SharpCap Forums

Dear Robin,
Since 1 month I have a new TIS camera DMK 37BUX178. When I start Sharpcap the camera is listened twice in the camera menue...1) underneath "Celestron/Imaging Source Camera" and 2) underneath "Integrated Camera"
When I press the camera under 1) I get a ROI section when I decrease the Pixel number under resolution e.g. 2048x2048. But those ROI sections have fixed numbers of pixels and are movable but it is not possible to enter a customer sized ROI.
When I press the camera under 2) it is not possible to get any ROI.

For my work with solar spectra I need a flexible ROI e.g. 100x3000 pixel which I can draw with the cursor at any place.

In the basic software IC from TIS this is possible but this software is not capable to save in .ser format.

Do I need another driver for the camera? At the moment I use the driver "Driver for USB 33U-, 37U-, 38U-Cameras and DFG/HDMI-Converter 5.0.1" ?
Or do I need a special astronomical driver from TIS?

Thanks in advance and kind regads

Konrad

Hi,

currently SharpCap does not support custom ROI sizes with TIS/Celestron cameras when using the 'direct' SDK access to the camera - I am not even sure if (or how) the camera SDK supports such a thing.

The DirectShow (webcam) driver access cannot support custom ROI - the ROI sizes are set by the camera driver and cannot be altered in software.

Typically, frame rate is determined only by the vertical dimension of the capture area on most CMOS cameras, so you may find it reasonable to capture at a larger area and then use a tool like PIPP to cut down the size of the SER file after capturing is complete.

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,

I want to make video streams from solar spectral lines. Typical sizes from those lines are 3072x60 to 3072x100 pixels. A fast frame rate (as fast as possible) and a low storage size (as low as possible) is also neccessary.
This is the reason why I cannot live with the sizes which I get from sharpcap at the moment (see picture)

TIS support told me that those frame sizes are coming from your software and not from the TIS driver.

May I ask you to add some more frames to that list, e.g. 3072x60, 3072x70, 3072x80, 3072x90 and 3072x100 ? This would help me and all the users with spectral applications a lot

cheers

Konrad

Hi,

thanks for investigating this further - having looked into this a bit more, I can see that there is an ROI function in the SDK for these cameras that will allow the image to be cut down to the desired size. This will not increase the frame rate (as the size of image coming from the camera to the PC is unchanged), but will reduce the output file size.

I will put this on the list of things to investigate for a future update.

thanks,

Robin

Dear Robin,

I am also in contact with Mr. Geissler from TIS suport and sent him your thoughts about the ROI function for TIS cameras. His answer may give you some hints:


"If the cameras support an ROI on the sensor, which most of the newer cameras do, then the ROI can be set by the video format, e.g. grabber.setVideoFormat("RGB32 (128x128)"; After setting the video format in this way, the maximum frame rate will be increased.
The other method is using the ROI FrameFilter. This filter clips from the original image an ROI in software, therefore, the maximum frame rate is not increased.
Whether an ROI on the sensor is support and which is the step size in height and width can be queried with IC Imaging Control's VideoFormatdesc object."


May be you find a way to work with grabber.setVideoFormat. This has the advantage that also the frame rate will be increased which makes it possible to freeze the seeing effects by using very short exposure times.

Cheers

Konrad

Hi Konrad,

thanks for that info - I had assumed that SetVideoFormat could only be used with the list of video formats that the camera reported it supported - I didn't realise that you can effectively build your own providing you obey the appropriate rules on step size.

I will test this - hopefully one of my 3 cameras supports this which would allow me to develop this feature nicely.

thanks,

Robin

Hi Robin,

I just tested the ROI function which is still included in sharpcap for my TIS camera DMK 37BUX178 when using smaller formats than full frame.
Those smaller frames can be positioned at any place with the cursor.
Making the size smaller will increase the frame rate dramatically, e.g. 16bit ...full frame = 40fps, 320x240pixel = 540fps and the very small format 256x4pixel = 5100fps.
If it is possible to implement additional smaller formats as 3072x60 to 3072X100 in steps of ...x70, ...x80, ...x90 would help a lot and are able to increase the framerate. Those frames can be moved with the ROI cursor over the entire fullframe area and in my case exactly over a spectral line.
Maybe that it is necessary to cut the width also a little bit but any value which is between 3000 and 3072 would be fine.

Thanks a lot for your cooperation

Cheers

Konrad

Hi Konrad,

good news - I found some time today to test this idea out, and one of my cameras does seem to support the ROI mode. I'm now working on the full implementation of custom ROI and there is a good chance of this being in next week's update.

cheers,

Robin

Hi,

custom ROI support for ImagingSource/Celestron cameras that have this feature is now in SC 4.0.8060.

I got ~500fps out of my 236C at 1920x40 resolution.

cheers,

Robin