Hi all,
 
I am hoping some of you experienced Autostitch users will come to my aid!
 
I am new to VR photography, and have recently settled on Stitcher 5.7 as my program of choice. BUT, I am having real issues with it, mainly my questions are below:
 
1: My images rarely all stitch together automatically, I am often left to do it myself, even though I am ensuring at least 30% overlap?  For a £200 program, is this right?
 
2: During stitching, it goes fast then at 40% slows down to near standstill, is this a memory problem?
 
3: Even when using fisheye and managing to get all the images correctly stitched, during render the finished product is poor, with ghost images, blurriness (is that a word?) and poor stiching?  I have the nodal point pretty sorted, so can't think what the problem is?  
 
4:  Where is the user manual available!
 
5:  I am using a canon G9 12.1 MP camera, with 58mm fish eye lens, with the Panosaurous bracket, am I only going to get good results using a DSLR?  
 
I am sorry about all the questions, especially on my first post, but I am getting really down trying to make it work.  I just can't seem to get it to work right, I have tried other stitchers before and even with the nodal point way off have still managed to get it to stich well, and that was on a £30 example!  
 
Thanks all!

Hi mattybaz!
 
Some valuable info to provide - what is your OS; what is your physical RAM; how many images for your pano (lateral - i.e. 3 shots around, 4 shots around - plus the up/down "cap" shots)?
 
Let's take an excerpt from your last paragraph first:
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"I have tried other stitchers before and even with the nodal point way off have still managed to get it to stich well, and that was on a £30 example!"
 
If this £30 program worked well then why are you considering/using Stitcher at 7x the price?
 
 
1: My images rarely all stitch together automatically, I am often left to do it myself, even though I am ensuring at least 30% overlap?  For a £200 program, is this right?
 
A good overlap is just part of the equation (see #3 below) - but 30% is good.
 
 
2: During stitching, it goes fast then at 40% slows down to near standstill, is this a memory problem?
 
Probably. First we need to know the parameters of your gear - as per the first sentence in this post. It does sound like your pano is rendering in any event. You might try lowering your memory setting ("Preferences" ) to 40-50% to see if that helps (the default is 75%). Lowering this memory setting puts less demand on your physical RAM... at the expense of more disk activity. While nominally this increases render times it actually might help if you're squeezing your RAM too tightly. Experiment!
 
 
3: Even when using fisheye and managing to get all the images correctly stitched, during render the finished product is poor, with ghost images, blurriness (is that a word?) and poor stiching?  I have the nodal point pretty sorted, so can't think what the problem is?  
 
Actually it sounds like your nodal point is off - but your fisheye lens could be part of the problem (see #5). Ghost images are typical of parallax (nodal point) error.
 
 
4: Where is the user manual available!
 
There is online help, under the "Help" menu - and you can purchase a printed manual from Autodesk.
 
 
5:  I am using a canon G9 12.1 MP camera, with 58mm fish eye lens, with the Panosaurous bracket, am I only going to get good results using a DSLR?
 
Do you mean a 5.8mm fish eye? From what I have read about the G9 this fish eye lens would be an "adaptor" lens - the quality will not be as good using this type of hardware compared to using a DSLR and a "real" fish eye lens. This might be related to your ghosting problems.
 
 
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Would you provide three contiguous lateral images from one of your panos? (1/2 res at high quality JPEG will do.) This example set of source images will be valuable in ferreting out your problem.

Hi there, Thanks for your response, it is much appreciated!
 
In answer to your questions:  
 
The £30 system worked great for stitching, although was not able to do full 360 degree stitches, hence me switching to realviz.
 
My current system is the following (i just performed a test):
 
Maximum Memory Capacity:  3072 MB  
Currently Installed Memory:  512 MB  
CPU Family:   Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz Model 13, Stepping 6  
CPU Speed:  1692 MHz  
 
I imagine it is the memory that is the issue, I am going to get this upgraded to 1024. I will have to cope with the speed for now!
 
 
Please find below some example images:
 



 
These images were taken with the fish eye attachement, and zoomed in to reduce the black edge with the nodal point corrected.  With this I took 9 shots level every 45 degrees, 9 shots -40 degrees, 9 shots + 45 degrees, then a final one looking up.
 
I have also tried with my standard lens on the G9, zoomed right out, and took a photo every 30 degrees to ensure overlap, then a bottom row and top row, but it still will not stitch right.  
 
I have also tried the fish eye (that is supposed to be 180 degrees, but is not) taking a total of 3 / 4 shots level, then one for the top and bottom, and it is awful, it just won't stitch, and if it does, it looks rubbish.
 
Thanks again for your help,

Sorry, images are a tad big!  Have just ordered more memory, by tomorrow it wil be 1 gig.

Dear mattybaz,
 
did you try "Tools > Distortion > Calibrate"?
It works fine for me with your 3 provided images in SU 5.6.2.
 
Best regards
 
Tim

Hi Tim, thanks for the reply.  I am trying again with less images using the fish eye lens.  I cannot do full 180 shots, so I am having to do around 6 at -20 degrees, and 6 at + 35 to get the whole room.  Will let you know how I get on.  PS: I tried calibrating with the 2 fish eye images, and it was always greyed out, no matter what I did.

Dear mattybaz,
 
maybe, you would like to try the camera-profile I've created with your images:
http://panographers.net/ForumREALV [...] G9+58.lens
"Tools > Distortion > Load Camera Profile"
 
Best regards
 
Tim

Hi all, I feel I am really getting somewhere.  I have realised that less is more, and taking less pictures and not having so much overlap is the way forward.  My latest attempt is a room VR, but at 6 megabytes it is very big, and the image quality is not good.  But I am getting somewhere!  Thanks