oacapture on el capitan

milo

I have just received for Christmas the ASI 120MM-S camera and I am having a problem with capturing images using "oaCapture". When I plug in my camera to my Apple Macbook Pro Retina 13", I can record files in the formats: AVI, SER and MOV without issues, but when I try and capture the images as a FITS or TIFF, I get an error message and am unable to save anything. The error message says "Output is not writable" for FITS and TIFF. I also get message "The TIFF file format is selected, but the filename template does not contain either the "%INDEX" or "%I" pattern. Output files may therefore overwrite each other" for TIFF when I first select it.

I am trying out Nebulosity currently and the above formats appear to be the best for that software so I am a little stymied at the moment.

Any ideas?

Sam@ZWO

we will feedback this issue to the author

Admin

Can you confirm that the folder you're attempting to save files in is actually one you can write to? If not you can change it using the icons next to the filename template box. I know there were some bugs in this area that I have fixed recently, but I think the fixes should all be in the latest release. If not I should have a new release out in the next few days.

The second error message just means that you need to change the template for the filename (probably by adding the %INDEX substitution to the filename template), otherwise it will be the same for all TIFF or FITS files written in the capture sequence.

Unrelated to this issue, I'm afraid you may find that your camera just doesn't work on El Capitan. Apple changed the USB subsystem enormously between Yosemite and El Capitan and appear to have broken some of it badly. This doesn't just affect ZWO cameras -- I've heard that other cameras have become unreliable or completely stopped working, and other peripherals such as PIC programmers too. There appear to be fixes in 10.11.2 that improve the situation and I've read that connecting devices via a USB2 hub can help, but at the moment there's probably no way to find out what works and what doesn't other than by testing every possible combination of hardware :(

To the best of my knowledge there are three separate bugs reports filed with Apple about these problems, but as their bugs database isn't public I can't find out if they have been marked as fixed yet.

James

antonio.spinoza

Milo wrote:
I have just received for Christmas the ASI 120MM-S camera and I am having a problem with capturing images using "oaCapture". When I plug in my camera to my Apple Macbook Pro Retina 13", I can record files in the formats: AVI, SER and MOV without issues, but when I try and capture the images as a FITS or TIFF, I get an error message and am unable to save anything. The error message says "Output is not writable" for FITS and TIFF. I also get message "The TIFF file format is selected, but the filename template does not contain either the "%INDEX" or "%I" pattern. Output files may therefore overwrite each other" for TIFF when I first select it.

I am trying out Nebulosity currently and the above formats appear to be the best for that software so I am a little stymied at the moment.

Any ideas?

I don't know if you are still checking this thread, but I just ran across this. I have an ASI174MM and experienced the same problem on both Yosemite and El Capitan. On Yosemite it was exactly as you described, and on El Capitan I had the issue with all file formats. Here is the simple solution that has worked for me:

1. Browse to the oaCapture.app application file.

2. Right-click on the oaCapture.app and choose "Show Package Contents".

3. Open "Contents", then open "MacOS".

4. Double-click oaCapture from there. You should get a terminal screen that automatically launches the app.

5. Run a test capture in .FITS and .TIFF formats.

Hope this helps.

milo

Antonio.Spinoza wrote:

I don't know if you are still checking this thread, but I just ran across this. I have an ASI174MM and experienced the same problem on both Yosemite and El Capitan. On Yosemite it was exactly as you described, and on El Capitan I had the issue with all file formats. Here is the simple solution that has worked for me:

1. Browse to the oaCapture.app application file.

2. Right-click on the oaCapture.app and choose "Show Package Contents".

3. Open "Contents", then open "MacOS".

4. Double-click oaCapture from there. You should get a terminal screen that automatically launches the app.

5. Run a test capture in .FITS and .TIFF formats.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for this work-around, it works perfectly now and is writing all file formats great. I'm sorry I didn't see this post earlier, I thought I'd give it a rest for a few months and wait for a new version to come around, and got lost just enjoying viewing the cosmos through an eyepiece until I thought I'd do astrophotography for my school photography project and came back to it 3 days ago. I hope now I can get some good photos and will keep practising and getting better. Thank You again very much.