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Trouble with SharpCap2

Astrosurf

By Astrosurf
in Discussions - Software

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rwg

rwg

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I'm tryinmg to image Jupiter at the mo with my ZWO ASI120MC and SharpCap is playing up. For a start it keeps grinding to a halt when I turn up the Exposure to focus. Then the view shows lots of what look like hot pixels that aren't there when it's running. But it also keeps Previewing, whatever that is. See screenshot, bottom of 1st image. But it's also very slow. I'm on a new laptop W8.1 and bags of memory etc so it should be OK.Why is it running at approx 8.3fps - 2nd image?

Alexxx

Changed the settings and it's faster. But when I pushed Turbo USB up to 100 the fps increased but the image started to jump about.New settings here:

Hi,

sorry not to notice this earlier and contribute. You may benefit from updating to the SharpCap 2.5 beta builds that I have put online over the last couple of days - http://www.sharpcap.co.uk/sharpcap/news

You have the right idea with the Turbo USB control - basically you turn it up gradually and it will increase the frame rate, then it will get to the point where it's trying to push things too far and you will suddenly find that turning it up gives you broken frames, a much lower frame rate or both. The idea is to tweak this to a level to get the highest stable frame rate.

Issues with broken frames where it looks like 1/2 the frame has been snapped off and shifted around are much improved in the new version -this is down to a new version of the ZWO SDK which helps reduce the problem a lot *and* a new option to drop split frames in the SharpCap UI, which means that SharpCap is on the lookout for the odd split frame and will just discard it without showing it to you.

Finally, you've hit another snag when turning up the exposure to try to focus. Under some circumstances it seemed that the older builds of SharpCap would just keep waiting for ever to get another frame which isn't happening when setting longer exposures. ZWO's new SDK provides a much nicer way to deal with setting long exposures up and cancelling them if necessary and I think that I've got this issue fixed in the latest version.

Of course, it's a beta version, so I could have fixed all these three bugs and introduced a worse one, but I really hope not :)

cheers,

Robin

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rwg

rwg

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SharpCap is in preview mode by default when it starts - that means that you're looking at the frames on the screen, but not capturing them. When you press 'Start Capture' it goes into capture mode - now the frames are being saved as well as you looking at them.

hope that makes sense :)

cheers,

Robin

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  • 2 weeks later...
Astrosurf

Astrosurf

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That is an amazing image of Jupiter.  Did you take that using your 200P with a Barlow or just with the web cam? I used a x2 Barlow plus web cam and my Jupiter  image is much smaller than yours :(

Pete

Thank you! I used a 3xTal Barlow with my 200P and ZWO ASI120MC cam. Then I doubled the size in Paint Shop Pro. That's why it's larger! :grin: So don't despair. Keep at it!

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