SharpCap Forums

Hello. I was wondering if a Mintron integrating type camera could be used with SharpCap. I tried mine with no luck. SharpCap recognises the USB adapter that is used to connect to the pc, along with the other cameras such as webcams. A camera window appears and camera controls, such as brightness/contrast, gain, gamma etc are all available, but just a black screen in the camera view. These cameras, being very sensitive, I would have thought be ideal for polar alignment or tracking. Dave.

Hi,

People have certainly used that type of analogue camera with SharpCap using a frame grabbing device to bring the images into the computer.

There may be settings that need to be adjusted for the frame capture device to get an image to appear. Those do vary from device to device, but you can see threads on similar cameras such as the revolution imager here viewtopic.php?t=71 and in the frame grabbers section of the manual here https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/3.2/#Frame%20Grabbers.

Hope this helps, Robin

Hi Robin, thank you very much for your reply. I’m really pleased this kind of camera has been used, it sounds promising. I will give it another try and look into the settings you have highlighted. Dave.

Hello. Back in November, I asked for advice regarding using a Mintron camera with Sharpcap. The USB device for the camera was being recognised, but the display was just just blank, although it would vary in size, depending on the resolution selected. I now have the camera operating, but, in a round about way and I don’t know why. If I switch on the computer and start Sharpcap, I get the problem I described, a blank camera view. If I then close or minimise Sharpcap and open another video capture program I have on the pc, the camera view opens and displays correctly. If I then close down this program and restart Sharpcap, the camera view then works perfectly and displays as it should. It stays like this however many times I start and stop Sharpcap, until I shutdown or restart the pc, then the problem returns. Is there a way around this inconvenience? Dave.

Hi,

I suspect that the second application may be setting some of the options that appear in one of the two configuration dialogues for the capture device – that is the 'video capture filter' or the 'video capture pin' dialogues which can be found under the options menu. It may be that you can make the same adjustments in SharpCap once you know what changes to make.

Cheers, Robin

Hello Robin, thanks very much for the reply. With Sharpcap running ok and displaying the camera view correctly, I made a note of all the settings. I then closed down and restarted the computer and started Sharpcap, the problem returned. I checked all the settings and they all appear identical. While S/cap was actually running, I started the other capture program. As soon as the other program started, the S/cap camera view switched on. It almost seems as if S/cap is missing a final command or whatever you would call it, to initialise the video output. Dave.