SharpCap Forums

Hi Barry, thanks for the further info - I definitely think you are right - the problem is occurring at the hardware/driver/SDK level. Unfortunately the QHY SDK doesn't provide a means to ask about the number of dropped frames, so SharpCap just doesn't show any for QHY cameras unless they are dropped...

Hi, SharpCap doesn't support the Orion cameras directly so you have to either use an ASCOM driver or a DirectShow driver to connect to the camera (some cameras have both available, some only one). If you have both for your camera it is worth trying both of them to see if either works. If no luck the...

A couple of suggestions... * adjust the USB Traffic control for the QHY camera - the wrong value for that can lead to slow frame rates or dropped frame issues. Adjusting is usually a matter of turning the value down until suddenly you get no more frames, then turn it up a bit. * check USB cables. I ...

It'd be handy to know what QHY camera you are using and to see the SharpCap log from after the problem has occurred.

cheers,

Robin

It's amazing how many weird seeming problems turn out to be related to loose or dodgy cables. Been there myself with several pieces of equipment thinking they were faulty and then realizing the cable wasn't fully pushed in... :) I'm afraid I could only suggest trial and error for finding the right f...

Sadly no option to change this at the moment - will pop it onto the feature list for 2.11 as it's a nice easy one.

cheers,

Robin

Hi Don, yes, you've found me out... The ZWO cameras have 2 white balance adjustment channels (red and blue) but just one 'auto white balance' option which adjusts both. Designing the UI to reflect that exactly would have been a lot more work than the way I've done it which is to have two separate co...

I believe that you are referring to the brighter image being shown in IrfanView than in SharpCap - this I think is only going to happen when you are using a 16 bit mode on the camera. 8 bit modes are easy - the image that gets saved has a bit depth of 8, your screen has a bit depth of 8, Windows wor...

Hi Jeff, not really possible I'm afraid as the ZWO camera (like quite a few others) stretches the 12 bit range to 16 bits inside the camera SDK. Your best bet would be to capture to FITS and then post process the data by dividing every pixel by 16. I don't know how linear these sensors are in the fi...

I think that narrows it down to the white balance procedure (which is in the ZWO SDK, not in SharpCap) not being able to cope well with astro images, since it is working with non astro imaging. Any white balance algorithm requires a good area of image that is neither white (all channels saturated, y...