Live Stacking graph not moving?

[bluesilver]

Hi, First sorry if i have this in the wrong section.
So i have the Pro version of SharpCap V4 for a few years now and just a few nights ago i decided to give this Live stacking a try as i in general have been using another program for all my imaging.

So I ran the smart histogram and using the brain function, done a sky darkness test to see what the recommended exposure time would be for my target ( NGC 253 )
I am in a pretty dark area, but it was fairly bright this night which mean the results came back as 58 second exposures at gain 100 for my asi2600mc camera.

So after taking 30 flats using the capture flat frames and ticking all the boxes, I set the live stack going.
I stacked a total of 53 frames.
Now i am not sure what i am doing wrong here or missing something obvious, but when you look at the histogram, nothing has moved, it is as if it is all bunched up on the left hand side.
I have attached 2 images of what i am referring to.
The first is the data as it is coming in, nothing has been touched,
The second is the data with both the main histogram and the camera histogram stretched using that lighting icon.

These screen shots are of the nights recording, so not a capture of the actual night, just reloaded the data back in and hit play if that makes sense?
That is why you don't see the auto color balance sliders.

Screenshot (55).jpg (86.62 KiB) Viewed 579 times

Graph2.jpg (111.01 KiB) Viewed 579 times

Any advice on what i may be doing wrong here?

[admin]

Hi,

it looks like your source images (the ones you saved) are incredibly dark for some reason. I've sometimes seen similar when someone selects a dark frame that is too bright (for instance made with a higher offset setting) which then pulls almost everything to the left of the histogram, but that doesn't look like it is the case here.

Could you share one of the images that you are stacking and the capture settings file saved alongside it and I will have a look to see if I can spot what is going on.

cheers,

Robin

[bluesilver]

Thanks for the reply,
This particular image was taken with APT ( Astro Photography Tool ) and i just ran it through SharpCap live stacking to see what sort of result it would do,
I have already just captured the Flats just before it in SharpCap, So i am guessing this shouldn't be the problem, ( importing an imaging sequence from another program into ShapCap) ?
I Did do another short one using LiveStacking but a different target and the same result.
I did do another target using LiveStacking entirely to see what was going on, but ended up with the same result, unfortunately i did not save this one for some reason.

I can share one of the images that you are stacking and the capture settings file saved alongside it, but just not 100% sure on what you mean by that sorry.
Or do you mean use that report a bug option in SharpCap itself?
Sorry just got a tad confused with that question there.
Thanks.

[bluesilver]

Just as a side question also and also to help any further confusions that I may have.
I like to process my images in a program like StarTools just to fine tune them.
So after stacking has been done i then process them with this program.

So in Live Stacking, you have a few options for saving
Under Raw Frames, you have 4 options:
Save none
Save Stacked
Save except when Paused / Dithering
Save all.

I am guessing for myself, option 3 would be the best pick? Save except when paused / Dithering would this be correct
Would this also give me a saved stacked file and also saved individual files.

Next is the save option under actions
Save as 16 Bit Stack
Save as Raw (32 Bit ) Stack
Save with adjustments
Save exactly as seen

My myself, I think the best option here is option 1, Save as 16 Bit Stack as i want to fine tune the final image in StarTools or ( PixInsight if i ever try to use it )

If you could please clear this question up for me also it would help heaps, to make sure i have got that part correct.

[admin]

Hi,

so just to answer your questions first, if you are capturing and stacking in SharpCap then the best options are either 'Save Stacked' or 'Save except when paused/dithering' - this will save the frames coming off the camera without any modification as well as stacking them (and of course you can save the stack if you wish). The difference between the two only matters if you are using the 'filter FWHM' or 'filter brightness' options in stacking. If either of those are enabled and the filter rejects a frame then with 'Save Stacked' that frame doesn't get saved, but with 'save except paused/dithering' it does.

Next, for saving the final stack, 16 bit is the best if you are going to continue processing in something like StarTools. The 32 bit option is for specialist use, the other two are more for saving to just view the image or for final tweaks in Photoshop or similar.

Now, back to the original problem. Ideally I'd like to see one of the FITS images that you were trying to stack - the ones that you captured in APT - so that I can see if there is anything odd about them. There probably won't be a capture settings file as that is a SharpCap thing, not an APT thing, but the FITS file will have some header information in it that will contain the most important camera settings, so that will be fine.

The file will be too large to upload directly to the forums. The easiest thing is to use GoogleDrive/OneDrive/DropBox/etc to share the file and then put the sharing link here.

cheers,

Robin