Ha! Last 2.1.971 is going to be the last release of 2.1… No chance 🙂
Two significant changes in 2.1.1049
- Support for iNova cameras (http://inovaccdusa.com/). Thanks to Roger and Ilia at M42Optic for providing me with a sample and getting me started with the SDK. I am testing using a PLB-Cx, but iNove owners with other cameras please do get in touch if you have any problems. A few things to note
- On most computers you should get good frame rates by leaving the ‘Hb’ setting on auto and (maybe) tweaking PixClock up to 44 or higher. On some, leaving Hb on auto may lead to a frame rate that wobbles between 2-3fps and 15-20fps. On these, put Hb on manual and adjust as needed.
- I can’t get the iNove camera I have (PLB-Cx) to switch between 8 and 16 bit modes reliably – I usually have to unplug and re-plug the camera to get this to work. iNova are working on fixing this bug in their SDK, but for now, select the camera normally and you will get 8 bit mode. Select it with SHIFT held down and you will get 16 bit mode. If you get no frames from the camera, unplug it, close SharpCap, reconnect it and retry.
- The iNova DirectShow drivers have an issue that means that they don’t work in SharpCap. The guys at iNova are trying to figure out what is going wrong. For now, make sure you select the camera from the ‘iNova Cameras (Experimental)’ section of the menu.
- If your iNova camera doesn’t show up, try installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) which is required by the iNova SDK.
- Changes to the way that AVI files are written for non-DirectShow cameras (that means QHY, ZWO, etc). Previously I was using AVIFIL32.dll (which is a Windows component) to write AVI files. Unfortunately, these files were limited to 2gb in size by limitations in AVIFIL32.dll and were incompatible with some stacking applications when MONO or RAW capture was being used. Now SharpCap uses a different approach to write AVI files for these cameras (by setting up a DirectShow push source filter, if you must ask), which should address these issues. Thanks to Sam at ZWO for pointing this bug out.
Other changes since 2.1.971 include
- Custom resolutions specified for ASI cameras are now saved and will be in the resolution list next time
- Better placing of the ‘waiting for next capture’ window when performing a capture sequence
- Fix bug which stopped any frame transform from being turned off for DirectShow cameras
- Fix Pan/Tilt not working on ASI cameras
- Fix various bugs reported via crash reports
As usual, the installer is available from the download page, and will be available via auto-update after a week or two.
[Note: 2.1.1028 had a bug causing a crash when the cameras menu was opened on some machines – it has been removed and replaced by 2.1.1049. I’m afraid I missed this bug in testing – thanks to the users who reported it!]
[Note: It seemed that build 2.1.1049 was actually 2.1.1048.1, which was annoying as it meant the auto-update kept trying to re-update. I have rebuilt with a new build number to hopefully fix this. The two builds are functionally identical aside from this]