Major malfunction: Crash by change binning in DirectShow

[StarFlea]

Hi Robin,

This morning I set my sights on Mercury. I ran my Omegon veLOX 178c in DirectShow mode. When I set the binning from 1 to 2 in the control settings as a test, SharpCap crashed.
I restarted the program several times, but the binning always remained at 2 when connecting the camera. As soon as I try to reset it to 1, SharpCap crash again.

I unplugged and reconnected the camera several times, restarted the notebook several times, reinstalled SharpCap and the DirectShow driver, edited and/or deleted the _autosave (veLOX178C).ini - file: without success. The binning remains at 2...

Binning can be changed easily in ASCOM mode.

What could that be?
Greetings!
Star Flea

[StarFlea]

Hello again!

I made a few other observations related to this problem and tried a few things...

For example, I once deactivated the graphics card acceleration, but that had no effect!
On the other hand, I saw that all sliders are deactivated in the Image Controls in the Control Center, immediately after connecting the DShow-camera, probable because of the RAW8-mode, which I actually don't want to use...

StarFlea

[admin]

Hi,

I have tried to make the various resolutions available on these cameras show up as binning in SharpCap (that's how the resolutions work), but unfortunately it's quite complex because of the way the basic DirectShow implementation interacts with the enhanced controls

One problem is that the camera software itself seems to remember the last resolution used, so will start in effectively the last binning used - I haven't found a way to fix that during startup of the camera that works reliably.

I think a workaround to get the camera back into bin1 mode would be to run an older version of SharpCap (ie 4.0) and in that change to the highest possible resolution for the camera, then close. If you then go back to the most recent SharpCap then you should end up in bin1 mode.

I will have to do some more tinkering to see if I can get the binning to behave itself properly

cheers,

Robin

[StarFlea]

Perfect!
This fixed the incorrect setting! Now I can use the camera again!

I had already thought something similar. With other programs I was able to change the binning to 1x1 without any problems, but the setting did not transfer to SharpCap.

So it's worth keeping an older version!

However, I still don't understand why the program crashed so much when I changed the binning to 2x2!?

StarFlea

[StarFlea]

Ok, I've now specifically reproduced the behavior.
As soon as the camera is running under DirectShow, I easily change the binning from 1x1 to 2x2.

However, if I switch back immediately afterwards, the program crashes.

I attached an extended log for interesting.

[admin]

Hi,

I think it is trying to send the wrong ROI info to the camera for the new binning settings, but unfortunately the version you are using is not recording the values it is trying to send. I fixed that issue in yesterday's update along with another fix that should reliably put the camera into bin1 mode on startup (so no need to go back to the older version). Hopefully with the log from the newer version I should have a better chance of working out why the change back to bin1 mode is causing a problem (with my IMX571 based model I can switch binning backwards and forwards without any problems).

cheers,

Robin

[StarFlea]

Ok, the reset to Binning 1 worked wonderfully with the new version (4.1.11049.0).

I have now switched on the extended logging and provoked the crash again.
The protocol is in the appendix. Hope it helps!

Greetings!
Star Flea

[StarFlea]

Ah, I get a different crash when I want to apply ROI.
This protocol is also attached...

[StarFlea]

... and another one if I just try to change the resolution...

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for the reports with the new version - I will work through them and see if I can make them happen in my testing (always a good start) and then fix them.

cheers,

Robin