New Feature : Planetary Live Stacking

[Cey42]

I went to try this latest version using a SER file captured last week. But I was getting bad colors. Wondering if it was a bug I downgraded back to the version I was using 4.1.11491 but still see the issue.

The seeing was horrible and I was still trying to get focus when I captured this SER. What I am asking about is the colors.
Here is the original image that I captured that night.

Live.jpg (25.6 KiB) Viewed 123365 times

Now I tried to use the SER file and I get these colors while using "Auto Adjust Brightness/Colour" which is what I did when I captured the live image.

File.jpg (11.49 KiB) Viewed 123365 times

I have tried checking all the settings to try and get the colors right but nothing works. Display Histogram is off.
Any ideas or suggestions on what I am doing wrong?

The SER file can be downloaded here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmzOfpCoABCRgoJkfhO ... Q?e=74T7EC

Thanks,
Cey

[Borodog]

The wrong Bayer pattern is being used. Probably should be RGGB and it is using BGGR for some reason.

Under Debayer Preview you can force the proper Bayer matrix.

[admin]

Hi,

the cause of the incorrect bayer pattern looks to be a bug which is related to using the 'flip' option to change the orientation of the image. Changing the orientation changes the effective bayer pattern, which SharpCap corrects for on screen, but it looks like the header of the SER file gets the wrong information. I'll try to fix this.

cheers,

Robin

[admin]

I have uploaded a further update today that fixes an issue with a crash when using surface alignment if the Windows language settings have been set up to use a ',' as decimal separator (sorry Europe!).

I have also added 'Reset All' buttons to reset the sharpening and adjustment sliders easily and a brightness stabilization option for the timelapse (which will stop the brightness of the timelapse from flickering if you have variable transparency).

cheers,

Robin

[Cey42]

Argh, I should have thought about the Bayer pattern. Setting it to BGGR fixed the issue.

Trying 4.1.11536, I find the Auto Adjust does not work as well. Seems too yellow. Maybe it just my preference. Both of these images are after stacking the first 1000 frames and the same sharpening values.

36.jpg (9.59 KiB) Viewed 122800 times

Here is the image from 4.1.11491 which I like better

91.jpg (9.25 KiB) Viewed 122800 times

Thanks,
Cey

[admin]

Hi Cey,

I limited the amount of boost on the blue channel in the latest version to avoid issues with Mars and Saturn getting too much blue, but looks like that has adverse effects on some Jupiter images I will tweak further...

cheers,

Robin

[admin]

Just an update on the auto colour - since Cey had kindly shared his SER file, I was able to test.

It's a bit of an odd situation - the SER file is quite dim, so auto-adjust tries to brighten it, but hits the maximum brightness limit of 2.5x. Since the red/blue channels are still too dark, they get boosted further and the blue boost limitation kicks in giving a yellow image.

If you boost the brightness of the video being played back (turn up exposure or gain in the test camera controls) then it works a lot better, since the brightness boost can bring the level up further, meaning that the colours get adjusted by turning down green as well as turning up blue/red.

I will tweak the maximum brightness boost to 3.0x rather than 2.5x - that helps significantly even without boosting the source frame brightness, but otherwise I think I will leave things alone.

cheers,

Robin

[Borodog]

Thanks for the update, Robin. You work fast!

[admin]

Hi folks,

hope that everyone had a good Christmas

I uploaded another update yesterday which adds two key features to planetary live stacking

1) Solar colorization - which you will find available when stacking MONO - look in the Image Adjustments area

2) A gamma adjustment, which can help give a bit more contrast to certain stacked images.

Note that both of these adjustments are applied after the sharpening (and therefore also after brightness/colour adjustments).

Adding the solar colorization required a change in the way that the planetary live stacking plugs into the rest of SharpCap (the previous way made it basically impossible for a monochrome frame to go in and a colour frame come out). This change initially led to a number of bugs, but I *think* I've ironed all of those out now. If anything in this area unexpectedly breaks that worked nicely before, please let me know.

cheers,

Robin

[PeterC65]

Hi Robin,

Just using this latest version, I'm unable to save a PNG snapshot of the live planetary stack while also capturing frames to a SER file. I haven't done this before so it may not be a new bug, or indeed it may be as intended, but I'm thinking that capturing the frames for a subsequent re-run while also saving snapshots on the night is a reasonable use case.

Peter