Frequently Asked Questions

Licencing

  1. If I get a 100-day licence and then decide to buy an unlimited licence, do I pay the difference between the price of the latter and what I already paid?
    Yes.
  2. I have a licence and have changed machines. Could you issue me with a new licence key since I will now be using the new machine?
    No problem. Just let us know what licence you have, the platform/OS of your new machine, and its hostid and host name, and we will give you a new licence key immediately.

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Deciding
  1. Do you support Apple Macintosh, Silicon Graphics...?
    Apple Macintosh OS X is now supported. The following are also supported: (a) Sun Solaris, Sparc platform, (b) Linux, Intel platform, and (c) Windows, Intel platform - Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT.

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  2. Do you support a particular wavelet function? Can I do ... with MR?
    Download and have a look through the documentation. Or email us, and ask. For wavelet functions, apart from a very wide selection already available, inputing your own filters is possible too with transform and filtering programs (using the wvf format of the Bath Wavelet Warehouse, which apparently has relocated to here).

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  3. What does MR offer which is not in Matlab's wavelet toolbox, IDL's wavelet software, S+Wavelets, public domain packages, ...?
    A comparison of what is available in these different packages is underway. High points of MR include: (a) very sophisticated use of noise models, (b) extensive availability of redundant wavelet transforms - best for feature analysis, (c) broad support for, and use of, multiple scale entropy, (d) unique capability for deconvolution, filtering based on noise modelling, 3D wavelet transforms, (e) compression - lossy and lossless grayscale, colour - with memory management for very large images, and (f) much more besides.

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  4. What image and signal display functionality is available?
    The systems for Windows, MR/Materials and MR/Signal, offer image and signal display functionality.

    Otherwise MR programs can be used with other display environments. Publicly available systems include ImageMagick and xv. For FITS images, SAOimage is an excellent package, and FView and others are available for Windows. It is also very easy to use MR in conjunction with IDL, with the latter serving as display environment.

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  5. FITS extensions - are they handled?
    FITS extensions entail multiple frames. The first frame only is read and processed. Of course breaking the multiple frame FITS file into single frames allows MR to be used straightforwardly on any one.

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Advice and Work-Arounds
  1. Deconvolution, programs im_deconv and mr_deconv: What format is the PSF to be in?
    The PSF is given as an image. This image need not be of large dimensions. A PSF may be chosen as an isolated point source, e.g. a star. In this case, extract a subimage around the star and call that the PSF image. Or if a Gaussian is acceptable, you can generate it with the -w option in im_simu: 
    im_simu -f 20.0 -w outnew snpsf out3
    This generates a Gaussian of FWHM 20.0 in outnew.fits.
    Then run the deconvolution program, maybe limiting the iterations to 50, and checking on progress with the verbose option: 
    mr_deconv -i 50 -v sn.fits snpsf.fits out

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  2. Program mr_decomp.
    A problem can arise in image decompression using e.g. 
    mr_decomp -r 3 IC4678-R-B1.fits.MRC sv3.fits
    which partially writes the output file, but in a corrupted manner. This is due to an Integer to Float conversion bug in the FITSIO libraries used. Forcing the conversion in the following way avoids this problem: 
    mr_decomp -r 3 -t f IC4678-R-B1.fits.MRC sv3.fits

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  3. Java Graphical User Interface
    There is a known Java bug with the Pentium 4 processor, which gives the following message: "Java.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows...". From Sun Microsystems: "Current JDK/JRE 1.1.x users who want to run their JDK 1.1.x based Java applets or applications on new Pentium 4 systems must upgrade to JDK/JRE 1.1.8_008 for Windows. Alternatively, Pentium 4 systems are also supported by the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) v 1.3.0 and higher."
    The version of these Java classes now available on the software page, and these should be used instead of the previous class files of the same name when using a Pentium 4.

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  4. Program wk_memfilter
    Option -U 2 is not yet implemented.
    For option -U 1 = fixed alpha, the option -G sets this value.

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  5. Program ww_filter
    Documentation (p. 311, section 19.5, Examples):
    ww_filter -t 18 -T 3 input.fits out.fits
    Filtering using the Haar wavelet transform.
    This should be:
    ww_filter -t 14 -T 3 input.fits out.fits
    Filtering using the Mallat biorthogonal wavelet transform.

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  6. im3d_convert order of dimensions
    In MR/3, the format conversion program im3d_convert is designed for use with colour images, hence inputs of dimensions N x M x 3 When the 3rd dimension is greater than 3, a result is obtained which is not useful.

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  7. wk_trans program
    In MR/3, the transform program wk_trans takes the 3rd dimension as the one containing the sequence of frames.

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  8. Short signal
    A signal or time series of at least 16 values is needed in MR/Signal. This is an arbitrary lower limit. Processing a very small amount of data makes little sense. Note that signal lengths have no limitation to being integer powers of 2.

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Comparisons With Other Systems
  1. How does MR differ from the Matlab Wavelet Toolbox?

The Matlab Wavelet Toolbox is strong in its documentation, and graphical user interface.

Strengths of MR are as follows.