Live View framing, possibly ROI related.

[rac19]

I have noticed (only very recently) that the displayed image frame seems to move around within a "fixed/full" frame, In that attached image, what I refer as the "fixed" frame includes both the black region (to the left) and the blue region (the actual image). It appears the some of the image is out for view to right.

Apart from that, I thought for a while the 'scope was unusually shaky. until I realised that the image frame was moving slightly between images. The bright start on the left-hand edge was actually quite steady against the image frame but the entire frame was moving about.

Have I perhaps accidently activated a feature that I am unaware of? Before this started happening, I experimented with dragging the ROI box around within the full frame, for example. This problem persists even after selecting the full frame (full resolution). I have checked that Feature Tracking with ROI is not active, because it does look a little like that sort of thing.

[admin]

Hi,

check the 'Preprocessing' controls section on the right to make sure that everything is turned off - in particular Planet/Disc stabilization, which could cause something like this. Another thing to do would be to open the camera with the <CTRL> key pressed down to stop previous camera settings from reloading - that will clear any camera settings that might be affecting this.

Anything else that you might have enabled like feature tracking would be disabled by closing and restarting SharpCap, so is not likely to give a persistent problem like this.

What is odd is that the black bar on the left looks almost perfectly black, and unless you happened to have the planet/disc stabilization on, or some other preprocessing option, then I think it is coming in the image from the camera. If that's the case then it may be a camera hardware issue unfortunately. It could just be a temporary glitch that will be cleared by unplugging the camera from USB and 12V and reconnecting. It would also be worth checking your power supply and USB cabling, just in case that might be causing issues. This is probably something that you can test in daylight - as you don't really need a proper image to tell if you have a black stripe on the left or not.

cheers,

Robin

[rac19]

Thanks Robin, I did look at the pre-processing options because I have been using them to apply darks and flats during Live Stacking. I have never turned planet stabilisation on intentionally but may have done so accidentally. I will check next time. There is definitely some sort of active re-framing happening.

By the way, I checked the Feature Tracking settings, make sure that ROI isn't selected, which it is not, but I was not able to find where to turn Feature Tracking on and off. I did in fact look for it in the pre-processing options.

[admin]

Hi,

for the feature tracking, it is only 'on' when the control window for it is showing, so you turn it on by selecting it from the tools menu and turn it off by closing the 'Feature Tracking' window.

cheers,

Robin

[rac19]

Thanks Robin. That's good to know.

I checked the pre-processing options this morning and Planet/Disc Stabilisation was on. I must have done it accidentally whilst turning other options on/off. I think that because I was looking for something to do Feature Tracking I missed the fact that Planet/Disc Stabilisation was turned on.

Thanks for the replies.

[rac19]

As final comment on this matter. I think that the black region caused a problem when capturing flats. There was a warning that there were too many pixels below 10% even though the Histogram looked good. Possibly, the large black region was being included in the exposure evaluation.

It may be useful for the text of the Pre-Processing options to be changed to red when set to a non-default value. I think that I missed the fact that Planetary Stabilisation was On, because I was looking for Feature Tracking. If the word On was red, I probably would have noticed.

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for the suggestion - that's a nice idea. I might also consider turning those options off automatically when capturing flats/darks (I already turn off some options automatically during dark/flat capture to avoid problems).


cheers,

Robin