No way to set capture area in Sequence editor

[lowenthalm]

I don't know if this is a bug or has been missing all along...

In a sequence, you can set the pan and tilt, but there does not appear to be a way to select a frame size. I have a script for capturing a range of darks into my dark library. I can't find a way to set the ROI to full frame at the beginning of the script. There is no access to the Capture Area control with its list of standard sizes, so I am kind of stuck. I know I will at some point in the future accidentally have the ROI set some weird size and screw up a bunch of dark captures. Was hoping to avoid that...

[admin]

Hi,

firstly, if you are just going to use the dark and flat frames in SharpCap then all you need to do is capture the full resolution ones. SharpCap can deal with using a full resolution dark and/or flat when working at an ROI. If you take this approach, avoid using the 'Flip' option that appears in the camera controls (this flip may come from the camera itself), instead if you want to flip the image, use the 'Flip (after dark/flat)' option in the 'Preprocessing' section.

Otherwise, you can set the ROI from the sequencer, but the naming is different to the UI - look for the 'Set Resolution' block.

cheers,

Robin

[lowenthalm]

I saw the SetResolution command in the camera section and it just didn't click to look at that.

My intent was to be sure to capture full frame darks, since Sharpcap handles any ROI with full frame darks now. I believe SharpCap still captures darks using whatever the current ROI size is. If Sharpcap no longer needs to have darks for each ROI size, is there a reason for SharpCap shouldn't just always capture a full frame dark, no matter how the current ROI is set?

[admin]

Hi,

the basic answer is a design principle called 'the principle of least surprise', which I try to stick to as much as possible in SharpCap. It basically guides you to avoid doing things that would surprise the user of the software, and in particular don't do things that appear to behave randomly.

I imagine that most people would think that SharpCap had a bug if it switched to full resolution from ROI to capture a dark or flat - that would certainly be the first reaction. It also would introduce side effects (the most obvious being slower frame rates and larger capture files) that are bound to be an issue for some people, which would then make it require an option

cheers,

Robin

[lowenthalm]

I guess I was thinking more for use when capturing darks to the dark library for use with live stacking. All the user knows is there is a dark file to select for the camera/bin/exposure/temperature combo in the Sharpcap dark library. The frame rate would be slower during dark capture only. When live stacking, frames would be the size of the ROI, so frame rates wouldn't be affected. It seemed to me that you have already gone 3/4 of the way to making live stacking darks ROI independent and this change would be that last 1/4 to make it fully independent.

Do some people feed Sharpcap flats and/or dark library files directly into their stacking programs? I hadn't thought of that work flow. That would ruin my idea above and I would agree with you that it should stay as is.

If a user is capturing a bunch of raw dark frames and/or raw flats frames to be used in another stacking program, then certainly doing exactly what the user requests in terms of ROI for darks, flats and lights makes total sense.

[admin]

Hi,

yes, there is the issue of re-stacking too. Actually quite a few people process the data live in SharpCap live stacking and then re-process later in something like DSS or similar to get the best of both worlds - immediate view of the target and fine control of the stacking.

cheers,

Robin