By ‘hand’ - RC on one screen, counting up the seconds; cache temp folder open in W Explorer on the other screen; when new files start to appear, and when they reach 55 and stop, I jot down the second count.
Time taken - in Draft, 55 files are created, total 10MB. Then in Align, another 55 are created, adding 82MB. Looks like RC starts stage b) all over again when Downscale factor changes. Then running Align again is only 11secs, not needing to do stage b) again - unless cache temp had been cleared meanwhile.
So looks like one can’t afford to clear cache, if planning to run Align again, or it will do stage b) all over again. However the *results* of Align (Reconstruction?) are stored in the Project and don’t need to refer to the cache temp files.
So I guess stage a) is EXIF sorting of images, b) is obviously detecting and caching points, c) is Reconstruction?
BTW I can see no cache temp numbering pattern that links any file to a particular photo image filename, a pity, as the individual files differ greatly in size, presumably due to #pts found for each.
I assume #pts in the Images list means, or is same as, ‘number of identifiable features’ in ea photo, which get used in ‘number of tie points’ in the Component>Camera poses list.
In the above Draft>Align>Align Run, I notice that in the second Align>Component>Camera poses list, three are redlined, 0 tie points, but one click on Enable brings them back with plenty of tie points. What’s that about?
I was threatened with expulsion when I mentioned that *competitor* by name. Maybe it’s OK if included in a link. I hope so, as the quality of advice there deserves to be referred to.
I know mean from median - and now I recall that ‘error’ in statistics means only ‘internal discrepancy’ not ‘deviation from absolute truth’!