Image Size

[WirthmU]

I am a bit confused about the different sizing options in config.sh - and did not really got to a good result using trial and error.

The camera is a RpiHQ camera and thus the maximal available image size is 4056 x 3040.

Now with the settings like:

IMG_RESIZE="true"
IMG_WIDTH=4056
IMG_HEIGHT=3040

I get the current live-view picture like whis is perfectly well:

The startrails is totally oversized:

The keogram is oversized as well:

The timelapse videos are perfect in size with full resolution:

Now what parameters would I need to change so that startrail and keogram pictures are reduced in size and both live-view and timelapse keep being in full resolution?

The website is here: http://80.219.133.218/Bern/allskyB2.htm
BTW the stars chart overlay is not yet fixed.

[EricClaeys]

@WirthmU Hi, First, there's no reason to

IMG_RESIZE="true"
IMG_WIDTH=4056
IMG_HEIGHT=3040

All that's doing is resizing each picture to the existing size, so is only taking CPU and slightly decreasing quality.

Can you check what the resolution is of a startrails.jpg and keogram.jpg file?

identify ~/allsky/tmp/image.jpg
identify ~/allsky/images/YYYYMMDD/keogram/keogram*
identify ~/allsky/images/YYYYMMDD/startrails/startrails*

and see if all three picture have the same height. The startrails should have the same width as image.jpg, but the keograms' width may differ some.

I think you'll find the files are correct, but the http://80.219.133.218/Bern/allskyB2.htm page isn't displaying them correctly, so that's something you'll have to fix. Allsky is working fine.

[WirthmU]

I thought so, too @EricClaeys about the IMG_RESIZE="true", I have set it to false already.

Resolution checks are as following and yes, they all are of the same height exactly as you mentioned:

pi@allsky:~ $ identify ~/allsky/tmp/image.jpg
/home/pi/allsky/tmp/image.jpg JPEG 4056x3040 4056x3040+0+0 8-bit sRGB 2.84716MiB 0.000u 0:00.000

pi@allsky:~ $ identify ~/allsky/images/20220726/keogram/keogram*
/home/pi/allsky/images/20220726/keogram/keogram-20220726.jpg JPEG 3920x3040 3920x3040+0+0 8-bit sRGB 2.19901MiB 0.000u 0:00.000

pi@allsky:~ $ identify ~/allsky/images/20220726/startrails/startrails*
/home/pi/allsky/images/20220726/startrails/startrails-20220726.jpg JPEG 4056x3040 4056x3040+0+0 8-bit sRGB 3.25395MiB 0.000u 0:00.000

The html code on my page site to display is:

<p style="margin:50px; " class="style3">Current Live Picture AllSky Camera 2 RpiHQ Bern</p>
<div style="width:1000px;height:700px"><iframe scrolling="no" src="http://80.219.133.218/Bern/allsky_2/allsky/" style="border:0;width:100%;height:100%"></iframe></div>

The code that then displays the image seems to be in the index.php file from the allsky-webesite files (allsky-website/index.php. All thumbnails look correct and also the videos are in full resolution. Only the startrails and the keograms seem to be oversized. Is this index.php file the reason for the different resolutions?

What is the difference between:

IMG_RESIZE="true"
IMG_WIDTH=4056
IMG_HEIGHT=3040

and:

RESIZE_UPLOADS="true"
RESIZE_UPLOADS_SIZE="960x720"

??

[EricClaeys]

@WirthmU It looks like you fixed the problem by simply having a click on the thumbnail show the full picture, and not a picture in your web page. That's what the Allsky Website does and IMHO is the nicest way, because it shows the picture as large as possible. I would leave it the way it is. I'm not very good with CSS, especially when one object is inside another which is inside another, so wouldn't be able to help anyhow.

The names of the variables in config/config.sh aren't totally consistent. All the ones in the ########## Images section should really begin with IMG_ to indicate they only apply to the images that are taken constantly.

IMG_RESIZE="true"
IMG_WIDTH=4056
IMG_HEIGHT=3040

resize the images from the camera before saving them. As sensors get larger, people may not want a full-sized image - they take more disk space and CPU power to process. An example: you have the RPi HQ which is 4056 x 3040. Do you have a monitor with that high a resolution? If not, you may decide it's not worth having full-size picture. On the other hand, you may like to zoom in on the images so decide to keep full-size file. But if the next PRi camera has twice the resolution, I suspect the cheap lenses we have combined with the distortion from the cheap plastic domes most of us have will not support that resolution, and the lower-end Pi's won't either.

The RESIZE_UPLOADS* variables should be called IMG_RESIZE_UPLOADS*, and tell Allsky to resize the image.jpg file before uploading it. You may want full-size images on your Pi but smaller images uploaded, especially if your network bandwidth is slow or you pay per MB, as some people do.
I suspect that if someone has IMG_RESIZE=true they probably do NOT have RESIZE_UPLOADS=true, but that's just a guess.

Does that help? It was a good question.

[WirthmU]

Thank you @EricClaeys and yes, it makes perfectly sense.
So maybe for further improving the structure of allksy you might unknot a bit thing with scripts. First a config.sh for the local settings (i.e. all the settings how images are processed and stored locally). A second maybe called web.sh that is for the settings about what and in which quality things are uploaded to a website. And finally the ftp-settings.sh as already used.

Also - and this is just a detail and about consistency - slightly restructure :

RESIZE_UPLOADS="false"
RESIZE_UPLOADS_SIZE="962x720"

to

IMG_RESIZE_UPLOADS="false"
IMG_RESIZE_UPLOADS_WIDTH=962
IMG_RESIZE_UPLOADS_HEIGHT=720

And another question is why some of the parameters are with quotation marks (") and others no (maybe its because some are used as text and others as figures only):

AUTO_STRETCH="false"
AUTO_STRETCH_AMOUNT=10
AUTO_STRETCH_MID_POINT="10%"

And btw speaking about distortion and cheap plastic domes. For two of my four allsky cameras I went away from domes and changed to flat glass and it looks much better. Also I keep looking for better quality lens. The ones I use for my RPiHQ is an Ultra Wide-Angle C-Mount Lens with 3.2mm Focal Length.

[EricClaeys]

@WirthmU,
I want to limit the changes to config.sh since we're eventually going to replace it, and whenever I change the name of a variable I need to make sure it's changed in all the scripts that use it, and the Wiki is updated, and people know about the new name. But I agree your restructure is better.

Re: quotes vs no quotes. Find me a totally consistent human and I'll make 'em an Allsky developer!! Technically, quotes are only required around strings that have "special" characters in them, like spaces, semi-colons, and others. However, for the most part I've been putting them around booleans (true, false), and anything that's not a number, and when I want to show a variable is empty, e.g., x="" implies x is a string and not a number. 962x720 is a string of characters, not a number, so has quotes.
I'm sure you can find cases where I wasn't consistent.

Re: domes. Tell me more. With a fisheye lens, how does flat glass work? The lens will see where there's no glass. Or are your lens not fisheye, e.g., not ~ 180 degrees?

Re: lens. I have a feeling we're not going to find any Canon/Nikon quality lens in a C-mount size. I'm just guessing that the cheap lens we have won't support super-high resolution. I've never done any testing so could easily be wrong.
My allsky at the observatory has sharp stars on the left of the image an blurry stars on the middle and right. I don't know if that means the lens is defective or is tilted, or the camera sensor is tilted, or the dome is causing distortion, or what. Next time I take the camera down I'll take the dome off and see if that helps. If not, I'll probably focus for the middle of the image.

[WirthmU]

@EricClaeys

I keep playing with the settings in config.sh to understand what is going on.

With the following settings I get the pictures with the right size in my website:

IMG_RESIZE="true"
IMG_WIDTH=1014
IMG_HEIGHT=760

RESIZE_UPLOADS="false"
RESIZE_UPLOADS_SIZE="1014x760"

This is what I find on the web server the day after and it is what I would expect:

image.jpg JPEG 1014x760 1014x760+0+0 8-bit sRGB 167840B 0.000u 0:00.000
keogram-20220728.jpg JPEG 1188x760 1188x760+0+0 8-bit sRGB 205.87KiB 0.000u 0:00.000
startrails-20220728.jpg JPEG 1014x760 1014x760+0+0 8-bit sRGB 213.65KiB 0.000u 0:00.000

Now using the following settings:

IMG_RESIZE="false"
IMG_WIDTH=1014
IMG_HEIGHT=760

RESIZE_UPLOADS="true"
RESIZE_UPLOADS_SIZE="1014x760"

I get the following sizes and obviously the pictures on the website are oversized again:

image.jpg JPEG 1012x760 1012x760+0+0 8-bit sRGB 175.08KiB 0.000u 0:00.000
keogram-20220729.jpg JPEG 3990x3040 3990x3040+0+0 8-bit sRGB 2.1942MiB 0.000u 0:00.000
startrails-20220729.jpg JPEG 4056x3040 4056x3040+0+0 8-bit sRGB 3.0877MiB 0.000u 0:00.000

So it looks like the only thing that is being re-sized on the Web-server if I leave the size of the original picture on the RPi untouched is the image.jpg. Neither startrails nor keogram seem to be impressed by the RESIZE_UPLOADS="true" command. Is this correct?

I guess for your Re:domes and Re:lens I will open up new discussions.

[EricClaeys]

@WirthmU That's behaving as expected. The "RESIZE_UPLOADS" only applies to image.jpg as it's being uploaded, so all the images in allsky/images/DATE are full size, and those are what the keogram, startrails, and timelapse use, so those would also be full size.
I did notice what's probably a bug, though. With IMG_RESIZE set to 1014x760, that's the size you are getting, but with RESIZE_UPLOADS_SIZE you are getting 1012x760. The first case is just telling the software to resize to 1014x760, the second case is telling it to resize but chop off 2 pixels on the right. I'll have to ask Thomas why the difference.

[WirthmU]

@EricClaeys
Ok - this then does make sense as well.

The funny thing is that with RESIZE_UPLOADS="false" and IMG_RESIZE="false" even though image.jpg is full resolution and still perfectly visible as an entire picture on the website whereas startrails and keograms - which are of about the same size - when they are called from the thumbnails are totally oversized. But I guess this then has to do with re-programming HTML-code and CSS.

A possible solution would be to resize startrails and keograms in their respective scripts before uploading them to the Web-server. Maybe this would be another functionality in allsky?

[EricClaeys]

@WirthmU You repeated repeated with RESIZE_UPLOADS="false" and RESIZE_UPLOADS="false". I assume one of the "RESIZE_UPLOADS" should have been a different setting, maybe "IMG_RESIZE"?

On my observatory Pi with a ZWO, I crop the image to get ride of most of the black border, but I don't resize the image so the keogram, startrails and timelapse are full cropped-size. When I go to my website using Edge or Chrome, then look at a keogram or startrails, they appear as big as the browser window, and the cursor is a "+" in a circle, and clicking on the image displays it full resolution and I have to scroll in the browser window to see it all. Take a look at my site. It's running the new website code which allows some customization of the home page, but the keograms, startrails, and timelapse are the same.

[WirthmU]

@EricClaeys: I have meant both set to false.

Its strange that this looks good with the first oversized image.jpg:

While the startrails (and keograms as well) with the same picture size appear oversized:

What intrigues me is that with the same iFrame setting the image on the first one is scaled down from full size to the size of the frame while with the latter one is not. But as I said - it must be CSS wizardry.

[WirthmU]

Could you add this as a project @EricClaeys - to resize startrails and keograms picture size just as image.jpg before they are uploaded to the server?

[EricClaeys]

@WirthmU. Just added, with this text.

Aug 8, 2022, suggested by @WirthmU.
Timelapse videos can already be resized, although not prior to upload.  This Project would allow timelapse, mini-timelapse, startrails, and keograms to be resized prior to upload, just like image.jpg is.

It won't make it in the next release, though.