ScottF's dashboard

ScottF replied on July 08, 2009 21:11 to the question "How can I "encourage" photosynth to recognize similarity between photos?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Since Photosynth downsamples the photo before extracting features, sometimes addding cropped versions of areas that are common between the two photos will be enough for Photosynth to make the connection.

ScottF replied on June 12, 2009 07:39 to the update "Photosynth Maintenance: 6/11/09, 10-11pm PST." in Microsoft Live Labs:

The Operations team has completed this month's maintenance work, and Photosynth is back online. Synth away!

ScottF replied on June 12, 2009 07:29 to the update "Photosynth Maintenance: 6/11/09, 10-11pm PST." in Microsoft Live Labs:

This work is taking much longer than we'd hoped. I'll update this thread as soon as I have a firm ETA. Thanks for your patience..

ScottF replied on June 12, 2009 01:08 to the question "Where have all my synth's gone?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hi Jerry, you can log in to Photosynth.net and click your name in the upper-right corner. You should be able to see a link to your synths from there.

ScottF posted an update in Microsoft Live Labs on June 12, 2009 01:06:

Photosynth Maintenance: 6/11/09, 10-11pm PST.

We'll be doing maintenance tonight starting at 10pm PST. You'll see the static Web site and all uploads will be disabled during this time. We hope to be back at about 11pm, with a fresh coat of paint and Armor-all on the tires.

ScottF set one of ScottF's replies as an official response to "Publishing Synt "stuck" now for 1h and counting" in Microsoft Live Labs

ScottF replied on May 11, 2009 03:33 to the problem "Publishing Synt "stuck" now for 1h and counting" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hi everyone, the Photosynth team has just found and fixed a server problem that is likely causing these synths to be stuck. Please go ahead and check the site later on this evening - you'll likely find that your synth has completed. We'll post again on this thread tomorrow once we've confirmed that this was in fact the root cause.

A comment on the update "Workaround available for WinXP SP2 out of memory issue." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Yes, the code prefers WIC for image conversion, if it's present.

This particular bug isn't threading related - I believe it's a memory leak that has been fixed but not yet integrated.

To answer your question about the process, image conversion to the Deep Zoom (Seadragon) tile format happens in parallel to the synth pipeline (feature extraction -> matching -> reconstruction). What you see in the app progress bar follows the latter process, until it is complete - at which time you see progress on file upload. Once both are complete, the synth files need to be processed and unpacked onto the storage servers ("publishing"). – ScottF, on April 22, 2009 20:33

ScottF replied on April 22, 2009 20:31 to the update "Workaround available for WinXP SP2 out of memory issue." in Microsoft Live Labs:

I should have also mentioned that upgrading to XP SP3 is really the best way to fix this issue.

Thanks Darius for pointing this out.. :-)

ScottF posted an update in Microsoft Live Labs on April 22, 2009 16:52:

Workaround available for WinXP SP2 out of memory issue.

Photosynth running out of memory? Do you have Windows XP SP2? (Not SP1, not SP3 - just SP2) We have a workaround available for you. All you need to do is install WIC (Windows Imaging Component). There are two options for the install: You can get WIC directly from the Download Center here, for free - but this requires Windows Genuine validation.

An easier way to get WIC is to simply install the latest Windows Live Photo Gallery.

ScottF replied on February 18, 2009 04:50 to the question "guide needs major work" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hi Robert, thanks for the feedback. I like your idea of a cheat sheet that can be printed and carried about.

The dialog box currently updates in chunks, and isn't very accurate, unfortunately. If you have a fast PC but slow upload speed, the last 1/3rd of the progress bar can take an awfully long time. We compensate for this by telling you which image we're currently uploading, and how many are left.

ScottF replied on February 10, 2009 22:59 to the problem "taking the photosynth site out service for a while." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Thanks for the feedback.. We're actually working on a better embedding scenario that won't be as dependent on Photosynth.com.

ScottF replied on January 26, 2009 23:46 to the problem "199 images = 5% synthy :/" in Microsoft Live Labs:

First of all - those are great pictures, we'd like to see a synth of that place..

Your biggest problem is that you don't have enough pictures that overlap. Please read the photography guide here, and make sure you have enough overlap between your images.

ScottF replied on December 12, 2008 03:26 to the update "Anyone experiencing slow load times?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

The problem has been resolved!

ScottF replied on December 12, 2008 00:13 to the update "Anyone experiencing slow load times?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Thanks Andrew..

We have more data now, and we think the problem is isolated to the west coast. The networking folks are implementing a fix now.

ScottF replied on December 12, 2008 00:13 to the update "Anyone experiencing slow load times?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Thanks Andrew..

We have more data now, and we think the problem is isolated to the west coast. The networking folks are implementing a fix now.

ScottF posted an update in Microsoft Live Labs on December 11, 2008 22:01:

Anyone experiencing slow load times?

Hi folks, one of our network providers is experiencing problems right now. Some images are loading very slowly. Are you seeing these problems? If so, please let us know what city or state you're in.

ScottF replied on December 01, 2008 21:07 to the problem "Missing synths." in Microsoft Live Labs:

We did resolve the problem with the remaining synths last Wednesday, so all content should be back online - please let us know if you see any further problems!

ScottF replied on November 18, 2008 23:00 to the idea "QoS: Bandwidth cap while uploading" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Actually, the underlying HTTP library used by the Photosynth client doesn't support QoS.. So we'll be doing some work to implement bandwidth management in a future version of the client. My goal is to allow you to synth while viewing a Photosynth, which is a more demanding activity from a bandwidth perspective.

ScottF set one of Dan Cory's replies as an official response to "Recommended economy graphics cards" in Microsoft Live Labs