SER Video Colour Depth & Bayering?

[SnakeyJ]

In recent months I've noticed that my SER video output, recorded @ 8bit in Firecap 2.3 with my mono QHY5L-II has been showing up as 48 bit colour.    It's caused me to scratch my head, but been chasing other problems down so haven't thought to enquire before hand.      When I try to import these files in to AS!2 they show up as Bayer GBRG in the preview window and if I attempt to load and sort with PIPP, this will error telling me it can't produce an output SER file from a colour input video.      When I load the resultant stacked files into R6 it also treats them as colour files.

Not sure if this is simply an error in the way that Firecap is writing the SER file headers - but definitely loosing resolution if I try to force a conversion to monochrome within PIPP.

Is there anyway to check the SER file headers to confirm the problem?

[cgarry]

By default PIPP will debayer the .SER video if the header specifies a bayer pattern.  You can disable this in PIPP by changing:

* Input Options->SER File Options->Debayer SER Frames With Bayer Pattern = Unticked.

Then you will be able to write out the file in SER format.

It does sound like the SER header is saying that your data has a bayer pattern and the data is written as 16-bit data instead of 8.  I do not know of a program that will output the SER header data, though I could quickly knock up a version of PIPP that dumps the header information if that helps.

Cheers,

Chris