SharpCap - free Astro Webcam Capture Software

[RogerTheDodger]

Hi Robin, I've just given 1.5.307 a go and it's crashing in XP when I select the LX cam in the menu - all I get is a crash and a Windows error box. Is it dumping a file somewhere as I don't see on in the rwg dir...

[Flying Eye]

There is the sequence setup that you get when you hit 'start capture'. Currently that's limited to a max of 100 captures in the sequence (which could be single frames) and a minimum realistic interval of 1-2 seconds.

It's easy enough for me to increase the sequence count limit, but due to the way the sequencing works making the minimum interval smaller isn't going to work.

Doesn't fulfill your requirements entirely, but might be useful anyway.

Robin

Hi Robin, I just had a try and directed it to save the single images to a folder just for timelapse shots, and it went fine, however the file naming is a problem for combining them later. I guess I need an option to just number sequentially, or a util that could renumber them based on date and time etc, into something like xxxx.png (I'm guessing 0000-9999 might be enough for now, but maybe having 5 digits to be certain?)

The text files are useful, but one might not want them if doing a timelapse set, or maybe just for first and last shots. I don't know really, as I've never been here before, and I am sorry if that makes me a bit of a pest!

[rwg]

Hi Robin, I've just given 1.5.307 a go and it's crashing in XP when I select the LX cam in the menu - all I get is a crash and a Windows error box. Is it dumping a file somewhere as I don't see on in the rwg dir...

Look on the desktop for a file named 'Sharpcap.dump' or similar. If you have one then email it to me.

I've had another report of this too - bit odd as I didn't think I'd changed anything to do with LX mode since the last version, but these things happen sometime

cheers,

Robin

[rwg]

Hi Robin, I just had a try and directed it to save the single images to a folder just for timelapse shots, and it went fine, however the file naming is a problem for combining them later. I guess I need an option to just number sequentially, or a util that could renumber them based on date and time etc, into something like xxxx.png (I'm guessing 0000-9999 might be enough for now, but maybe having 5 digits to be certain?)

The text files are useful, but one might not want them if doing a timelapse set, or maybe just for first and last shots. I don't know really, as I've never been here before, and I am sorry if that makes me a bit of a pest!

I'll have a look at the file naming/placing to see if it can be tidied up a bit.

cheers,

Robin

[Flying Eye]

I'll have a look at the file naming/placing to see if it can be tidied up a bit.

cheers,

Robin

Thanks Robin, I'd add the thought that I do like how the naming is now, for regular one off shots and clips. But if changing anything I'd definitely make it an optional feature if at all. I'd hate to see my wishes detract from it's original intended functionality, which it's really good at right now.

I guess if it had an extra and distinctly separate mode as an option for timelapse then that would make the most sense and cause least impact from a regular astro users point of view.

I noticed Regstax can use the file names as they are, but it does not seem to bolt things together as I might wish in all cases. I will be trying some startrail stackers for the first time, this week hopefully, I don't know how they will be with the existing naming convention yet. I'll see about making time to install those later today with some luck.

I've used a file browser (FastStone, a really great free image browser/manager with tools) to roughly "animate" some of the raw output sequences from SharpCap and they look very encouraging and interesting, but of course it can't save an avi of them, but it gives a tantalising glimpse of how things might look! Just a shame I can only do 100 frames at a time at present, as that is a pretty short movie on anyone's terms.

[rwg]

Hi Robin, I've just given 1.5.307 a go and it's crashing in XP when I select the LX cam in the menu - all I get is a crash and a Windows error box. Is it dumping a file somewhere as I don't see on in the rwg dir...

Fixed (I hope - no LX camera here to test with, but pretty sure I found the bug) in version 1.5.308 - download from usual place.

Robin

[RogerTheDodger]

Hi Robin, I've just tried 1.5.309 and it's working fine again thanks.

BTW, the link for .309 points to the .308 file on your download page....

[ianaiken]

Hi Themos,

I'm reluctant to remove the connect on startup feature - it is probably the right thing to do far more often than it is the wrong thing todo. There are a couple of bugs that make it awkward that I will try to squash when I get a little time - the first is that if the application crashes it is supposed to not auto connect to the camera then next time it starts up, but it does. The second is todo with the cancel button on the LX dialog not really cancelling...

cheers,

Robin

And without this being fixed I can't start the app (it crashes). It's constantly looking for my QHY5 which I haven't got connected. I don't even want it to connect to that camera anyway. Auto connect used to be in software like APT and I think BYEOS and this was disabled eventually from feedback from users. I think auto connect is the wrong thing to do all the time. Let the user decide.

[RogerTheDodger]

or have it as a tickbox choice.

[rwg]

Hi Robin, I've just tried 1.5.309 and it's working fine again thanks.

BTW, the link for .309 points to the .308 file on your download page....

Thanks for the heads up on that - got careless with the copy and paste when editing the page. Fixed now.

I hear what you are saying about auto connect. In the latest versions I have made some improvements. The program should no longer crash if it fails to autoconnect to a camera on startup. I will try to make some more improvements to make failed autoconnect less of an annoyance.

Cheers

Robin

Sent from my MZ604 using Tapatalk

[ianaiken]

Hi Robin, 1.5.309 still crashes upon startup when it cant find my QHY5 camera.

[rwg]

Hi Ian,

OK, I presume it's just crashing with a 'Sharpcap has closed unexpectedly' message or similar, rather than showing the normal Sharpcap crash dialog with all the error text in it (otherwise you'd have posted the error text, right )

This means that it's actually the QHY driver that is bringing the program down when there is no camera available rather than doing what it should which would be to return an error code to SharpCap. However, you might struggle to get QHY to fix this, so I will try to implement an autoconnect on/off switch soon. My plan is to leave autoconnect on by default, but you will be able to turn it off manually *and* it will automatically turn off if the program crashes so that it will not connect next time.

cheers,

Robin

[ianaiken]

Right ... er.... hehe, no. I can email you it if you like but your diagnosis seems spot on. There is a pop up behind your crash report which states "Could not start previewing on CMOS QHY5 Camera Failed to initialize ASCOM camera" because it's not plugged in.

If there is an option for auto connect that would be great, even if it's in an ini file or something.

[nkneebone]

Hi there, first time I've ever posted in any forum so hope I'm doing this right, anyway I've been using Sharpcap and it's excellent but with just one problem for me. I've been imaging Jupiter(with neximage on a Windows 7 laptop) and can only capture at 20 fps or faster. When I click to 15 fps or lower the preview screen goes black and I can't capture anything, although the image does reappear if I drop the resolution lower tham 640x320. I've tried looking through the settings but have been unable to find a solution so I thought I'd ask on here !

Many thanks for any advice

Nick

[rwg]

Hi Nick,

I've heard of the preview vanishing sometimes during capture because the computer doesn't think it has enough processing power to run both the capture and the preview at the same time, so it gives up on the preview to actually let the capture work. However, it doesn't make sense that this would happen at low frame rates and all would be fine at high frame rates - surely the other way round would be expected...

Some general suggestions that might help :

Check you have the correct graphics drivers installed for your graphics hardware - sometimes blank previews seem to happen because the generic (slow) graphics drivers are being used

Test some different capture software (WxAstroCapture, Amcap?) to see if the same thing happens or if it is just SharpCap giving the problem

Try on a different computer if you can to see if it is just the one computer with the problem or it happens on several.

Robin

[nkneebone]

Hi Robin

Many thanks for your prompt reply, I have been following your suggestions but have not got very far unfortunately as both AmCap and WxAstrocapture kept crashing when I opened them and I was unable to check different frame rates because of this. I am able to change to lower frame rates when I run the laptop's webcam through Sharpcap instead of the Neximage.

I installed sharpcap on my XP desktop which I used to use with the neximage via Amcap before I got my laptop, however now for some reason its saying it doesn't recognize the device and claims it has a malfunction- will have another look at this tomorrow.

I'm not sure how to go about checking if the graphic card/driver are correct ?

Cheers,

Nick

[Cath]

Hello

I thought I would try SharpCap to see if it works with my HD webcam, but when I run the program it tries to access a video capture card I have in my PC rather than the USB HD webcam. It says it cant start previewing the video device, the trouble is it's trying to use the wrong device.

How do I tell the program to try to use the USB cam and not the video card card when the program starts up?

Thank you for any help

Cathy

[rwg]

Hi Cathy,

Your HD webcam should be listed in the 'cameras menu - just choose it from there after getting rid of the warning about the capture card. If you are finding that Sharpcap actually crashes on startup because of the capture card, just hold down control when starting it, which stops it from automatically trying to preview the first camera found.

Hope this helps

Robin

Sent from my MZ604 using Tapatalk

[Cath]

Your HD webcam should be listed in the 'cameras menu - just choose it from there after getting rid of the warning about the capture card. If you are finding that Sharpcap actually crashes on startup because of the capture card, just hold down control when starting it, which stops it from automatically trying to preview the first camera found.

Hope this helps

It certainly did help!

Yes the program was crashing at start up, but holding down the control key stopped that and I could then select the QuickCam Pro 9000 cam.

I'll have a play with it now.

Thank you Robin!

[rwg]

For those of you waiting for the ability to turn off auto connect on startup, it's available now in v1.5.310, which can be found at the usual place - SharpCap

Robin

[Grunthos]

v1.5.310

Thanks for your ongoing hard work Robin, it's all greatly appreciated.

[themos]

yes, thank you!

[nkneebone]

Hi Nick,

I've heard of the preview vanishing sometimes during capture because the computer doesn't think it has enough processing power to run both the capture and the preview at the same time, so it gives up on the preview to actually let the capture work. However, it doesn't make sense that this would happen at low frame rates and all would be fine at high frame rates - surely the other way round would be expected...

Some general suggestions that might help :

Check you have the correct graphics drivers installed for your graphics hardware - sometimes blank previews seem to happen because the generic (slow) graphics drivers are being used

Test some different capture software (WxAstroCapture, Amcap?) to see if the same thing happens or if it is just SharpCap giving the problem

Try on a different computer if you can to see if it is just the one computer with the problem or it happens on several.

Robin

Hi Robin

I've checked if I have the same problem on a different computer with SharpCap and the same thing does occur- as soon as I drop down to 15 fps the preview screen goes black. The problem did not happen when I tried AmCap. I don't know how to check if the correct driver is installed for my graphics hardware but I'm guessing this is less likely to be the issue if the same problem occurs on separate computers ?

Is there anything else you can think of that I can try ?

Cheers,

Nick

[rwg]

Yes, you are right, unlikely to be anything to do with the video card - most likely some sort of disagreement between SharpCap and the Neximage drivers which is causing the problem.

If you look in the Cameras menu, you will see your camera listed twice, once near the top and once lower down in an 'old code' section. Try selecting the second copy in the old code section and see if that works - it uses the code that Sharpcap used to capture in v1.4 and before which is more like the Amcap code. You'll miss out on a couple of recent features, but it might work.

Robin

[nkneebone]

Nope that doesn't seem to work either. Do you think reinstalling the Neximage drivers is likely to make a difference ?

Nick