Learn from my mistake!!!

[hayju01]

I post this so others will not be so 'stupid' as I was last Tuesday 1st Nov.

Didn't Dew Shield/Heater my scope, a school boy error and not the first time so should have learnt by now but by no means the only lesson taught me that night.

It was first light for my Baader Steeltrack so maybe I was impatient, I did remember to put the scope (C9.25) out too cool down and made doubly sure on all aspects of alignment.

Started imaging (DFK21) Jupiter at around 8pm wasn't too surprised to see a wobbling blob as I figured seeing would be bad an it was only at 30Degs at this time. Was however impressed at how well the Steeltrack worked (even on focusing a blob) and was looking forward to the seeing improving as the night got older and jupiter got higher. I still captured some images not expecting too much but to be sure i was ready for later.

Sure enough seeing did improved considerably around 9.15 and i was imaging right up to my laptop battery running dry (new laptop not got a lighter powercord for it yet) at around 10.15.

Back into the house to plug in the laptop and try a couple of quick processes to see the results of my 2 hours labour and 23GB of avi's......

Well this is where my heart sank and my second lesson of the night was taught:iamwithstupid:. ALL my avi's were black and white and not what i had expected as i was sure I had been capturing using YUY2 and the images on the screen looked fine but one after the other they were all b&W.................may be I had selected Y800 and all was not lost and the images were just needed debayer so put a few through registax and used the debayer prefilter......but no they were still B&W

Unpacked the DFK and plugged it back into the laptop to check what setting i had in IC Capture and sure enough i had been using YUY2 as i'd thought ..........but WAIT isnt there a setting under the recording settings.......oh yes here it is - Video Compressor - Uncompressed Y800 :(:(

So there you have it LESSON 2, make sure the capture settings and record settings in IC Capture are compatible or you'll end up with GB's of useless avi's.

I dont actually feel too bad as luckily even though seeing did improve it probably wasnt above 4/10, plus I did get to prove that the money spent on the Steeltrack was well worth it and that my new(ish) laptop (only second light of it) was a great improvement on my netbook.

I guess I would add a 3rd lesson and that is to check your video/capture settings early on in a session just to be sure

Hope this saves someone else from that sinking feeling.......

[todd8137]

you could always save the settings as default and they load up that way

[hayju01]

you could always save the settings as default and they load up that way

Indeed, the reason the problem occured is the previous imgaing session I was using Y800 for capture and therefore the Y800 for recording was correct so even if I had saved my settings e.g. Y800 for both capture and record, I would probably have gone and changed the capture to YUY2 and still forgotten to change the recording setting to RGB

I just need to remember to change both.