Why didn't my images get saved?

[Moonstruck]

Hi Robin,
I tried to image the ring nebula last night, running 105 4-minute exposures, but they didn't get saved in my sharpcap folder as they usually do. I am quite sure I captured them the same way I always do, using FITS files, and as I recall, right after I started capturing, I looked at the bottom right part of the screen and it said 1 of 105, then 2 of 105, etc. So it looked like it was capturing ok.

Any idea why the images weren't saved?

[admin]

Hi,

all I can think of is maybe they were saved somewhere other than the place you expected? If you have set SharpCap to capture to a customized folder and that folder seems to be missing, full or read-only when you start SharpCap, the software will switch back to the default 'SharpCap Captures' folder on the desktop. Might be worth checking...

The next step beyond that is to check the log file which will have been saved from last nights session - that should track the captures you made, what files they were saved to, etc.

cheers,

Robin

[Moonstruck]

Thanks. I just checked the log file, and it said I was capturing still frames. Maye that is why it didn't save? Next time I will make sure it is in live mode before i try to capture!

Thanks again for the help.

John

[Astrogeordie]

Hi Everyone,

I just registered to this forum as I have the same problem.

Just two nights ago, I did an exposure series using my Altair Hypercam 26C with Sharpcap 4.1 on a Windows 10 laptop.

I started with 3min exposure time, but stopped this after two frames as I decided to go for 2min exposure time instead. Changed the file name to reflect "120s" in it instaed of "180s", changed the exposure time from 3min to 2min and restarted. The frames did not get saved. I stopped, started again, same problem.

The only bit that helped was disconnecting the camera in the "Camera" tab, and reconnecting it again. Of course I had to check the thermal controls still work (they are not that reliable either), but when I started the series then, it saved the images again.

I wonder where the bug may be.

Cheers,


Jurgen

[admin]

Sorry about the delay in spotting this post and approving it...

It's hard to be 100% sure about the cause of the problem with no frames being saved from the description above. If you can find and share the SharpCap log file from the session where the problem happened (SharpCap should keep log files for 30 days or so) then it might let us work out correct cause. However, there are two main possibilities that occur to me.

1) The camera stopped sending frames to SharpCap - this would show up as the 'dropped' frame count increasing in the status at the bottom left corner of SharpCap (the dropped frames would also be recorded in the log).

2) The frames are still arriving from the camera and being shown but are not being saved for some reason

Since you found you needed to disconnect and then reconnect to get things going again, I suspect that the camera stopping sending frames was the problem. Things to check in that case are

* Reduce the camera USB Speed setting to a lower value - that can help ensure reliable operation for long exposures (but will reduce maximum frame rates available at short exposures)
* Make sure your USB connection cables are not over length (for USB3 a cable length about about 3.5m tends to lead to increased chances of problems - if the cable run needs to be longer than that then a hub or an active repeater cable may be required to split the run into two shorter sections)
* Make sure you have the very latest version of SharpCap 4.1 from our downloads page - the latest versions will have updates to the Altair SDK and also to SharpCap itself to try to deal with any reliability issues that we are aware of and are able to resolve.

thanks,

Robin