WEBCAM UTILITIES Last updated: 17 August 2008

Subject:	Tuning the Philips webcam (WcRmac & AviRAW), free capture software (wxAstrocapture),
 free webcam-control software (WcCtrl)
Sent:	Friday, August 8, 2008 04:04:54
From:	Michael Schroder (m-schr@web.de)
I am not sure if someone already posted some nice freeware tools.

First the WcRmac-tool for tuning the webcam. This tool reprograms some
feature of the webcam to drastically improve the picture quality. There
is a nice tutorial (sorry only in German here:
http://astrofotografie.hohmann-edv.de/aufnahmetechniken/toucam.optimieren.php).

Attached are three snapshots of the picture-quality before the tuning,
after the tuning and one after recoloring with another great
freeware-tool: aviRAW. With this tool you can automatically recolor the
B/W-pics of the improved webcam. The gaining of sharpness and detail is
extraordinary. I cant wait to try it on the night-sky.









The second software I wish to recommend is a freeware capture-software
esp. designed for astro-usage. There is included a live-histogram and
reticle as well as the possibility to attach the guiding-system from
some platforms. You find the link to the software here:
http://www.arnholm.org/astro/software/wxAstroCapture/index.htm .

For usage with every capture-software there is another brilliant
freeware tool: WcCtrl. With this tool you can control your webcam
(regardless of your capture-software) and save different settings (one
for moon, one for jupiter etc.) so you can use them every night. You
find the software here:
http://www.burri-web.org/bm98/soft/wcctrl/index.htm .

Again I am not sure if already someone posted this links. These tools
are awesome and will definitely help to improve the quality of my
astrophotos.

Greetings from Germany

Sent:	Thursday, August 14, 2008 07:38:07 
From:	Dr.-Ing. Michael Schroder (mschroeder@schroeder-kg.de)
One addition to the webcam improvement.
I found out that AviRAW was not able to recolor the RAW-avi if

a) the fps-settings are higher than 15 fps
b) with any other resolution than 640x480.

I guess in both cases the video-signal is compressed too much. You gain
just a b/w-picure without any additional sharpness.

So from my experience I suggest to always use the 640x480-resolution
(even if that means bigger avi-files) and stay at 5 fps.

That means you only get 1200 picture from a 4 min avi-file (on planets
like jupiter it is not recommended to record avi-files longer than 4
minutes due to the rotation).

Hope that helped.

Michael

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