New in Echoview 4.80 for all users

Feature

How it works

Benefit

Automated region classification

Echoview is pleased to introduce automated region classification for single beam Sv echograms.

Choose to apply classification rules immediately after 2D school detection or manually with selections, selected regions or through the Region Manager.

Classification rules can enable you to distinguish between schools of different species according the school region's SHAPES and analysis variables.

For more information refer to Classifying regions.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts for classifying one or more regions, see User-defined keyboard shortcuts for more information.

Variable and Geometry window enhancements

Drag and drop input operands

You can now change input operands by dragging an arrow from one variable to another. For more information refer to Variables and Geometry window - Editing.

When you drag an arrow, available objects are haloed and specific objects are highlighted when the mouse points to them. Visual nodes are displayed, to indicate that the object can be used as an input operand or can accept an input operand.

Customize View tabs

To customize the arrangement of the View tabs select then drag the tabs.

Copy, Paste

You can now select one or more lines and/or virtual variables and Copy and Paste them into your current and other EV files.

For more information, see About the Variables and Geometry window.

View - line usage information

Line usage information can now be displayed on a View by using the Shortcut menu > View > View Properties > Relationship type: Line usage. For more details refer to Colors and shapes in the Variables and Geometry window.

Improved usability streamlines your processing.

Copy and Paste provides an easy way to reuse parts of important virtual variable chains.

Region manager enhancement

You now use the Region Manager to change region classes or types, delete regions or shift regions in depth or time for manually selected individual regions. Use the Regions window to select particular regions.

A TVG curve overlay can help you estimate background noise.

Exporting 2D region definitions enhancement

You can now export your 2D region definitions from the Regions window as well as from the Echogram window.

For information on exporting region definitions, see About Exporting Data.

Region Notes enhancement

You can now select whether the detection settings are written to the Notes section of a detected region.

Use or clear Write detection settings to notes on the Fish Track Detection dialog box or School detection dialog box.

Your annotations can be added using the Region Browser.

A wider choice in how you annotate your regions.

Live viewing enhancement

Assign a user-defined keyboard shortcut to create a marker region at the last ping without having to select the ping. This can be particularly useful while you live view data.

Live viewing shortcuts facilitate live viewing analysis.

Save template enhancement

The File menu now offers the action Save Template with options:

• Copy to New Template
• Copy to New Live Viewing Template

Refer to Using EV files for more information.

Creating EV file templates is easier.

Tape measure tool change

The displayed measurement no longer obscures the feature you are measuring.

Clearer display of measurements improves usability.

New Latest Forum Topics window

Highlights of the new Echoview hosted Hydroacoustics User Forum can be displayed in the Echoview application. Click the Forum Topic to open it in your internet browser.

A tool that keeps you in touch with current hydroacoustic processing methodology.

New Operators and Operator enhancements

The new Reduce pings [Method 2] operator calculates pings only when they are required. This can lead to significant savings in display time and can be useful in developing and testing virtual variable processing chains.

The Method 2 operator differs from the Reduce pings operator in that the Method 2 echogram has the same number of pings as the input operand, but the data is padded with ‘no data’ values for the number of pings removed by the Reduce pings algorithm.

Note: The pings that pad the end of a Reduce pings [Method 2] echogram will introduce an error in NASC calculations for the last cell. For more information refer to the Notes section for Reduce pings [Method 2].

Virtual variable limit removed

The upper limit of 500 of virtual variables per EV file has been removed.

Allows your virtual variable methodologies to meet your analysis needs.

Bug fixes

School detection bug fix

A bug in single-beam school detection introduced in Echoview 4.70 has been fixed. Older versions of Echoview (4.60 and earlier) are not affected.

The bug results in two parameters (Minimum total school height and Minimum total school length) being ignored during school detection. This meant that many smaller schools were detected that would otherwise have been discarded by the school detection algorithm. As a result region counts and overall values for integration and hence biomass, increased.

If you have detected schools in version 4.70, we strongly recommend that you download the latest version of 4.70 from our web site, then redetect schools in your data.

PRC_NASC cell bug fix

A bug associated with a Ping number based Time/distance grid and the (exported) PRC_NASC for the last cells in an echogram has been fixed. When a Ping number grid was specified, calculations extended beyond the end of the data and resulted in incorrect cell sizes in the last cells of the echogram.

COM bug fixes

• A bug with EvFile.Properties.SchoolsDetection2D.MinimumCandidateHeight has been fixed. Incorrect (error) messages about the minimum legal value for the MinimumCandidateHeight property were displayed.
• A bug for color display minimum properties has been fixed. You can now set the color display minimum using a COM script.
• A bug that affected EvCalibration.SvGain has  been fixed. The EvCalibration property SvGain failed to work over Echoview versions 4.50 to 4.70. This bug could have affected those whose COM scripts referred to Simrad EK500 data.

Two bugs have been fixed for the Resample by distance interval operator:

• A bug has been fixed in the distance grid algorithm of the Resample by distance interval operator. The operator's distance grid was (at times) slightly different from the distance grid in the variable, this affected onscreen integration results.

• A bug has been fixed in the Resample by distance interval operator. When resampling down to one ping, the resampled ping was incorrectly calculated.

A bug has been fixed in the EVE file export where range values were incorrectly exported as depths. EVE data range values are now correct.

Layer and interval bug fix

A bug associated with discrepancies between onscreen and exported layer and interval numbers has been fixed. Documentation on Interval and layer numbering in export files has been updated.

HAC display bug

A bug that affected the display of the user specified Absorption value for HAC data has been fixed. Prior to Echoview 4.80, the Absorption value was incorrectly displayed by Echoview.

Echoconfig 500 bug

A bug that affected Echoconfig 500 has  been fixed. The version of Echoconfig 500 was incompatible with Echolog 500 over the Echoview versions 4.50 to 4.70.

Scripting and COM objects

The implementation of COM objects (COM object automation) to access Echoview (through scripts) has been highly successful. Echoview Software continues to enhance existing COM objects and add support for new COM objects. We are also developing new tutorials and example scripts to help you upload, process and export your data efficiently.

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.

For more information about the COM objects in Echoview 4.80 refer to Scripting with COM objects.

If you are interested to know more about COM automation, please contact us for further information.

Support for the Inherit calibration settings from settings on the Calibration page of the Variable Properties dialog box for virtual variables.

• Properties.Calibration.InheritCalibrationSettings
  Access or set the variable to inherit from.
• Properties.Calibration.UseCalibrationInheritance
  Set variable to inherit from the first operand.
• EvFile.Variables.UseCalibrationInheritance
  Set all variables to inherit from the first operand.

Support for Shift regions in the depth dimension and the Shift regions in the time dimension settings on the Region manager.

• EvRegion.ShiftDepth
  Shift region by the specified depth.
• EvRegion.ShiftTime
  Shift region by the specified time.

Support for the pre-reading of EV files. This is useful when large data files are used by an EV file.
Usage is EvFile.PreReadDataFiles.

Support for editable lines and line pick properties.

• EvFile.Lines supports new methods in the EvLinesCollection to create and delete editable lines.
• The EvLine object supports the new methods AsLineEditable and AsLineBase which are used to determine editable lines or lines.
• The new EvLineEditable object offers support for editable lines similar to the EvLine object. EvLineEditable.OverwriteWith supports overwriting an editable line.
• The new property EvFile.Properties.LinePick accesses the new EvLinePickProperties object and allows you to access the settings on the Line pick page of the EV File Properties dialog box.

A change to EvFileset.TimeOffset; you can now read and set a fileset's Time offset.

From Echoview 4.80, Echoview will apply correctly set and default shortcuts, and ignore incorrectly set shortcuts in Echoview shortcuts.cfg. This means that you can use Echoview shortcuts.cfg with the minimum of fuss in previous and future versions of Echoview.

For more information refer to User defined keyboard shortcuts.

Documentation bug fixes

• Documentation for the calculation for Thickness_mean for Sv and Single targets was unclear. The two methods are now documented separately. Clarification is provided for the definitions for εs and εi.

For more information, refer to the Thickness_mean algorithm.

• Documentation for the 3D schools area algorithm did not state that the calculation excludes the area of the circles at the ends of the cylinder.

For more information, refer to School detection module algorithms.

New documentation

• A new reference for the 3 color maximum topic.

• Clearer documentation for Region Manager Action section settings - shift regions in depth and time.

• Clearer documentation on the use of Active and Selected regions.
• The extensive Variable Properties dialog box page has been split into pages that are better targeted, easier to navigate and easier to read.
• Echoview now reads the Pulse length from HAC data files. This value is displayed in Ping (from file) section of the Details window.