12 Jun 2009
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 12 Nov 2009 at 11:45 GMT
updated: 12 Nov 2009 at 11:54 GMT
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Well, there you have it! Thanks for clearing this up for me Hans! Definetely saved me some money there on extra drives which would have been ill spent.
BTW, do you know of any good programs to use for these projection conversions?
/Kalle
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panocanarias
Posts: 42
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
Registered: 22 Oct 2006
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 12 Nov 2009 at 12:19 GMT
updated: 12 Nov 2009 at 12:23 GMT
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Kalle said: BTW, do you know of any good programs to use for these projection conversions?
You do have it already. PTGui !! 
Start new projekt. Load your final equirectangular as the only image.
Apply 'equirectangular' as Lens Type (Lens Setting TAB) and choose 'Little Planet' (e.g.) as projection.
There you go. 
Salu2,
Klaus
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Kalle
Posts: 15
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Registered: 12 Jun 2009
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Re: 33h blending and warping time in PTGui
Posted: 13 Nov 2009 at 13:36 GMT
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Ooops! Well there you have it again! Should take my time to read the manual better...
/Kalle
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