Sharpcap on Macbook pro m2 running windows

[kleanthise88]

Hello ,

I am in the process of debating whether to purchase a new macbook pro m2 and run windows on it with parallels. Will Sharpcap operate ok on it? i am aware m2 chips have some issues with various windows applications .

If that will not work then i am guessing the best choice will be a microsoft surface pro 9 . Could you please advice me on the right direction ?

Thanks
Kleanthis

[admin]

Hi,

I have no experience of the M2 or M1 Mac computers, but I know they run an ARM processor. SharpCap is designed for Windows on x86 processors, so if you are going to run it on an M1 or M2, there will be emulation of an x86 going on somewhere. I have no idea how well that works, or how it manages for performance. Personally, I think I'd be hoping to see a report from someone who had got it working before I assumed it would be workable...

The Surface Pro 9 should be fine, as it has an Intel CPU (note that the Surface Pro 9 5G is Arm, and also falls into the 'untested' category). There were some issues with older Surface Pro systems that came up, but an update of the Graphics driver to the latest version seemed to cure them.

cheers,

Robin

[mwob]

I'm new to SharpCap, so I'd take my review with a grain of salt. However, it seems to me I have SharpCap running reasonably well on my 2023 MacBook Air M2. I'm running Parallels 19.1.1 version and Windows 11 for ARM. SharpCap 4.1.11388 the 64-bit version seems to run well. I have two cameras that I've done some very quick testing. The Svbony SV205 color seems to work fine on SharpCap and run expected frame rates with expected resolutions. I'm taking delivery of a ZWO ASI585 color soon and will test that when I can.

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for the feedback - the ZWO585 will push things much harder since it is capable of high frame rates over USB3. That's usually where things get a bit tricky when running in virtual environments like Parallels, VMWare or VirtualBox. Good luck!

cheers,

Robin

[Diogenes505]

Newby to SharpCap using an ancient Macbook with an INTEL Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40 Ghz, 8.00 GB RAM, Running Windows 10 64 bit OS
Svbony 105 camera, 127 Mak and 80mm F7 refractor.
I was looking for something on the website that states minimum system requirements for running SharpCap Version 4.1.1 full functionality.
My little Macbook crashes when I select Live Stacking and Enhancement.
Before I go out and throw more money at this I want to know how much computing horsepower I need. I do not plan on going all in on astrophotography. I just wanted to get a decent EAA planetary image of Jupiter or Mars.
Any thoughts.

[admin]

Hi,

for a camera like the SV105 that only runs at about 2 megapixels then you won't need too much power (by modern standards), but the Core2 Duo processor dates from about 2008, so things have moved on quite a bit since then. A modern system based on the low end Intel Core i3 processor would probably have several times the processor power of your MacBook. 8Gb of ram is acceptable, but 16 would be better, and an SSD rather than a hard disk is pretty much a given these days. That being said, live planetary stacking is probably the most CPU intensive feature in SharpCap - particularly if you progress from planetary to lunar/solar image stacking.

From your description, it sounds like the whole PC crashes rather than just SharpCap, which is unexpected. It could be that the processor is just so old that it doesn't support the instructions needed by SharpCap's image processing code, but that should *still* only crash the SharpCap application, not the PC.

Some things you could try with the existing PC

* Are you running boot camp to boot straight to windows? That seems to work much better than emulating windows inside MacOS
* Try using the SV105 at lower resolution if you can (maybe 800x600 or similar) to see if that still crashes the computer
* You could also try SharpCap's high speed test camera (which displays an image of jupiter) - select that and try live planetary stacking/enhancement and see what happens.

cheers,

Robin

[minhlead]

Hello ,

I am in the process of debating whether to purchase a new macbook pro m2 and run windows on it with parallels. Will Sharpcap operate ok on it? i am aware m2 chips have some issues with various windows applications .

If that will not work then i am guessing the best choice will be a microsoft surface pro 9 . Could you please advice me on the right direction ?

Thanks
Kleanthis

I am on the fence on buying a new Macbook with M3 processor on it and wondering if it will run Sharpcap flawlessly with Parallel? I see someone mentioned that you can run Sharpcap on Windows ARM via Parallel. Anyone can confirm that?

[admin]

Hi,

it looks like post #3 above was a report from someone who had SharpCap working in Parallels on an M2 Mac, so that gives a bit of hope. I must admit that I haven't seen many people try out that sort of configuration, so I can't be sure of how things stand over a year later than that post. Maybe someone who is running an 'M' based Mac will chip in?

cheers,

Robin

[minhlead]

Hi,

it looks like post #3 above was a report from someone who had SharpCap working in Parallels on an M2 Mac, so that gives a bit of hope. I must admit that I haven't seen many people try out that sort of configuration, so I can't be sure of how things stand over a year later than that post. Maybe someone who is running an 'M' based Mac will chip in?

cheers,

Robin

I assume he'll have to use a sharpcap for ARM too, since he's running windows ARM?

[admin]

Hi,

not necessarily - Windows-on-Arm will emulate x86 (32 and 64 bit), although with some noticeable performance degradation. In fact, it looks like it is *not* the arm version, since I have only ever published one arm version to download (4.1.11621) and it's not that version that is being mentioned.

cheers,

Robin