Allysky teething problems

[Douglas]

Hi all,

I've been taking Allsky images with Sharpcap using the MONO8 and WMF settings and producing a nice video. I have encounted a couple teething problems though. First the timestamp/video is fine while recording but playback has it has been 'mirrored'. And secondly the video forward and back control function doesn't work. I have the latest version of Sharpcap installed, interestingly Sharpcap crashes if I don't bin my images. I'm using a ZWO178MM, 15 second images, full frame, MONO8, Bin2. The video looks and runs great otherwise, I have taken over 5 hour run with no dropped images.
Any help would be appreciated.

Doug

[admin]

Hi Doug,

I think I can explain the inability to use video forward/back controls - that can happen if the capture is not finished cleanly. WMV files require an extra indexing step after the video has been written to file to allow the file to be navigated properly. SharpCap starts this step when the capture is complete, but if SharpCap is closed without stopping the capture (or closed quickly after stopping the capture), the indexing may not happen, which leaves the file playable but not seekable.

I'm less sure about the timestamp appearing mirrored - I just did some tests capturing to WMV with the timestamp active, and it looked just fine in the file when playing back - this was using an Altair Astro camera. What camera are you using for the allsky? Maybe that has an effect, or the particular settings of the camera controls?

thanks,

Robin

[Douglas]

Thanks for the reply Robin.

I'll try another way to stop the capture, I had just been using the Stop Capture control, maybe give Sharpcap a end point like select a time or a number of frames to perform.
I'm using a ZWO 178MM, I'm going to eventually use a ZWO 178MC or the newer ZWO 678MC for Allsky capture.
My settings are: Mono 8, Bin 2, gain 237, cap area 3096x2080, hot pix removal 7, banding suppression 20, banding threshold 10, exposure 15 seconds.

cheer's,
Doug

[Douglas]

Well setting a time for the capture to end didn't help, still no forward or reverse function on the timelapse. And the mirrored effect on the images is very strange, I'm using and USB extension so I tried without it and no change there.

Doug

[admin]

Hi,

just using the stop capture should be fine - as long as you don't close SharpCap straight away after stopping the capture.

Here's a WMV file captured by my all-sky camera fairly recently, and you can see that the timestamp is the right way round and if you play it in a media player you can drag the playback position around as expected (I tried in VLC, Windows Media Player and Windows 'Films and TV')

https://links.sharpcap.co.uk/misc/AllSky 2024-08-12T21_18_39.wmv

cheers,

Robin

[Douglas]

Hi Robin.

I've tried again and same result, mirrored timestamp and only able to use the stop/start function.
I took some TIFFs with SC, 398 at 15 seconds and loaded them into PIPP and created a timelapse, timestamp was correct but the functionality the same. Very strange.
The link you attached says page not found.
I'm going to use another computer tonight to see if there's any difference.

Cheer's,
Doug

[Douglas]

Hi Robin,

I've tried on my other obsy laptop and it's the same, it has a older SC installed, (before you added a timestamp font size option), anyway the same mirrored effect. The timelapse played back on the house pc has the same nonfunctioning video controls too. So I'm at a loss. Taking some fits and putting them in MaximDL has the images correct, so stills are not effected.
Perhaps it's because I'm in France, everything's back to front here

Doug

[admin]

Hi,

sorry for the broken link - fixed now.

Please can you send me a video showing the problem and also the exact steps used to create it so that I can walk through them and check.

cheers,

Robin

[Douglas]

Thanks Robin, the link you provided, I can't use the forward or back functions, pause play is ok.
I capture images in SC Mono8 using, Bin 2, gain 237, cap area 3096x2080, hot pix removal 7 and the video conversion in SC

Doug

[admin]

Hi Doug,

ok, that's odd - what video player are you using? Since I can get that video to move back and forward nicely, it seems likely that it's some peculiarity with the video playing software rather than the video itself.

cheers,

Robin