|
Feature
|
Benefit
|
|
User interface enhancements
|
These enhancements give you better control over Echoview's workspace. They make your work easier by giving you easily accessible information about your data.
- A Tape measure tool
 on the Echogram tools toolbar, to gauge the distance between two points on a multibeam echogram.
- Enhancements for the display of onscreen analyses. Integration results or analysis results are displayed on the relevant dialog box for requested regions or rectangle-shaped selections or cells. The dialog box can be left open and will update itself with respect to a requested onscreen analysis. Linking is available for regions and selections, so that the display of integration results or analysis results updates automatically for subsequent regions and selections. In addition, the Integration Results dialog box or Analysis Results dialog box will respond to regions selected on the Region browser. The ergonomics of viewing integration and analysis results are significantly improved by this enhancement.
- Enhancements to the Looped Multibeam Replay feature. On the singlebeam echogram a line indicates the active ping. In addition, the feature now works when the multibeam and singlebeam echograms are part of an auto-synchronized group.
- The Echoview status bar now displays latitude and longitude to one thousandth of a minute.
- Speed up the removal of data files in a fileset by using the shortcut CTRL+A, to select all files.
- To maximize the working area in your Echoview workspace, you can now move the main menu, and dock toolbars next to the Echoview logo.
- Delete a selected 3D region from a multibeam echogram with the DELETE key or Delete Selected Region from the Shortcut menu.
- A new Zoom toolbar can be used on echograms, cruise tracks, the Variables and Geometry window and graph selections. Zooming with the mouse wheel can be used on echograms, cruise tracks and the Variables and Geometry window.
- Changes to keyboard shortcuts for the Regions window and changes to the Shortcut menu mean that you can select all regions and use the SHIFT and/or CTRL keys for multiple region selection as well. As a result, you can delete many regions at a time.
- New docking ability for the Region browser dialog box. This feature enhances your control over the look and workflow of the Echoview window.
- A bug affecting the shortcut keys to graph a single target region has been fixed. The new shortcut keys are CTRL+SHIFT+F3.
- A bug affecting the SHIFT+K Fish tracking shortcut has been fixed. To accompany the fix, a new shortcut SHIFT+CTRL+K to detect fishtracks in the entire echogram has been added.
- There is now a Shortcut (right-click) menu for the Color legend. This menu displays the current color display settings from the Display page of the Variable Properties dialog box and can be used to quickly change those settings.
- Saved Echoview workspaces now scale to fit when opened in a differently sized Echoview window.
- The Microsoft Windows taskbar button (and tooltip) for Echoview now displays the name of the active EV file in the Echoview window.
|
|
Support for pitch data
|
Echoview introduces support for pitch data from RESON 7000 series data files and *pitch.csv data files. The new Motion correction operator requires both roll and pitch data to calculate corrections to sample data.
|
|
New Operators and Operator enhancements
|
These new operators and operator enhancements give you powerful and more flexible tools to process your data.
- A new Motion correction operator that corrects for attenuation that occurs when the transducer changes orientation, in the time between signal transmission and signal reception. The operator requires a singlebeam variable and both pitch and roll data, to calculate corrections to sample data. This operator may be useful in improving biomass estimate calculations. See About motion correction for more information about the operator and its algorithms.
- The Motion correction (Dunford method) operator is in the beta feature state for Echoview 4.30.
- A new X x Y convolution operator which allows you to specify the size of the convolution window and the convolution algorithm to be used - a choice of Top hat algorithm or a variation of a Gaussian blur algorithm. This allows you to tailor a convolution for your data.
- The X x Y convolution operator is in the beta feature state for Echoview 4.30.
- The Maximum threshold operator has been replaced by the more versatile Threshold operator. Settings are offered to enable the Threshold operator to act as a Minimum threshold operator or a Maximum threshold operator.
- The Processed data operator can now accept Single targets operands.
- The Single target detection - single beam (method 1) and Single target - split beam (method 1) operators have been changed. These operators will now only accept TS data as input operands. EV files using an earlier version of the operator will behave as normal but will have [deprecated] in the operator name.
- Support for boolean operands has been added to the following operators: Dilation filter nxn and Erosion filter nxn, Beam opening filter 3x3, Beam closing filter 3x3, Beam dilation filter 3x3 and Beam erosion filter 3x3.
|
|
Line enhancements
|
Design changes for line operators and a new bottom line pick algorithm continue our commitment to make working with lines easier.
- Line operators have been rationalized into existing operator groups. These changes have no impact on your previous EV files. When creating a new editable line or a new virtual line in the Variables and Geometry window, all line operators are automatically listed.
- Echoview offers a new line picking algorithm called the Best bottom candidate line pick that uses information from surrounding pings to constrain the bottom detection candidates. You will notice much more accurate and consistent line picking using the default settings for this algorithm, and there is also the option to fine-tune the line pick settings for data sets where the defaults don't work.
This algorithm can be used when line picking on an echogram or when creating a virtual line with the new Best bottom candidate line pick operator.
The Best bottom candidate link pick is in the beta feature state for Echoview 4.30.
Refer to About the Best bottom candidate line pick for more information.
- To streamline the behavior and settings of the Maximum Sv and the Best bottom candidate line pick algorithms, the Maximum Sv algorithm has been modified slightly at Step 2.
- Editable lines picked before Echoview 4.30 will not change but these lines will be different from lines picked (on the same data) with Echoview 4.30.
-
- Virtual lines created using the Maximum Sv algorithm, from Echoview 4.20, will change. Such virtual lines will be picked using the algorithm implemented in Echoview 4.30.
-
- The difference between the two versions of the Maximum Sv algorithm is that the earlier version returns a picked line that is deeper by one to two samples for a Backstep range of 0m.
-
- Echoview introduces the new Line operator group. The Line pick operators group contains the Maximum Sv line pick operator and the new Best bottom candidate line pick operator.
- A new setting for the Span gaps operator, that allows you to specify the line status of the bridging line segments.
|
|
Variables and Geometry window enhancements
|
These enhancements to the Variables and Geometry Window are aimed at speeding up and simplifying workflow when working with variables, virtual variables and geometry objects. We are pleased to add the following:
- Enhancements for the Variables and Geometry window that allow you to Pan, Zoom, select objects and print with ease. Multiple objects can be selected at once and moved as a group, allowing much easier and smoother rearrangement of objects.
- Visual enhancements add to the upgrade - objects are rendered in a more appealing way and the arrows linking objects have been enhanced and smoothed.
- A fix for a bug. Layouts for variables, virtual variables and objects in the Variables and Geometry window are now copied to templates.
|
|
Support for greater than 3GB RAM
|
Echoview now supports the use of the Windows /3GB setting. Enable this setting on your computer to better manage >3GB of physical RAM.
|
|
Design change - Saved Live viewing EV files
|
Echoview has changed the filename format for EV files saved while Live viewing. The change will allow you to sort saved live viewing EV files chronologically (by their name).
|
|
Improved file reading performance
|
Changes to Echoview's file reading code will improve Echoview's performance in this area. Improvements are dependent on the type of data files and the device from which you read your files.
|
|
Microsoft Windows Vista and Echoview
|
We are continuing to work on support for the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system in version 4.30 and beyond. Refer to Echoview and Microsoft Windows Vista for known issues and information on how to run Echoview under Microsoft Windows Vista.
|
|
Scripting and COM object enhancements
|
We continue to develop support for scripting using COM object automation. The key advantage of this automation model is that Echoview can pass information back to the script. It is now possible for scripts to make informed decisions, request decisions from the user, and pass information from Echoview to the user. If you are interested to know more about COM automation, please contact us for further information. It is important to note that COM automation is in a highly developmental state and that we cannot guarantee backwards compatibility in future versions.
For more information about the COM objects in Echoview 4.30 refer to Scripting with COM objects.
Other specific enhancements include:
- A new script SetProperty (deprecated scripting model for Echoview 5.0) command to specify a transducer.
i.e. SetProperty "Variable.Calibration.Transducer","TransducerN".
- A bug fix for the script command evo.ExportLine (deprecated scripting model for Echoview 5.0). This command will now correctly export according the file type specified in the output file name. Behavior before this fix was that Echoview would export according to the default file type (.csv).
|
|
Help file documentation corrected
|
- Documentation about Echocheck support for .raw files from Simrad ME70 echosounders was incorrect and has been removed from the About Echocheck page.
- Additional documentation has been added for Single Targets .csv data, outlining the settings that affect the export of such data. The case of a vertically offset transducer is discussed.
|