Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

Discussions of Electronically Assisted Astronomy using the Live Stacking feature.
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Biggen
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Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

#1

Post by Biggen »

So I was running some live stacking last night and I didn't have the check box called "Save Individual Frames" checked. However, I noticed when I was done with my session, I looked in the Sharpcap Folder and saw yesterdays date with a Capture folder inside of that. When I clicked in that, I saw another folder with time time and yet another folder called "rawframes". Every single one of my .fit frames for my livestacking session was located in this rawframes folder.

So is Sharpcap saving individual frames even though "Save Indiviual Frames" is unchecked? Are these frames straight off the camera or are the light/dark masters being applied to them when they are being saved individually? I'm just trying to understand what the purpose of the "Save Individual Frame" box is if they are already being saved without ticking that box.

Also, is there a way to not average flat/darks and to have it save the individual calibration frames instead? I'd like to use Sharpcap as acquisition software and then feed darks, flats, flat darks, and lights into Astro Pixel Processor for post processing.
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Re: Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

Thanks for posting this – there was another thread on the same subject of saving the raw frames when the box was not checked a month or so back, but I could never reproduce the problem or work out how it could happen. If you are using an up-to-date version of SharpCap and you have the log from your live stacking session (this should have been saved in the normal location for SharpCap log files – see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/3.2/#How%20 ... %20a%20Bug ), then you can search the log for 'SaveRawFrames' which should track the initial value of the flag that determines whether raw frames are saved and any changes to that value. It would be very helpful if you could post the appropriate log file here for me to look at.

There is no way to save the individual frames that are captured during the 'capture flat' or 'capture dark' options. If you want to capture individual dark or flat frames you can use the normal capture tools in SharpCap (for instance clicking the start capture button and choosing the number of frames to capture). If you have enabled advanced filename templating then a drop-down will appear in the toolbar to enable you to select the type of frame you are capturing and you can put the frame type into the file name or path using the advanced templating configuration.

Cheers, Robin
Biggen
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Joined: Sun Jan 05, 2020 1:19 pm

Re: Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

#3

Post by Biggen »

Robin,

Here is the log file from last night: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3vqndcclgzkfn ... 0.log?dl=0

Hopefully that sheds some light on the issue.

I'm assuming the files in the "rawframes" folder don't have any preprocessing to them done at all. They are straight off the camera, correct?
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Re: Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

you are using quite an old version of SharpCap (relatively speaking, anyway) - certainly one that was made before I added the extra logging to try to track down this problem. Please can you download the latest (3.2.6194 or later) and see if either that fixes the problem or if not then it should have some useful info in the log.

The raw frames are straight off the camera with no processing.

Thanks, Robin
finleyhere
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Re: Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

#5

Post by finleyhere »

I've also had this happen as far as having the box to save individual frames NOT checked but it saved them anyway. However, not checking the box was an omission on my part as I'd like to save the frames and try the traditional processing just to learn that technique. My question is about the frames that are saved. They open in Pixinsight in grey scale. How do I get them in color (I'm using a ZWO ASI294MCpro) Also, when it saves those frames is it subtracting the dark and flat?

Cheers,
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Re: Saving Frames while stacking but box not checked?

#6

Post by admin »

Hi,

The raw frames that are saved are the data that come straight off the camera, which is the pixel value from each of the camera pixels. In order to see colour in these images you need to open them with software that is capable of debayering the image. This can definitely be done in pixinsight and in many other pieces of software – more on this here viewtopic.php?t=254

Cheers, Robin
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