I’m going to call 2.8 a preview release for a couple of days – just in case there are a few bugs lurking. As always with a new version, test in daylight before risking valuable clear skies time!
What’s new in 2.8?
- Notification Bar – replaces many message boxes and the capture sequence wait dialog.
- Quick Capture – new Quick Capture toolbar button with various frame and time options.
- Performance – Improved performance with high speed USB3 cameras, especially capture speed
- Performance – Frame write speed test on the filename settings page for testing.
- Histogram – improved look, range bars below histogram and now scaled in percent on the horizontal axis
- RAW Mode – Debayer On/Off is now a separate control, no longer part of Colour Space selection.
- File Naming – added option for WinJUPOS compatible file names. Uses mid point time in the capture for the WinJUPOS name
- Dark Capture – new tool to help capture dark files in the Capture menu.
- Dark Library – Darks automatically get saved into a folder structure based on camera name and parameters.
- Dark Library – When you browse for a dark file it will start in the correct part of the dark library.
- Focus Score – switch between recording average and best values.
- Focus Score – Now always requires a selection rectangle to avoid hang on large frame sizes
- Live Stacking – improved file naming including number of stacked frames
- Live Stacking – Stop accidental double dark subtraction – Astro cameras can only subtract darks from the camera controls now.
- Live Stacking – Switch between raw/stack immediately even for long exposures.
- Live Stacking – fix FWHM filter not working unless the limit value was changed.
- Live Stacking – Save as Dark removed from Live Stacking – use the ‘Dark Capture’ option in the Capture menu.
- Many bug fixes from bug reports.
Note that this version will still work with Windows XP, but this will be the last major version of SharpCap to support XP.