Sequence of captures and time spent in writing buffered frames

[daniele.bonfiglio]

Hello,
if I understand correctly, when performing a sequence of captures (with say a capture length of 25 seconds and 5 seconds interval between each capture), the time it takes for writing down any buffered frames after the end of each capture adds up to the chosen time interval between captures.
Is it possible to tell sharcap to automatically discard the buffered frames that were not written to disk within the chosen time interval between captures? (such that the time between each capture would be exactly 5 seconds, and not 5 seconds + the variable time required to write the buffered frames)
The motivation for this would be to keep costant the actual time between captures, which is good for smooth time-lapses.
Best,
Daniele

[admin]

Hi,

unfortunately there is no way to automate the act of abandoning writing the remaining frames - the only way to do that is for the user to click on the 'Cancel (discard unwritten frames)' in the notification bar.

There are other ways to approach the problem however...

* Use the 'frame rate limit' control on the right to throttle the speed at which SharpCap accepts frames from the camera down to a level that your disk/SSD can keep up with.

* Use the 'Advanced Sequence Editor' to set up your captures, using a loop for repeating and the step 'Add a delay if these steps take less than <Minium Duration> seconds'. Put the capture inside the 'add a delay' step, and the 'add a delay step' inside the loop. Then, if you do a 25s capture that may require an additional 10-15 seconds to write to disk, set the 'minimum duration' to 40s, meaning that you will get a regularly spaced list of captures.

cheers,

Robin

[daniele.bonfiglio]

Hi,

unfortunately there is no way to automate the act of abandoning writing the remaining frames - the only way to do that is for the user to click on the 'Cancel (discard unwritten frames)' in the notification bar.

There are other ways to approach the problem however...

* Use the 'frame rate limit' control on the right to throttle the speed at which SharpCap accepts frames from the camera down to a level that your disk/SSD can keep up with.

* Use the 'Advanced Sequence Editor' to set up your captures, using a loop for repeating and the step 'Add a delay if these steps take less than <Minium Duration> seconds'. Put the capture inside the 'add a delay' step, and the 'add a delay step' inside the loop. Then, if you do a 25s capture that may require an additional 10-15 seconds to write to disk, set the 'minimum duration' to 40s, meaning that you will get a regularly spaced list of captures.

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,
thanks a lot!
Concerning your second suggestion, do you mean something like this?

Screenshot 2026-05-21 171437.png (7.37 KiB) Viewed 394 times

Best,
Daniele

[admin]

Hi,

yes, that will basically do the trick, providing that the extra 15s is enough for writing to disk. It's worth knowing that SSDs have a tendency to get slower when you are writing if you have recently written a lot of data, so you could find that the padding of 15s is enough to begin with, then is no longer enough as the session progresses.

You could also consider looking at the timelapse tools built into the Solar/Lunar/Planetary live stacking - that lets you create a timelapse without needing to capture and process hundreds of video files, although probably at the expense of not quite reaching the same quality that conventional stacking would. It can still be very impressive...

cheers,

Robin