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Just in time for Christmas, oacapture 1.3.0


JamesF

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Yes indeed!  In case you've got nothing else exciting going on over the next few days, you can now upgrade to oacapture 1.3.0.  And to think people believe I hate Christmas :D

Major changes for this release include:

  • The latest ZWO SDK for ASI cameras and updates so the application has more knowledge of their newer cameras
  • Support for the QHY IMG132E
  • Improved handling for the QHY5-II and QHY5L-II
  • Support for turning camera controls on and off where the camera provides such functionality (mostly Point Grey GigE and IIDC models)

There are also numerous other small bugfixes and improvements.  According to github I've cleared more than fifty issues with this release.  Not that there aren't an awful lot more...

Support for the IMG132E is a bit "experimental".  I mostly did it just to prove to myself that I could.  Generally it seems to work, but there may be a problem here and there still to be found.

Users of Touptek, Altair and (USB only, I think) Mallincam cameras that are recognised by the Linux software provided by the vendors should now find that oacapture also supports the same cameras if the vendor's software is installed in the default location.  In Altair's case I'd recommend using the most recent beta version of their software.  For Touptek I'm not sure there's real news there as I've had many of their cameras working for a while, but I believe it should be quite a step forward for Altair cameras.  I'm still trying to find a way to do this on MacOS that won't spook the horses.

Downloads of DMG files for MacOS and .deb/.rpm packages for Linux from the downloads page and sources are available from github where you can also report problems you have with the application.

I have vague plans for the next couple of releases to improve the handling of video formats and then to improve the handling of cropping and ROI selection, but I'm easily distracted if something else interesting comes up or I get hold of an unsupported camera :D

James

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  • 1 month later...

Hi James,

Yesterday I used an ASI1600 mono camera with oaCapture 1.3.0 for the first time. I am using a MBP 15" with OS 10.9.5.

The format was MOV 8 bits and I set it to ROI 640 x 480 px. It seemed to work perfectly and I caught approximately 1.200 frames. The .mov file is about 750 Mb which seems consistent with the number of frames.

But when I open it in QT, there are only 98 frames in all. 

Do you have any idea of where all the frames are hiding?

Thanks

 

/*Peter

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I wonder if some of the metadata for the mov file is wrong.  I'll have a look at this as soon as I can, but it will probably be a couple of weeks.  At the moment it seems that my available free time cannot be expressed as a positive integer :(

James

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  • 1 month later...

Hi James,

last night I photographed Jupiter using my ASI-120 MC-S camera and got the same problem as described above, i.e. Iphotographed 1200 frames but only 38 were available. I used my MBP 15" (mid 2012) running 10.9.5.

As I I first noticed the problem when I tried an ASI 1600 on that computer with oaCapture, I assumed that oaCapture had a bug. I have just tested my ASI-120 MC-S on a different MBP and it works fine just as it has done before so I now think it is more likely it is something in my computer rather than the program that is at fault. Would you have any suggestions to what can be the cause?

Is it possible that something got corrupted when I tried the ASI-1600 with oaCapture as everything worked fine before but not after?

Thank you

 

/*Peter R

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No, I have the problem on a MBP 15" mid 2012 with 10.9.5.

Since you fixed the problem I had with debarring in the .MOV-format, I have successfully used it with my ASI-120MC-S.

A friend lent me an ASI-1600 some times ago so I tried to capture some sequences in the .MOV-format. Everything seemed to work fine during the capture but when stacking I noticed the problem I describe above in my first and second posts. (I can still capture tiff files in 8 and 16 bits using the ASI-1600 with oaCapture).

Since then I have the same problem when using my ASI-120MC-S with oaCapture on that Mac as something has become corrupt. If I capture 1200 frames, only about 38 appear when playing or stacking the movie.

I have tried downloading newer versions of oaCapture but the problem persists.

I have a second MBP 15" early 2011 with 10.7.5. As I have never tried the ASI-1600 on that computer, it still runs fine with my ASI-120 MC-S and oaCapture.

My conclusion so far is that the .MOV-files have become corrupt in oaCapture since I tried it with the ASI-1600.

As a side note, when I use my TIS firewire cameras with the capture program "AstroII DC", those .MOV-files are not corrupt and work fine on the first MBP.

/*Peter R

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oacapture should see the TIS firewire cameras too, so you may be able to compare them directly.

Could be that there's some sort of problem with mov files.  I'll investigate here.

James

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Yes, I started using oaCapture with my TIS firewire cameras as well but since I got this corruption problems of the .MOV files in oaCapture, it also affects these cameras.

On the same computer, AstroIIDC (my old Mac capture program)  still captures .MOV files correctly as I wrote above.

/*Peter R

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  • 1 month later...

Hi James,

since the problem appeared I have switched partition on my computer and run oaCapture 1.0.0 on a 10.10.5 system and everything has been mostly fine. But last night I installed oaCapture 1.4.0 on that partition and all my files were corrupt the same way as I have described. A capture of 2500 frames will only allow me to stack 70 or 80 of them, the others remain invisible.!

I now start to suspect that oaCapture 1.4.0 might be the origin of my problems.

I am now trying to revert and have trashed oaCapture 1.4.0 and reinstalled 1.1.0 but nothing works as it should. Is there any hidden preference file that I should trash as well or do you have any other advice you can give me?

Thank you

/*Peter R

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  • 2 weeks later...

There is a preferences file and it might help to delete that.  It'll probably be below Library/Preferences in your home folder and there may be more than one as the names seem to have changed over time for no reason that is obvious to me right now.

You may also want to remove .config/OpenAstro/oacapture.ini (again starting from your home folder) too.  I've moved to the .ini file because it was taking silly amounts of time to process the plist file on startup.

I'm trying to duplicate the problems here, but haven't been able to do so thus far.  I'm still working on this however.

James

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  • 2 months later...

Hi James,

Sorry, I missed that you got back in June on this topic.

I went to >Library >Preferences and found a file called "com.openastro.oaCapture.plist". Sometimes I also found a file called "org.openastroproject.oacapture.plist" and I have trashed both of them but it does not help to solve the problems.

 

I have no idea were I can locate the file you are mentioning ".config/OpenAstro/oacapture.ini". Could you please guide me.

 

I can view the created file with QT7 or QT10. If I want to stack the result I use AstroIIDC. But since this problem appeared, all the .MOV files are corrupt. Even if I capture for example 1000 frames, less than 100 will display and QT says that the duration of the film is 0:00:00. But the file size corresponds to the 1000 frames.

 

I have tried on 2 MBP and one iMac running from 10.7.5, 10.9.5 and 10.10.5 with the same result. Everything used to work just fine with my ASI-120 MC-S and my 2 firewire cameras from TIS and suddenly it stopped working on all my Macs and with all my cameras.

 

Thank's for your help

 

/*Peter R

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