Firecapture Help

[kkara4 (Krishan)]

So last night I had my first go with a QHY5L-II and jupiter at f/40 on an EdgeHD 9.25, using firecapture.

Jupiter was amazing through a Baader RG610 filter, and it was actually very good through R, G and B filters too (though of course not as good as the RG610). I think I have focusing and collimation tight now. I think seeing was probably the best ive had since i got the telescope last year - fine detail readily visible on live firecapture preview with RG610 filter!

Anyway i really struggled with Firecapture settings. I have attached a screenshot, and all settings are whatever Firecapture has by default. I discovered that I could only get around 14fps at 1280x960, and I needed a 640x640 ROI to ensure i had a bit of manouvering room to avoid artifacts from dust and that sort of thing. As can be seen, it appears 22 fps was the best I could achieve. The camera was connected with the USB cable that comes with the QHY5L-II, and i had a proper desktop computer outside.

Any other details that I need to provide, happy to do so!

1) People seem to be pushing 50FPS when imaging with mono cameras - how can i increase the FPS from the 22 i am getting? I tried different USB ports, and exposure settings seemed to make absolutely no difference at all. I tried 1ms and 30ms and everything in between at a gain of 200, and it changed nothing?

2) How do I set custom profiles? As can be seen in the screenshot, I have selected Mars, i had Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Moon and Saturn but i dont want any of those, and every time i tried to change the filter it kept re-setting the exposure time to whatever the profile was set to.

3) A lot of people talk about setting gain as low as possible, even 0 in some cases. at f/10 i tried the moon and set gain to 0 and it was pretty much a black screen. I notice though i can set the gain between 0 and 1000, whereas most of these "people" talk about gain in %. For my last imaging before going to bed, i had gain at 200, exposure 15ms, with a slight variance in gain depending on filter used - enough so the histogram spread to fill 50% of the window width. Is there a setting I need to know about that will allow me to use lower gain? Or is a gain of 200 acceptable? I didnt really notice too much noise in the subsequent AVIs. The screenshot shows gain of 100 since that is what i was using while playing around with things.

4) Can someone explain how to set the exposure time properly? As i said in 1) i tried adjusting it and it made squat diddly difference to the live preview, and it appears to have not made any difference to recorded AVIs. It also didnt change the FPS (actual) value - no matter what, with a ROI of 640x640 it records at 22 ish FPS. I suspect strongly there is some setting somewhere, but i couldnt find it.

Apologies for the length of this, and TIA!

Either way i was stoked with how Jupiter looked live and recorded. Was amazing to see in the different filtered bands too!

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

I don't use Firecapture, I tried it once and it didn't seem to do what I was attempting (I must try it again sometime), so I use the bundled EZPlanetary.

It sounds like you're hitting the speed limit of USB 2. I only use a little 5-year old netbook and it can only manage 8fps at 1280, but runs faster with lower resolution. Last year I was using 320x240 with Mars, but Jupiter is too big for that and no doubt at f/40 it's huge...

People with the faster mono cameras are no doubt using USB 3 too.

Oh btw, look for a USB traffic option and set to as low a value as possible.

[kkara4 (Krishan)]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

I don't use Firecapture, I tried it once and it didn't seem to do what I was attempting (I must try it again sometime), so I use the bundled EZPlanetary.

It sounds like you're hitting the speed limit of USB 2. I only use a little 5-year old netbook and it can only manage 8fps at 1280, but runs faster with lower resolution. Last year I was using 320x240 with Mars, but Jupiter is too big for that and no doubt at f/40 it's huge...

People with the faster mono cameras are no doubt using USB 3 too.

Oh btw, look for a USB traffic option and set to as low a value as possible.

Cheers Dunk. Found some hidden settings, and an article by firecapture themselves. And also read Firecaptures own help file and discovered a menu i was looking for. set USBtraffic to zero, ROI to 600 x 600, and High speed transfer on = 75 fps . Gain i bumped up to 250, exposure 15ms. Got some good sequences i think, despite seeing being horrendous at first it quickly stabilised to half-decent. not even close to the seeing last night. oh well. a full weekend of sifting through vids ahead!

Gain i still dont understand how some people use 0. im thinking it has something to do with % and dB, where firecapture is displaying in dB / 100 or some funky thing like that

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Sounds good Krishan look forward to your results

Gain = 0...I'm not sure....it depends on how the gain is calibrated from program to program, meaning, is gain 0 really zero gain (raw signal?) or what value is it? In EZplanetary, I'd been using gain of 8-10 at f/25 on my C11, but who knows what that really means.

[kkara4 (Krishan)]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

Sounds good Krishan look forward to your results

Gain = 0...I'm not sure....it depends on how the gain is calibrated from program to program, meaning, is gain 0 really zero gain (raw signal?) or what value is it? In EZplanetary, I'd been using gain of 8-10 at f/25 on my C11, but who knows what that really means.

yeh not sure about the gain - i am hoping someone can provide some input into that value. I think the noise is quite acceptable at 200 gain anyway so not too concerned.

My biggest issue was frame rate which i am happy with now. I also have heaps of dirt specs somewhere in my imaging train. Not the filter wheel, changing filters has no effect. Sticking my hand in front of scope seems to do nothing, and corrector plate is relatively clean. They show up as small dark spots in the image, but because the planet drifts slightly and jumps around it gets eliminated in processing.

thanks for letting me know your settings for EZplanetary, i can use that as a more educated comparison - ill install ezplanetary at some point to do some tests.

do you play around with gamma at all?

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Yeah frame is the key to capturing something out if the changing seeing.

The dirt specs may not be in your optical train but on the sensor itself. I've got a spec on mine but I've not been brave enough to clean it. You can test this by rotating the camera and seeing if the spec rotates with it. You could always use flats to subtract it out.

I don't touch the gamma, as I figure is rather record the raw data and fiddle with it in software later, so the gain is the only thing I change - one thing to be wary of in EZPlanetary is to check the colour balance is more or less right. From memory, when I started using it the green channel was dialled up higher than the red and blue for some reason. Once set it will remember the settings.

[kkara4 (Krishan)]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

Yeah frame is the key to capturing something out if the changing seeing.

The dirt specs may not be in your optical train but on the sensor itself. I've got a spec on mine but I've not been brave enough to clean it. You can test this by rotating the camera and seeing if the spec rotates with it. You could always use flats to subtract it out.

I don't touch the gamma, as I figure is rather record the raw data and fiddle with it in software later, so the gain is the only thing I change - one thing to be wary of in EZPlanetary is to check the colour balance is more or less right. From memory, when I started using it the green channel was dialled up higher than the red and blue for some reason. Once set it will remember the settings.

Thanks Dunk, that rotation is a good idea. if its somewhere in the scope, itll rotate opposite to the way i turn it. if it is on the sensor, itll rotate the specs in the same direction .

I dont have to worry about colour balance - mono camera