Telescope Reviews: Best Debayering Software For TIS Camera (Y800 RAW)

Perfect! This works beautifully, Bird!

For those following along with DBK cameras (or any cam capable of outputing Y800 bayered color), here is my process that works thanks to Bird and ninox:

1) Open Y800 bayered AVI through Virtualdub, and set Color Depth (under Video menu @ top) to Y8 on both decompression format and output format.

2) Export the video from Virtualdub (under File menu @ top) as an "Image Sequence", and choose BMP as the output format. Save files to a directory of your choosing.

3) Run the resulting BMP files through ninox specifying the debayer=N option that matches your camera's output. In my case (DBK 21AU04.AS) that was "2", as Bird discovered. My final ninox command looked like this:

ninox -cut=400 -outdir=debayered -debayer=2 -qestimator -qrenumber=first *.bmp

You can also overwrite using the -overwrite flag, and there are several other features available as well. For a complete list see the ninox website at: http://acquerra.com.au/astro/software/ppmcentre/

4) Once ninox is finished, you can either go straight to Registax with the sorted, cropped and debayered BMP files, or go one step further and split the resulting files into the R,G, and B channels using something like RGBSplit. I found the RGBSplit software on the Ice In Space website, and it works very well for our purposes.

5) Once the files are split into separate R,G, and B directories, these can be dragged into Registax and you can stack the channels separately. I noticed this helps with the finished image, and I usually end up applying different wavelet settings on the individual channels based on their quality.

6) From there, your standard photo procedures can take over. Either use Photoshop or Astra Image to recombine the RGB channels back together, and sharpen / adjust to taste. Astra Image is great as the deconvolution filters are very powerful, and in speaking with the developer when I purchased I could tell he is very commited to his products and a great person to deal with. You'll still probably need Photoshop or something similar for that final bit of adjusting.

I'm very new to astrophotography, but thanks to the help of this forum and the astro community at large I think I have my head wrapped around the processing side of things. I'm not that good at it yet, but I have the basics down and will be working to perfect the artistic side as I continue in this hobby.

Thanks again to Bird and everyone else for their assistance in this matter!

Brian

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Celestron Nexstar 8 SE SCT
R/C Hobby Servo Electric Focuser
DBK 21AU04.AS CCD Imaging Camera
Orion Starblast 4.5" Reflector w/ Celestron 114GT Mount
Meade RB-60 Achromat Refractor

ETSU - Johnson City, TN