Getting 30fps from a webcam?

Frank,
I usually don't run the camera at 30fps as the image is too dim to be usable, 20 is a good compromise between image compression. brightness and frame rate.

Isn't there a trade off here somewhere? I mean 30 fps but 2500 frames needed as opposed to 5 fps and 400 frames needed. I guess trial and error would get you your half way 'perfect' mark where your frames are read e.g. at 12 or 15 fps are not saturated and would take less frames stacked toget that 'perfect image'.

Still, what do I know, I haven't relly tried any webcam imaging yet at all! But I do keep myself interested reading these kinds of posts for tips and what-not.

Seanie.

Seanie,

The challenge is to get as many good frames to stack as possible during the very brief moments of good seeing so as to mazimize your S/N ratio. As a result, a higher fps will allow you to get a large sample of good frames much easier than a lower fps since during those brief and precious moments you are capturing 60 fps as opposed to 10 fps.

As for the saturation, I have never experienced any such issue since I can always set my desired exposure.

Thanks for that app Anthony.
Handy Avi is very handy indeed.
I did a little experiment and was able to make a composite AVI
from 3 others therefore getting the best from each.
It's another was to cheat the seeing and to beat the 5000 frame limit in Registax.

It took a long time but I think that I was learning as I went so
it slowed me down.

To be honest,
I can't see myself stacking just one single AVI anymore,
(unless it's 2min of PERFECT seeing)
the best bits from 3 / 4 avi's is obviously much better.

Either that or move to Arizona!

Cheers again.

Well,
I was thinking about this and think the lines you are getting at 30 fps is because you are using a 5" aperture scope, remember they were not there when we tried your camera with my 20" scope.
With the bigger scope you can turn the gain down so you wont get as much junk in the image.
5 fps is best for data throughput from the camera to the computer, no data loss but in this relatively long exposures the planets "wobbles" alot (seeing) and smears the image, at 30 fps you don't get the smearing but you get data loss, so which is worse??

1, The atmospheric smearing at 5fps.
2, The image degradation due to the USB bottleneck in the camera.

For me no.1 is alot worse, for me the seeing never allows 5fps to work well.
Just my 2 cents.

If USB1.1 is the bottleneck are there are any USB2.0 or Firewire webcams around? I'm sure you've investigated this so sorry in advance for asking the "bleedin' obvious".