Planetary Video Apparently Not Saved!

[js10]

Although over the recent months I have been trying (unsuccessfully so far, but that's the subject for another forum topic) to capture DSO's with Sharpcap and its live stacking feature, the other night I decided to try to go back to planetary just for one night, as Jupiter and Saturn were in about a perfect position for me. Therefore, I clicked on Capture, named the file, and then chose to take four 2:30 minute videos. However, even though 10 minutes went by, at the end it said something to the effect of nothing was captured -- I think all of the frames were dropped. Then I tried something a bit different, and instead just set the number of frames to 5000 (rather than set a certain time) and it did, in fact, seem to capture that many frames, with only very few of them dropped. So, I thought even with that initial failure, I was all set.

However, then when I got back home and looked in my Captures folder, while the date was listed there, when I clicked on the folder for that date, there were only three files listed -- Camera Settings, Histogram, and a .ser file. In other words, no video! Needless to say, this is probably one of the most frustrating things that can happen in this hobby -- thinking you've captured data but then finding out that you didn't!

What could have caused this to happen? Also, while I'm not obviously optimistic, is there any chance that a video WAS saved and just somehow sent to the wrong folder on my laptop and is retrievable in some way? Thank you.

[admin]

Hi,

the SER file is your video - you can view it with programs like SERPlayer (https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/ser-player) and process it with most standard astro stacking tools (Registax, AS!2, etc).

AVI files have a number of drawbacks, making SER preferable for astro imaging - see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Captur ... 0Explained for a discussion of the pros/cons of various formats. If you want to change to another output format, see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#!2!Cap ... and%20Area and https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Start% ... t%20format

cheers,

Robin

[js10]

Okay, well I'm obviously very glad to hear that! Looking back at my old planetary files from last year, though, that certainly wasn't the case -- they were definitely avi files. I guess that's just something that changed since then with one of the updates?

I guess it doesn't really matter, though, as long as there IS a way to open them. Thanks again.