Issue with wefax decodes

[InTheWeeds]

Hi Everyone, I'm 'the new guy' here. Be gentle.

I have been decoding weather faxes lately, and a lot of the images seem to have the same problem. The image will decode straight for a while, and then make a jump to one side or the other. It will then continue to decode straight for a while again before making another jump. What I end up with is something like this:

http://www.pbase.com/bowman1/image/151249350/medium.jpg

I have tried skew correction, and ended up with an even bigger mess than I started with. Skew correction would work great if the entire image was affected, but this is not a constant, only intermittent. A friend of mine told me about a utility that can be used to correct this problem, but he couldn't remember the name and my Google searches have come up with nothing. Does anyone have any ideas?

I am currently using SeaTTY as my wefax decoder.

 

[Token]

In the past when I have had similar glitches it was an interrupt caused issue. Either another piece of software makes a call and interrupts the WEFAX software or an interrupt affects the data from the sound card (have seen both). I was able to trouble shoot by opening Task Manager and shutting down applications and processes until the glitches stopped, most often, for me, it came down to a single item. I know there was a plug-in for Photoshop that was giving me fits along these lines for a while. After finding the issue I just had to shut down the process before trying to run any WEFAX. The long term fix for me was a dedicated radio record / decode PC with little but radio related software on it.

You might also try another decoder and see if you have the same issue, fldigi does WEFAX and is pretty good.


By the way, nice SX-62 with Miss Sarah Jane


T!

 

[InTheWeeds]

Thanks for the advice. That seems to be the consensus over on another board as well. I have updated all the drivers as a precaution (needed to be done anyway), and will now try closing out some programs and seeing how it goes.

Thanks for the Sarah Jane compliments too. I have another shoot scheduled for next weekend with a different model who will be wearing little more than an old Crosley floor standing radio.

 

[eorange]

For what it's worth - I decoded WEFAX using MultiPSK on some pretty crappy laptops, and got decent images only by adjusting the skew and offset. I have never seen that stairstep pattern (but it's good to know what might be causing it).

 

[hawkeye32]

For what it's worth - I decoded WEFAX using MultiPSK on some pretty crappy laptops, and got decent images only by adjusting the skew and offset. I have never seen that stairstep pattern (but it's good to know what might be causing it).

I agree also Multi-Psk is great for WEFAX, also with this program, if u catch the WEFAX right at the very start, multi, will automatically set the offset and skew. If u catch in the middle then u can make the adjustments urself manually using the offset and skew. What u can do is push the offset 1 click at a time until the "black margin" reaches the left side. Hope this helps!!