Stack 10x Faster with PixInsight's New Fast Batch Preprocessing (FBPP)!

This is a game changer! You can stack up to 10x faster with FBPP than you could with WBPP (Weighted Batch Preprocessing). Here are my test results.
Chapters:
0:00 The Agenda
0:43 Fast Batch Preprocessing
2:47 FBPP Results and Start of Weighted Batch Preprocessing
4:05 WBPP Results and Final Findings
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[@dadwhitsett]

No drizzle, no FBPP. Appreciate the update and hopefully they will add it in the next iteration.

[@dexter1911]

I am so happy that they did such a great update! I love it.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

This is great news! That was one of my biggest gripes about PI.

[@Naztronomy]

I didn't mention it in the video but FBPP also uses less computing power than WBPP. Haven't compared that to APP or Siril though. Really an amazing advancement.

[@robinbrown3896]

WBPP has a similar option, and as I understand it is based on or incorporated from the FBPP. So, in WBPP , It only needs to be turned on; and this is an option is under POST-CALIBRATION - Fast Integration. It only has two options, ENABLE-SAVE IMAGES you need to select them both. But before doing that you will need to select the image stack that you want to apply it to. For instance, If I only wanted to apply it to my HA and not my SII or OIII then I would only select HA, and turn the feature on. HA would be processed at the very fast rate and the SII and OIII would be processed at the normal WBPP rate-slow. Else, apply it to all Filters. I have done a few comparisons to see if there was any benefit or quality gain/loss in the fast method. To my surprise, the fast method produced a better image then the slow method. So I was getting speeds from 30min down to 5min.

[@Naztronomy]

Ah thanks! I knew they had a standalone fast-integration process but I guess my eyes totally glazed over that option within WBPP. Thanks for pointing that out! The standalone process worked fine for me but having to jump to it from WBPP and click more buttons turned me off from it. But I'm really glad to see it incorporated into WBPP. I just ran it with the exact same dataset and it finished in 8.5 mins. MUCH faster than regular WBPP but FBPP is still faster. The difference you and I are seeing probably has to do with our hardware. My computer is coming up on 8 years old now. Aside from the speed, the masterLight file from FBPP is 103MB in size vs 317MB from Fast integration.

[@3SistersAstronomy]

Subscribed! Great video on the new tool. We've added your channel to our website. Hope it helps drive some people to you.

[@Naztronomy]

Thank you so much, I appreciate the support 😊

[@paulbenoit249]

A pity the drizzle fiction is not available as par of this new process.

[@Naztronomy]

Totally agree. Hopefully they'll include it in a future update even though that'll make the integration time a little bit longer. It'll still be way faster than regular WBPP.

[@ct8618]

For me FBPP was nearly exactly 10x faster. WBPP took 30 min. FBPP took a bit over 3 min.

[@Naztronomy]

3 minutes! That's awesome. How much data did you integrate? I did get to almost 8x with another test run today. Have no doubt it'll consistently do 10x or faster given the right set of circumstances.

[@MrGeert1972]

Yes it’s faster but is the quality the same cause the FWPP is only doing half the steps off WBPP

[@Naztronomy]

My initial tests suggest that quality is the same. I've tried this with 3 different data sets. The only thing I haven't yet compared is doing WBPP with drizzle which has previously given me sharper results. I'll try and do some testing with this in the coming week and will post my results in a new video. Let me know if you want me to look for anything specific.

[@ct8618]

Anyone else lose cosmic photon's star reduction script when they updated to this version of PixInsight?

[@Naztronomy]

Mine is still there. If yours disappeared, can you try readding it?

[@ct8618]

@@Naztronomy Yeah I tried that right away, still didn't work. Maybe I'll try some more. I normally don't update things as soon as they release but the idea of faster stacking was too tempting lol

[@Naztronomy]

@@ct8618 You and me both! I was in the middle of stacking with WBPP when I got the email. Weird that re-adding it didn't work. Let me know if you figure it out. Good luck!

[@ct8618]

@@Naztronomy I got it working. It's possible I didn't exit PI when I removed it last time before going back in to re-add it. Nevertheless, its back! Thanks!

[@Naztronomy]

@@ct8618 Awesome, glad to hear you have it working!

[@julianmatthews3262]

What was the Fast Processing when tick box within WBPP like but drizzling the images? Thanks

[@Naztronomy]

That's the 'Fast Integration' option in PixInsight. Previously, it was released as a standalone process where you do you preprocessing in WBPP then you stack them in Fast Integration. But they've since built that into WBPP. Someone else mentioned the option in the comments, I tested it out and although it's much faster than WBPP by itself, it's not as fast as FBPP (8.5 mins vs 5.75 mins).

[@_Astrovert]

The results page showed no Local Normalization and no Registration times. I'm assuming those were done too?? If Local Normalization was skipped, that saved about 15min right there.

[@Naztronomy]

It does do registration but it does a global normalization instead of local normalization. I still need to find some time to go through a full workflow in FBPP and WBPP and compare the final results. Will make sure my processing steps are the same.

[@_Astrovert]

@@Naztronomy Thanks, nice video! I did a little digging and found that Fast Integration (the stand alone process) is intended for hundreds or thousands of images that are generated when doing planetary. It narrows the scope/number of stars used for registration since they should be relatively close frame to frame. Not sure if that comes into play here too.

[@Naztronomy]

Thanks and very interesting. FBPP and Fast Integration are somewhat connected so I could see it used for data from the Seestar since you can easily to get a thousand 10s images. I have a different planetary processing workflow so I don't know if I'd use PI to stack planetary data since it's hard to get any stars from lucky imaging sessions. Although...it might be worth a try to see if maybe it'll register the frames and fix any field rotation, that's always a big hurdle. In Any case, whether you use FBPP for 10 frames or a thousand, it seems to be a great tool to get things done quickly, even when compared to other stacking software like APP and Siril. I'll still probably use WBPP for data that the extra benefit of drizzling.

[@Si-fp2ij]

Was the update a pain? Holding off at the moment Justin case

[@Naztronomy]

No pain at all. I updated PixInsight like I normally do.

[@Si-fp2ij]

@@Naztronomy Did everything still work?

[@Naztronomy]

Yep, everything worked as it did before.