Toucam Pro direct to Minidv handycam

Hi,

I have 70-300mm telephoto to which my TouCam Pro can mount for prime
focus. I intend to use this setup for Venus transit video recording.
However, recording such long hours into my harddisk is out of question
due to huge disk space requirement.

Is it possible to stream the USB output from my ToUcam pro to my
minidv camcorder, without quality loss? The minidv tape is just US$5
for 90 minutes recording.

From the recorded minidv tape, I can then select a few series of
frames for making a decent animation on my PC.

I also intend to use this arrangement for important eclipses.

Or any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks
Chote
Bangkok, Thailand

try using directly your minidv camcorder . Chances are it's using an equally
good CCD . What brand and model is it?

matt tudor

"Chotechai" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

I have 70-300mm telephoto to which my TouCam Pro can mount for prime
focus. I intend to use this setup for Venus transit video recording.
However, recording such long hours into my harddisk is out of question
due to huge disk space requirement.

Is it possible to stream the USB output from my ToUcam pro to my
minidv camcorder, without quality loss? The minidv tape is just US$5
for 90 minutes recording.

From the recorded minidv tape, I can then select a few series of
frames for making a decent animation on my PC.

I also intend to use this arrangement for important eclipses.

Or any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks
Chote
Bangkok, Thailand

"Chotechai" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

I have 70-300mm telephoto to which my TouCam Pro can mount for prime
focus. I intend to use this setup for Venus transit video recording.
However, recording such long hours into my harddisk is out of question
due to huge disk space requirement.

Is it possible to stream the USB output from my ToUcam pro to my
minidv camcorder, without quality loss? The minidv tape is just US$5
for 90 minutes recording.

From the recorded minidv tape, I can then select a few series of
frames for making a decent animation on my PC.

I also intend to use this arrangement for important eclipses.

Or any other suggestions are welcome.


Hi Chote,

You will find it difficult to match the 640x480 resolution that the Toucam
will give, with a video camera

I am planning to do something similar using a Toucam. If you use K3CCDtools
software you can automatically take a series of short avi at set intervals
(eg 10sec at 5 fps every 5 min) This will use much less room and you will
not have to worry about it crashing after 4 hours! Do not capture faster
than 5fps as this will lead to compression artefacts

If you then stack each avi to reduce the noise , you can make up a time
lapse recording out of the nice clean images. (You should use an IR filter
to make sure you do not get problems with chromatic abberations)


I used a Vesta Pro during the Mercury transit and it worked out quite well
(Venus will be much bigger!)

http://www.leadbeaterhome.fsnet.co.u...o_image_40.htm

Robin
----------------------------------------------------------------
Robin Leadbeater
N54.75 W3.24
www.leadbeaterhome.fsnet.co.uk/astro.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------

"Robin Leadbeater" wrote in message
...

"Chotechai" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

I have 70-300mm telephoto to which my TouCam Pro can mount for prime
focus. I intend to use this setup for Venus transit video recording.
However, recording such long hours into my harddisk is out of question
due to huge disk space requirement.

Is it possible to stream the USB output from my ToUcam pro to my
minidv camcorder, without quality loss? The minidv tape is just US$5
for 90 minutes recording.

From the recorded minidv tape, I can then select a few series of
frames for making a decent animation on my PC.

I also intend to use this arrangement for important eclipses.

Or any other suggestions are welcome.


Hi Chote,

You will find it difficult to match the 640x480 resolution that the Toucam
will give, with a video camera

I am planning to do something similar using a Toucam. If you use
K3CCDtools
software you can automatically take a series of short avi at set
intervals
(eg 10sec at 5 fps every 5 min) This will use much less room and you will
not have to worry about it crashing after 4 hours! Do not capture faster
than 5fps as this will lead to compression artefacts

If you then stack each avi to reduce the noise , you can make up a time
lapse recording out of the nice clean images. (You should use an IR filter
to make sure you do not get problems with chromatic abberations)


I used a Vesta Pro during the Mercury transit and it worked out quite well
(Venus will be much bigger!)

http://www.leadbeaterhome.fsnet.co.u...o_image_40.htm

Robin
----------------------------------------------------------------
Robin Leadbeater
N54.75 W3.24
www.leadbeaterhome.fsnet.co.uk/astro.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't used Astrosnap in its more recent incarnations but the website (if
I recall correctly) says it allows on the fly integration (stacks a user
preset number of good frames and only stores the resulting frame) , storing
just the integrated frames in the resulting AVI , decreasing the storage
requirements dramatically while maintaining its stacking ability . Instead
of either storing gigabytes of data _or_ having to discard lots of data,
effectively using a small percentage of observing time, this would allow to
store the whole imaging session in a much smaller number of frames. The
resulting frames would be of higher quality and less noisy so easier to
stack and process .

matt tudor

See my web site for results using Astrosnap at
http://home.woh.rr.com/frostdesign/. There are a ton of other benefits,
especially the use of final images in animation files, as it literally
tracks on the object you are imaging, not to mention I can image all night
long while using less than 1 gig of hard drive. Equivalent AVI would have
been 10 times this, and taken a lot longer to process in Registax! Also,
since the program only adds quality frames to the stack, it is also doing
the painstaking job of eliminating the bad frames from an AVI. If you were
processing an entire nights work for an AVI, it would take a week to sort
through all those frames. I can typically stack and process 3000 bitmaps
into 30 final images in less than 2 hours, and have a completed AVI in just
under another half an hour or less.
Mark
"matt" wrote in message
. ..

"Robin Leadbeater" wrote in message
...

"Chotechai" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

I have 70-300mm telephoto to which my TouCam Pro can mount for prime
focus. I intend to use this setup for Venus transit video recording.
However, recording such long hours into my harddisk is out of question
due to huge disk space requirement.

Is it possible to stream the USB output from my ToUcam pro to my
minidv camcorder, without quality loss? The minidv tape is just US$5
for 90 minutes recording.

From the recorded minidv tape, I can then select a few series of
frames for making a decent animation on my PC.

I also intend to use this arrangement for important eclipses.

Or any other suggestions are welcome.


Hi Chote,

You will find it difficult to match the 640x480 resolution that the
Toucam
will give, with a video camera

I am planning to do something similar using a Toucam. If you use
K3CCDtools
software you can automatically take a series of short avi at set
intervals
(eg 10sec at 5 fps every 5 min) This will use much less room and you
will
not have to worry about it crashing after 4 hours! Do not capture faster
than 5fps as this will lead to compression artefacts

If you then stack each avi to reduce the noise , you can make up a time
lapse recording out of the nice clean images. (You should use an IR
filter
to make sure you do not get problems with chromatic abberations)


I used a Vesta Pro during the Mercury transit and it worked out quite
well
(Venus will be much bigger!)

http://www.leadbeaterhome.fsnet.co.u...o_image_40.htm

Robin
----------------------------------------------------------------
Robin Leadbeater
N54.75 W3.24
www.leadbeaterhome.fsnet.co.uk/astro.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't used Astrosnap in its more recent incarnations but the website
(if
I recall correctly) says it allows on the fly integration (stacks a user
preset number of good frames and only stores the resulting frame) ,
storing
just the integrated frames in the resulting AVI , decreasing the storage
requirements dramatically while maintaining its stacking ability . Instead
of either storing gigabytes of data _or_ having to discard lots of data,
effectively using a small percentage of observing time, this would allow
to
store the whole imaging session in a much smaller number of frames. The
resulting frames would be of higher quality and less noisy so easier to
stack and process .

matt tudor

Thanks a lot for all your comment. Now I decide not to buy videocam
and will try the Astrosnap, instead.

Chote

Try longer exposures and lower frame rate....

Dominic


On 26 Mar 2004, Chotechai wrote:

Hi,

I have 70-300mm telephoto to which my TouCam Pro can mount for prime
focus. I intend to use this setup for Venus transit video recording.
However, recording such long hours into my harddisk is out of question
due to huge disk space requirement.

Is it possible to stream the USB output from my ToUcam pro to my
minidv camcorder, without quality loss? The minidv tape is just US$5
for 90 minutes recording.

From the recorded minidv tape, I can then select a few series of
frames for making a decent animation on my PC.

I also intend to use this arrangement for important eclipses.

Or any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks
Chote
Bangkok, Thailand