Why is using MAX to do IMAQ getting buggier with each version?

[BruceMoyer]

I am currently using NI-IMAQ 4.4 and MAX 4.7 and this is probably the least responsive version so far!  The user experience is really getting compromised here!  I'm using CameraLink to control my cameras and have a variety of cameras that worked fine with previous versions.  I upgraded the IMAQ on my computer to try out the new NI PCIe-1433 but I am not using this board to conduct these tests.

1.  To zoom in on a pixel now takes forever.  1 click for each +1X.  On a 320x240 camera (were not talking high resolution here) it takes 45 clicks to get to a point where I can easily distinguish the pixels.  45 clicks to unzoom too!  The 2X zoom per click (old version) was much better.  I see that there is a "Zoom to Fit" option to unzoom so I can use that to get back to near 1X zoom.

2.  It seems that switching tabs is tied to the acquire rate.  With a 30fps camera it takes about 4 seconds to switch tabs (for instance from changing from the Acquisition Parameters tab to Camera Attributes.  Using a linescan camera at 11 fps (100 lines/frame) it takes about 8 seconds.  At 1fps (100 lines/frame) it took 1 minutes 10 seconds!  I have a linescan camera that can go as slow as 1.1 seconds/line and switching tabs takes over 4 minutes!  (I gave up waiting and ended the MAX task).  This is unacceptable!

Please fix these problems so I can use my new board!

Thanks,

Bruce

[BlueCheese]

Hi Bruce,

Sorry for the inconvenience. We have reproduced both issues and are looking into them (CARs #254781 and #254782, respectively).

Eric

[BullDozier]

Hey Bruce, I was able to see both of your problems. I've already filed bug reports on the second issue so hopefully that will be fixed in the next release. At this point, I do not see a workaround currently. The click-to-zoom functionality changed from logarithmic to linear in 2008. This was an intentional design change because the logarithmic click-to-zoom took more clicks at the beginning. I'm working with the developers to possibly change this behavior so that it follows a linear zoom until it is at a certain amount of zoom. Thanks for bringing these issues to our attention!

[BruceMoyer]

Everyone,

Thanks for the quick responses!  I glad it's going to get worked on.  I don't totally understand the change from logarithmic to linear (logarithmic should be faster/less clicking)...

Log:  1 2 4 8 16 32 64 1/2 1/4 1/8 1/16

Lin:  1 2 3 4  5  6  7 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/4

but I do see that it is sometimes nice for resizing to have a finer adjustment of zoom.

I know with the MAX plug-in architecture it is probably not the easiest to add particular features, but one possibility is if the IMAQ module can recognize a click-hold (a mouse down for a period of time) to zoom-in/out more quickly (similar to a key repeat event).

Bruce

I know this may be asking a lot but this (or something similar) would add a lot to the ability to zoom.

Bruce