wx astrocapture

[old geezer]

hi from rainy brandon in suffolk england.ime using wx astrocapture on my vista laptop as k3ccd tools woodnt work with my philips sp900 on long exposures.i can see how to capture images but dont get the rest of the options so am looking for a tutorial.many thanks from oldgeezer

[Ant]

Welcome to SGL.

This is going to sound patronising (I don't mean it to be), has the webcam had the long exposure mod done?

I have the SP900 and use K3CCD without issue (using XP though).

If the webcam is LX modded, then there must be a tick box or something somewhere to enable it.

I've never used WX Astrocapture, so can't help anymore - hopefully someone else will have.

Cheers

Ant

[jgs001]

I don't have my spc900 lx modded, but in wcastrocapture there's a checkbox about half way down on the left of the main screen, with an exposure time below that.

[old geezer]

dear ant,thanks for your quick reply.luckily i have an xp desktop as well so was able to try the setup on that.its got the lx mod ok,bought from astronomiser so use k3ccd on this pc.think i would have flipped otherwise :crybaby: did try to get a xp laptop from lled but one day before deleivery they extended it by 3 weeks and couldnt promise that so cancelled. did consider old laptop with series/parallel ports.in the end was sorted after much friendly advice from astronomiser.now looking at qhy5 cmos to get bigger chip area or dslr for wider field of view,any idears would be appreciated.sincerely old geezer

[old geezer]

:? dear john thanks for your reply/i found that check box ok but dont get/understand the options/settings folders,there,s 5 of them :? .thanks for old geezer

[jgs001]

Give me a while and I'll dig out me SPC900 and have a look. Which settings are you looking at, the actual camera settings, like gain, brightness etc ?

[old geezer]

dear john,its the actual settings. its options/settings/video capture/file name etc in wx astrocaptur i dont get

[jgs001]

Ah ok...

Capture File Name prefix: This is used to add some name to the front of the file, here's an example from one of mine the other night..

wxAC_20081111_2231_038.avi

I left the prefix at detail, so the file starts wcAC, then the date, time and seconds I think...

Capture Folder, which folder to write the output video in.

Sample Format, leave it at YUV420. I can't recall what that means, but it's the CODEC used for the video. If you set it to RGB24 then things like registax can't process it, I know, I've tried and you can't convert them after as far as I can tell, I've tried that too.

Container, defines the file type. Either as an AVI, or a zip of FITS files. I can't remember what FITS are, but it's a special file format. I've only used AVI.

The 2nd screen is for defining long exposure stuff, the LE control port is, I believe the additional port required for controlling the LX camera. Not having got an LX modded camera, I've never used it.

The 3rd screen is for guiding, I've not tried this either.

HTH