No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

Discussions of Electronically Assisted Astronomy using the Live Stacking feature.
Avocette
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Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2019 7:11 pm

No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#1

Post by Avocette »

I have been struggling to make use of SharpCap Pro ever since I bought the licence in November. I started trying to use it directly with my Astromodified Canon DSLR, but had no success making that work.
So as an alternative approach, for several months I have been successfully running KStars/Ekos/Indi on a Raspberry Pi4 for Polar Alignment, Plate Solving, Guiding/Dithering and image capture. In this time I have amassed a reasonable number of images ready for processing. So I tried to use the Folder Monitor Camera and Live Stacking in SharpCapPro. I had some very weird behaviours, seemingly unrepeatable problems, but notably monochrome stacked image even when Debayer Preview set to 'Force RGGB'. A few days ago SharpCap Pro updated to version 3.2.6269.0. I tried again with the updated version but no difference on the colour front.
I followed a couple of forum threads and uninstalled and cleaned the registry of remnants of the old installation to try to get a clean version working. Obviously I wasn't successful in completely removing all vestiges of the installation, because the new installation already had my Pro licence details and I thinks some other elements of the original set up in place.
This discussion all relates to a new HP Pavilion laptop with a 10th generation i5 CPU and 16GB RAM that I bought in November.

So I decided to install a further copy of SharpCap Pro on a desktop PC which has an 8th generation i5 and 8 GB RAM and was rewarded with a more consistent user feel, and colour in my live stacked image!

Any suggestions please on how I can start again afresh with this laptop please? The laptop was bought to be used by the telescope, whereas the desktop PC will stay indoors!
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

If you could share one or two of the images that you are trying to stack from the folder monitor camera then we can investigate to see if we can reproduce the problem here.

Cheers, Robin
AussieHowie
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Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2017 12:23 am

Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#3

Post by AussieHowie »

If your files are Canon CR2 format then SharpCap will not read them. You have to convert them to tif or fit format and then they will load via the SharpCap Folder Monitor Camera option. The folder monitor only works with png, fit, tif, jpg. Robin will correct me if some newer version does more, but that's all my current PRO version does.

I use the free IrfanView software to convert my CR2 files to TIF format and drop them into the folder monitored by SC. Color works fine. Warning tif files are twice the size of CR2 files.

If you wish to use your Canon to live stack CR2 format raw files out in the field at night (EAA 'observing with a camera') then that is possible too. Let me know if you are interested in doing that?

Cheers
Howie
Avocette
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Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2019 7:11 pm

Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#4

Post by Avocette »

Thanks for your responses. My files are already .fit format as saved on the RaspberryPi and then transferred to the laptop by WinSCP. Each file is close to 40MB but I will post a number of them on a cloud server.
One factor I have noticed is that in the Camera Control area, the order of the image files seems to be randomised and not in chronological/numerical order. I think that this is not the case on the desktop PC. Just seems somewhat bizarre.
Avocette
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#5

Post by Avocette »

Here is the link to five .fits files from last nights imaging. https://www.mycloud.ch/s/S00CCF8D67E1A1 ... 48E09DFE80
Hope you can access this folder. I have used this method successfully to share large files with family in the UK and NZ!
BlackWikkett
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#6

Post by BlackWikkett »

I've been able to stack the provided data with SharpCap 3.2.6269 64bit using folder monitor camera and live stacking. Applied 4x digital gain in the live stack alignment tab to get enough stars to stack.
The image below is live stack histogram auto stretch and Display histogram auto stretch.
ImageTest Stack Stack_4frames_42s_WithDisplayStretch by Black Wikkett, on Flickr

This version is live stack stretch only
ImageTest Stack no display stretch Stack_4frames_42s_WithDisplayStretch by Black Wikkett, on Flickr

Here's a capture of the SC window to show settings
ImageSC 3.2.6269 64bit Capture by Black Wikkett, on Flickr

Seems to be working ok for me maybe a full uninstall and reinstall?
-Chris
Avocette
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#7

Post by Avocette »

Interesting BlackWikkett! I note that you are running the 64bit version of SharpCap Pro. Have I misunderstood the advice to use the 32bit version even on my 64bit version of Windows 10, or could this be an influence on the problem?
Avocette
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#8

Post by Avocette »

I may have answered my own question after finding this earlier post......
viewtopic.php?t=1825#p9463
My camera is 18 Mpixels.......
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#9

Post by admin »

Hi,

Yes, live stacking large resolution images is definitely a reason to use 64 bit version. However I don't think that would have any effect on a lack of colour in the image. I tested with those files too and could see colour – I did have to set the Bayer pattern to force RGGB to get correct colours though. Oddly I was also seeing colour with the Bayer pattern set to off, which is incorrect – I must investigate that.

Cheers, Robin
Avocette
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Re: No colour with Live Stacking of Folder Monitor Camera

#10

Post by Avocette »

Hi Robin,
Sadly, you were correct that uninstalling the 32 bit version and replacing it with the 64 bit didn’t seemingly make any difference on this colour issue! Just hoping that the anomaly you spotted may lead to a eureka moment.....
Best wishes, Ed
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