"An error has occurred while writing RAW frames"

[PetePeterson]

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I've been off doing spectroscopy for a bit and perhaps my settings are erroneous. It's a 1 terabyte solid state drive and it's only half full.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Pete

[Menno555]

Hi Pete

Most of the times this error means there is something wrong with the naming or writing in the FITS header.
Could you try and see if this error is gone with the latest stable version available on https://www.sharpcap.co.uk/sharpcap/downloads?

If the problem persists, could you try to capture with a simple Target Name? I see something with "mussing around" and maybe the saving gets "confused" by that?
Also, do you have the filter wheel enabled? If so, make sure the filter has a name so that's not something empty.

Menno

[PetePeterson]

Thank you very much for the quick response Menno. Leaving the setup as shown I just ran Live Stack with the lens cap on, using the target names TEST and LONGER TEST. Files saved fine. I believe that, as you suggested, I was using an invalid target name. (Which I guess is the same as my file name.)

[garyhawkins]

I may be experiencing a similar problem. I was attempting to use SharCap to image a bright photometry target. 5sec subs gain = 50. To remove atmospheric scintillation, I was then stacking a minute's worth of subs and trying to say the 16-bit stacked image (16-bit selected under Save button) with the Live Stacking function. I noted a number of issues:

1) I also got the Error writing RAW file. In my case, the problem was that after writing the first RAW file, SharpCap was then trying to save the next stacked file with the same filename. At this point, an error was logged in the log file
2) When you select Save 16-bit file, both 16-bit and 32-bit files were being saved
3) What is typically a 17MB 16-bit RAW file, becomes a 50MB 16-bit RAW file. And, the 32-bit RAW file is even larger. PNG files were also been saved. This will potentially create disk storage issues no long photometry runs. Ideally, I would like to only save the 16-bit stacked RAW file.

Best regards,

Gary

[admin]

Hi folks,

if you see that error and the disk is not full then it could be another problem with the saving. As Menno has suggested a common one is setting up custom filename templates in a way that causes files to overwrite ones that are already on the disk - for instance not including anything like {Index} in a raw file template, meaning that the filename for all the raw files would be the same.

Please make sure that you have the latest version of SharpCap and then go to the filename page of the settings. It should flag any problems for you and suggest ways to fix them. It will also not allow you to save and exit the settings without fixing the problem. This detection of problems is new with relatively recent versions of SharpCap, so older versions may have allowed you to set filename templates that cause the problem without any warning.

As for the file size...

When you save a RAW file from the camera it is only one byte per pixel (RAW8) or 2 bytes per pixel (RAW12/14/16). However, files saved from live stacking are full colour, so have to save red, green and blue values for every pixel. That means a 16 bit stack save is 6 bytes per pixel and a 32 bit save is 12 bytes per pixel.

I suspect you are getting both types due to autosave on reset of the stack which now saves both 16 and 32 bit to make sure nothing is lost.

cheers,

Robin

[PetePeterson]

The "fix" wasn't a fix after all. Out again last night figuring to do some simple imaging. At around 20:45 I tried imaging M101. But SharpCap kept giving me the same error message I’d experienced last time I’d attempted using it.

error message.jpg (738.9 KiB) Viewed 497 times

I’m using a simple description per my last inquiry on the SharpCap forum and it’s not saving. Tried many combinations. Occasionally M101 would sometimes save if I clicked M42 or Sun or Mars from the drop down description menu but usually not. Rebooting usually didn’t help, and even if something started working it would fail the next time an imaging sequence was started. Removing SharpCap and reloading didn’t help either. M101’s low and I gave up after 45 minutes.

Shifted to M13 about 23:12. Put my full descriptive object name: M13 4s 1X -5C 200g in and again the error message. Playing around some more it was determined that the frames are stacking and the file is actually saving even though the error message say’s it’s not. Somewhere between 30 and 120 4 second frames the error bar turned off.

Software???

[admin]

Hi,

can you send me the SharpCap log from the session last night where you still had the problem - it will have been saved to disk and you can find it by running SharpCap again on the same computer, going to 'Help' then 'Show Log', then press the 'Locate on Disk' button. That will open the folder where the log files get saved and the one of interest will be there - the timestamp of the file will indicate when you *closed* SharpCap and the file name will indicate the time that you *started* SharpCap.

With the log file, I can work out exactly what is going on.

cheers,

Robin