Taking flats

[Tomatobro]

One request. A box in settings that I can tick that stops Sharpcap doing anything else other than recording files in the FITs format.

My filters are ordered Red Green Blue etc so I adjust the exposure to move the histogram three quarters of the way over to start taking flats.
As Red is the first this is the longest exposure time and Sharpcap records with the FITS format. When I move to the Green the exposure is shorter and Sharpcap switches over to SER format. At the end of a long session if I don't pick this up then my flats are ruined. Next day I change the camera or whatever and only then spot that some of the flats are FITS and some are SER's.

PIPP allows me to create FITS from the SER but the FITS header data is lost, APP does not like creating calibration masters with missing header data,

This has caught me out many times even though I am aware of the problem

[Tomatobro]

I have just spent a couple of hours looking at ways to force Sharpcap to only take FITs files and I cannot see a way to do it. Camera profiles, even though it lists FITs as the capture format starts up in SER format.
I will take another look in the software but so far I cannot see a way to do it.

[admin]

Hi,

should be possible - setup as follows

1) In the 'Saving' settings untick the 'start cameras with Auto output format'
2) Also in 'Saving' settings, set preferred still format to FITS.
3) Set a default profile for your camera that has FITS set as output format (not auto select), so that the default file format on opening camera is FITS

Additionally, if you have saved capture profiles, check that none of them have got 'auto select' output format saved into them.

Admitedly, this is more complex than it should be - the default is based around automatically picking video formats for short exposures and still formats for long ones. I will have a think about how to tidy this up - I already have an idea about a 'first use' setup window that asks you where to save files, what formats to use, etc.

cheers,

Robin

[Tomatobro]

Thanks for the advice. Before I read you reply I was trialling your settings 1,2 and 3 and can confirm that as long as I select the named camera profile it defaults to FITS.

I do use Sharpcap in AVI and SERs capture mode so this is good. The procedure is now on my observatory "DO IT NOW" list.

many thanks
T

[Tomatobro]

And if the camera profile is set as the default it loads with all my standard settings
Perfect!