Philips tricked me!!

Brand new 2Ucam Pro II out of the box. Got everything working fine.
To the observatory with trepidation. Aligning and acquiring target,
easy peasy. Focusing, a doddle. Recording, in the bag. Smug, cold
and contented, back in the warm for a bit of after obs. tinkering.

There you are guys, that's where the trouble starts. The only format
offered by this camera are.smv which is not readable by Registak. Any
way you know of to convert them into .avi?

Pierre MK_UK

"Pierre" wrote in message
oups.com...
Brand new 2Ucam Pro II out of the box. Got everything working fine.
To the observatory with trepidation. Aligning and acquiring target,
easy peasy. Focusing, a doddle. Recording, in the bag. Smug, cold
and contented, back in the warm for a bit of after obs. tinkering.

There you are guys, that's where the trouble starts. The only format
offered by this camera are.smv which is not readable by Registak. Any
way you know of to convert them into .avi?

Pierre MK_UK


Here's something:

For Windows:
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/nesvideos/Conv...InWindows.html
For Linux: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/nesvideos/Conv...VIInLinux.html
Looks like some freeware will git 'er done. Adding audio makes it more
complicated.

Ed T.

"Pierre" wrote in message
oups.com...
Brand new 2Ucam Pro II out of the box. Got everything working fine.
To the observatory with trepidation. Aligning and acquiring target,
easy peasy. Focusing, a doddle. Recording, in the bag. Smug, cold
and contented, back in the warm for a bit of after obs. tinkering.

There you are guys, that's where the trouble starts. The only format
offered by this camera are.smv which is not readable by Registak. Any
way you know of to convert them into .avi?


Hi Pierre,

The Toucam pro II can definitely produce avi files. I suspect you have used
some other function of the Philips software. My advice is to forget the
software supplied and download a program designed for the job of capturing
astro avi like K3CCDTools here
http://www.pk3.org/Astro/index.htm?k3ccdtools.htm
(The free version will do the job)

Robin

Don't know of a conversion, but you might look into AVIEdit (do a Google to look
for it), freeware that controls your camera. Does a pretty good job, and saves
the results to AVI format, skipping the middle step. Try it. I like it.

--- Dave
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pinprick holes in a colorless sky
Let inspired figures of light pass by
The Mighty Light of ten thousand suns
Challenges infinity, and is soon gone




"Pierre" wrote in message
oups.com...
Brand new 2Ucam Pro II out of the box. Got everything working fine.
To the observatory with trepidation. Aligning and acquiring target,
easy peasy. Focusing, a doddle. Recording, in the bag. Smug, cold
and contented, back in the warm for a bit of after obs. tinkering.

There you are guys, that's where the trouble starts. The only format
offered by this camera are.smv which is not readable by Registak. Any
way you know of to convert them into .avi?

Pierre MK_UK

I apologize to Philips and all of you who posted on this thread.
..smv files are used for exchanging video clips and were acquired using
the Video link pro facility bundled with the camera software. 1 minute
of recording produces a file around 150kb and that made me suspicious
from the start as I knew the file should have been a lot bigger
Using the Vrecord facility as a stand alone acquisition tool produces
..avi files.

Sorry again for not reading the manual first.

Pierre MK-UK

Hi Pierre,

It caught me out the first time as well! I'll give you a hint (from one
MK resident to another), turn off audio recording and your files will
be much smaller :-)

Cheers,
JohnT
http://physics.open.ac.uk/~jdtanner

Robin Leadbeater wrote:
"Pierre" wrote in message
oups.com...

Brand new 2Ucam Pro II out of the box. Got everything working fine.
To the observatory with trepidation. Aligning and acquiring target,
easy peasy. Focusing, a doddle. Recording, in the bag. Smug, cold
and contented, back in the warm for a bit of after obs. tinkering.

There you are guys, that's where the trouble starts. The only format
offered by this camera are.smv which is not readable by Registak. Any
way you know of to convert them into .avi?



Hi Pierre,

The Toucam pro II can definitely produce avi files. I suspect you have used
some other function of the Philips software. My advice is to forget the
software supplied and download a program designed for the job of capturing
astro avi like K3CCDTools here
http://www.pk3.org/Astro/index.htm?k3ccdtools.htm
(The free version will do the job)

Robin


There was no free version on the site -( -( -(

I have the same webcam and have no trouble getting AVIs off it, though
I do have a lot of trouble so far doing anything useful with them.
When the sky clears in a few months I'll be trying agin though.


On 27 Nov 2005 10:14:13 -0800, "Pierre"
wrote:

Brand new 2Ucam Pro II out of the box. Got everything working fine.
To the observatory with trepidation. Aligning and acquiring target,
easy peasy. Focusing, a doddle. Recording, in the bag. Smug, cold
and contented, back in the warm for a bit of after obs. tinkering.

There you are guys, that's where the trouble starts. The only format
offered by this camera are.smv which is not readable by Registak. Any
way you know of to convert them into .avi?

Pierre MK_UK

The Toucam pro II can definitely produce avi files. I suspect you have
used
some other function of the Philips software. My advice is to forget the
software supplied and download a program designed for the job of
capturing
astro avi like K3CCDTools here
http://www.pk3.org/Astro/index.htm?k3ccdtools.htm
(The free version will do the job)

Robin


There was no free version on the site -( -( -(

You do have to buy the enhanced version 2 but if you scroll down to the
bottom, you will find the download for K3CCDTools 1 which is free to
download, though you have to register. This happened I am afraid because
someone ripped off software author Peter Katreniak by selling his free
software with their camera :-(

Robin

Thanks for the tip John. I'll soon be ready for action again as soon
as the weather clears.

Pierre MK-UK