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SharpCap - free Astro Webcam Capture Software

rwg

By rwg
in Imaging - Discussion

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rwg

rwg

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Ok, I'll bite - what sort of cameras can you do this with? If it's something you can do with an SPC900 by tweaking the firmware I might give it a try - I've got 3... Otherwise I'm a bit stuck by not having one to work with!

Robin

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rwg

rwg

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Ok, time for some quick updates...

  1. A new version is well advanced now and should be available in a couple more days. It all seems to work, just flushing out final bugs.
  2. I feel that I've had a lot of interesting feature suggestions, but they've got lost in amongst the rest of this thread. If you have a chance, please transfer your suggestions to a Google Moderator project I've created here : Google Moderator . It gives people the chance to make suggestions, comment on them, vote them up and down and so on. I'll be using the results to guide future development directions.
  3. I'm experimenting with twitter - not entirely sure if I get it yet, but I'm putting up some progress tweets as work progresses. Robin Glover (robin_glvr) on Twitter

Robin

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michaelmorris

michaelmorris

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Ok, I'll bite - what sort of cameras can you do this with? If it's something you can do with an SPC900 by tweaking the firmware I might give it a try - I've got 3... Otherwise I'm a bit stuck by not having one to work with!

Robin

Yes, it's a firmware tweak on the SPC900nc. Cheers

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rwg

rwg

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Sharpcap, SPC900 cameras & Blue Screens Of Death on Windows 7...

If anyone can consistently get a BSOD when using SharpCap on Windows 7, please let me know how - if I can reproduce the problem I might be able to fix it :D My experience is that doing the following can cause problems:

* Unplugging the SPC900 while it is previewing or capturing usually freezes the machine. Not convinced there is much I can do about this one, and it's fairly easy to avoid in a 'don't do that' sort of way.

* Running a second instance of SharpCap and both trying to talk to the same camera has once or twice given me a BSOD. Definitely intermittent.

Robin

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rwg

rwg

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SharpCap 1.2.34 Released

http://sites.google.com/site/rwgastro/sharpcap

  • Improved LX mode
    • No longer a toolbar button for LX mode, instead you'll see two copies of the camera in the Cameras menu - one for LX mode, one for normal.
    • If the LX mode version of your camera doesn't show in the menu and it should, open the camera in normal mode and choose 'Enable LX mode on this camera' from the options menu
    • A number of LX mode bugs fixed along with various tweaks.
    • You'll automatically be prompted for LX mode config when starting a camera in LX mode if the config is invalid (ie no serial port selected).

    [*]Various bug fixes

    • SharpCap should no longer get 'lost' - ie start with no visible window
    • A number of crashing bugs fixed
    • Some niggles associated with night mode fixed.
    • Tweaks to control of SPC900 camera that might reduce likelihood of BSOD.

    [*]All SharpCap configuration now in the registry - should remove the problems with crash on startup due to corrupted config file.

    [*]Major internal re-working to support exciting future plans.

Robin

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rwg

rwg

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Try going to the cameras menu and selecting a camera - it might be that it has lost the default camera it should connect to on startup because of the upgrade.

The initializing is actually finished by the time you see the menu, etc, it just doesn't get around to changing the status bar text (my bad).

let me know if this doesn't fix it.

Robin

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PeterW

PeterW

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Just checked it out as I am looking for something to get stills from the spc900 as well as streamed video. Am I missing an obvious option for doing that, e.g. feeze frame and save?

You got a good lot of options I have not come across before, I am going to enjoy using it when the clouds finally GO AWAY!

Cheers

PEterW

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SniffTheGlove

SniffTheGlove

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Just checked it out as I am looking for something to get stills from the spc900 as well as streamed video. Am I missing an obvious option for doing that, e.g. feeze frame and save?

Peter, your not missing any options.

I posted a feature request (last post on the page 4 of this thread) for this very function alsong with schedule timimg and Robin has discussed this at the begining of this page and posted a link to the project page a few posts above where you can vote for functions etc and Single frame capture is one that is now listed.

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rwg

rwg

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Hi Themos,

can you PM me with the details of which parallel port control lines you are using for which functions of the mod, and I will have a go at adding support for parallel port control.

cheers,

Robin

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TheThing

TheThing

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After a computer disaster, I have bought a new netbook running Windows 7. Sharpcap has downloaded fine onto it and is running my LX and ordinary webcams like a dream. Have yet to try it all out under a dark sky though!

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rwg

rwg

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@TheThing - glad that it's all working ok on the new laptop - sounds like the old one came to a stick end.

@lewnewtoastro - I got as far as making the change to one of my SPC cameras to output raw data. The trouble is that the camera still sends full colour images to the PC - it doesn't know that it can get away with sending one byte per pixel raw data. This means that it still struggles for bandwidth, and unless you turn the frame rate down to about 5 fps, the compression that the camera applies to the image destroys the bayer pattern data. Basically, it thinks it is compressing RGB data, so can use jpg like techniques of ignoring high spatial frequencies, but that blurs the pixels of one colour with neighbouring ones of another colour.

Upshot is, I can't quite convince myself that raw on the SPC has much value, although maybe I've missed something.

@stolenfeather -glad you like the look of SharpCap, hope it works well for you.

Robin

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michaelmorris

michaelmorris

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@I got as far as making the change to one of my SPC cameras to output raw data. The trouble is that the camera still sends full colour images to the PC - it doesn't know that it can get away with sending one byte per pixel raw data. This means that it still struggles for bandwidth, and unless you turn the frame rate down to about 5 fps, the compression that the camera applies to the image destroys the bayer pattern data. Basically, it thinks it is compressing RGB data, so can use jpg like techniques of ignoring high spatial frequencies, but that blurs the pixels of one colour with neighbouring ones of another colour.

Upshot is, I can't quite convince myself that raw on the SPC has much value, although maybe I've missed something.

Robin

I concur that using RAW mode at anything faster than 5 FPS is pointless. This means you can't really use it in poor seeing conditions. However, on the occassions when the seeing is fair to good (not common in the UK) the use of 5 fps in RAW mode is reported to be worth trying. In good to excellent seeing conditions (rare) some report significant advantages with the technique. The advantages of on-computer rather than on-camera debayering are well explained in an online article by Craig Stark

http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/articles/assets/Debayering_API.pdf

I hope this is of use.

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rwg

rwg

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Hi Michael,

yep, that's helpful - presumably you'd be happy with quick'n'dirty debayering for the preview, allowing some other software to be used to debayer the actual capture file.

One thing that has always perplexed me is the obsession with frame rates, since it's the exposure length that actually determines how much you freeze the turbulence when capturing a frame. Sure, 30fps is nice because you can capture 1800 frames a minute, but you can still capture them over 6 minutes at 5fps and if you set the same exposure for both captures then there shouldn't be any difference between the average frame quality of the two...

Robin

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michaelmorris

michaelmorris

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yep, that's helpful - presumably you'd be happy with quick'n'dirty debayering for the preview, allowing some other software to be used to debayer the actual capture file.

Yes, quick and dirty (i.e nearest neighbour) is fine for previewing the image. Whilst one can just use monochrome preview, using colour preview helps with focussing and exposure.

One thing that has always perplexed me is the obsession with frame rates, since it's the exposure length that actually determines how much you freeze the turbulence when capturing a frame. Sure, 30fps is nice because you can capture 1800 frames a minute, but you can still capture them over 6 minutes at 5fps and if you set the same exposure for both captures then there shouldn't be any difference between the average frame quality of the two...

Your argument is logical, at least it would be if 'exposure setting' really was the just length of time of the exposure and 'frame rate' really was just the number of frames taken per second. From what I can gather, with the Toucam/SPC900 this isn't strictly true. I remember reading somewhere that in fact the real exposure was based on a combination of the two. I can't remember exactly how it worked, but the gist of it was that (at least as far as the Toucam/SPC900 is concerned) faster FPS equates to shorter exposures as well as higher number of frames per second.

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rwg

rwg

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That's my software of choice for debayering. The other option is the amazing IRIS software.

Iris software

Technically brilliant, but with a frustratingly idiosyncratic interface.

'frustratingly idiosyncratic' - you sir, are a master of understatement! :)

Mind you, some of the stuff it does is truly brilliant - using the lucy richardson deconvolution to remove star trails and make your stars round again works much better than you'd imagine. I basically just use the little command line window and recipies for doing something I find on various web sites.

Robin

PS. Looking at implementing a nearest neighbour de-bayer filter...

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rwg

rwg

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Well, I wrote the simplest nastiest debayer filter possible - it picks the RGB values from the 4 pixels in a 2x2 block and then makes all 4 pixels in the block the same RGB colour specified by those pixels.... The results are horrific - if you keep the brightness down low then you see normal colours, but they are far too saturated. Turn up the exposure or brightness too far and any bright areas that should be white go bright green or cyan! Obviously there's more to this than just grabbing the RGB from the right slots - colour balance and so on to begin with!

I'll put the feature in v1.3 as a preview filter and ppl can have a look. If anyone has step-by-step instructions to processing an SPC raw file, I'll try working through them and see if I can work out what I'm doing wrong in my code.

cheers,

Robin

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