Autofocus and exposure settings during live stacking...

[DogWatch]

Hi all,

Loving this program for live stacking but I am having one difficulty. In setting up my autofocus, I have increased the binning and gain and lowered the exposure time so that it sees enough stars and runs quickly. It is consistently working well. My problem is that during live stacking (outside of the sequencer) if I pause live stacking and run the "Refocus", the "Refocus" uses the current bin, gain and exposure of my live stack settings. This causes the 'Refocus" to take an incredible amount of time to complete. Is there somewhere I can enter and save my autofocus exposure settings and have them called when I do a "Refocus" and then have the live stacking exposure settings reset when the autofocus is done? Currently I'm having to pause the live stacking, change the exposure, gain, binning values, run the "Refocus" and when it completes re-enter the live stack exposure values and then resume the live stacking.... any help or suggestions are very much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Chuck

[admin]

Hi Chuck,

glad that you are having fun with live stacking!

You can save particular sets of camera settings for easy recall later - SharpCap calls these 'Capture Profiles' and you can read more about creating and using them here : https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Capture%20Profiles

However, that's only part of what you want and the other part is the bit that is going to block you... When you change certain camera settings it forces the live stacking to restart. Anything that changes the resolution of the image will cause live stacking to reset, so that your stack will be saved and a new one started. If you can get a version of the refocus to run without the binning change then you have a chance (still change the exposure, gain, etc).

cheers,

Robin

[DogWatch]

Robin-

Thank you for your reply... I had not thought of using the "Capture Profile" in this way. I will have a go at cranking up the gain and lowering the exposure (not changing binning) and still have success with autofocus in a reasonable time frame... then save as an "Autofocus" capture profile. If I can find settings that work, I presume the work flow for this would be to pause live stacking, then save the current live stacking "Capture Profile", then select the saved "Autofocus" capture profile and do an autofocus run, then select the previous live stacking capture profile and resume live stacking?
If so, could this be automated into a "Refocus" program option? (Feature request)

Since increasing the binning was a huge part of finding an autofocus exposure setting that allowed the "Refocus" to run in a reasonable period of time, is there any way (in the future) to allow the live stack to be paused and resumed after an autofocus run that involved a binning change? (Second feature request)

I appreciate your thoughts and my education,

Chuck

FYI: C11, Losmandy G11, Onstep controller, F6.3 reducer/corrector, uv/ir-cut filter, Player One Saturn-C-SQR.

[admin]

Hi Chuck

yes, you have the procedure lined up pretty much as I would expect.

The idea of having a periodic refocus in the middle of live stacking isn't something I have considered so far, but it's not out of the question at some point in the future. However in the run-up to releasing SharpCap 4.1 I am concentrating on fine tuning and fixing bugs in existing features and not adding substantial new ones, so it won't happen for quite some time.

As to being able to keep live stack running during a binning change (and back) - not sure about that one - it's sounding pretty specialised. At some point though I have a plan to enable the live stack to be saved and resumed later, so maybe when I get around to doing that, it will be easier.

cheers,

Robin

[DogWatch]

Robin-

Thanks for the follow-up! I did manage to get a consistent, repeatable refocus without manipulating the binning and have saved it as an "Autofocus" capture profile.... So last night I was able to pause live stacking, switch profiles, run refocus, switch profiles back and resume live stacking. I will admit that at 1am my brain is foggy enough that it would be wonderful to have those steps automated into a single button click. However, I understand how full your plate must be at this point and I am eagerly awaiting the unveiling 4.1, so I will just need to be patient. It is a terrific program (especially the live stacking!) and is well worth the wait.

Cheers,

Chuck

[DogWatch]

Hi Robin-

Now that v4.1 is out (Yay!), I was hoping to bring this topic back to your attention as a possible feature request.

Thanks,

Chuck

[admin]

Hi Chuck,

yep, request noted. Second request this evening todo with remembering different settings for different setups or different modes, so I feel that there is something bigger than the individual requests that I haven't quite seen yet that might help deal with all of them...

For now, there's a possible workaround using the sequencer - try the attached sequencer script, which shortens the exposure (and increases gain to compensate) while focusing, then puts things back after the refocus is completed. You can run this from 'Sequencer->Run...' and once you've done it once it will be in 'Sequencer->Run Recent'.

One thing to note is that somewhere along the way in developing 4.1, I changed live stacking so that it will automatically reset if it is closed for more than one minute (with the exception of this happening during sequencer execution). The idea here was to make the behaviour of closing, moving to a new target and then re-opening live stacking less confusing, but it will potentially affect the idea of refocusing when paused. I'm not sure that I can think of a clean workaround for this at the moment, so it may require a further update.

cheers,

Robin

[DogWatch]

Robin-

Thanks for the sequencer script! Though, since the autofocus run takes longer than one minute to run (for me at least), this means there is no way to autofocus while maintaining a live stacking session...at least I now know why my little work around no longer works. Perhaps you could make the one minute timeout before reset during a pause in live stacking an option choice (opt in / opt out)?

Thanks,

Chuck

[admin]

Hi,

I thought about this a bit more - the one minute timeout only applies if the sequencer is not running at the time that live stacking is re-activated. I decided to tweak the 'Resume live stacking' step so that it will re-activate live stacking if it is not active as well as unpause the stack - by adding that to the end of the sequence I shared above, it should bring live stacking back without resetting. This will be in the next update. I will think about a more general way of dealing with the reset issue at a later point.

cheers,

Robin

[DogWatch]

Robin-

Your the best!! Many thanks!

Chuck