These instructions are for Windows machines with a Firewire connection. I have a Canon ZR45mc camcorder with miniDV tape
Scott Degenhardt's IOTA'08 ppt on this subject
Run Windows MovieMaker (free with WinXP)
--Connect firewire - computer to camcorder
-- then turn on the camcorder to the play position (down position on my Canon ZR45mc).
If not done in this order, WinXP and MovieMaker will not recognize the device
-- click file, and enter output filename and folder
-- choose Digital Device Format (DV-AVI) option, and
answer the obvious questions that follow
-- click the forward arrow to begin playing the tape
-- Plan to capture at least 2 occultation durations before and after the drop, for good statistics and solution from Occular, later on.
-- click Start Capture when you're at the point you
want, and Stop Capture, then finish
and the file will be written to your hard drive
-- close MovieMaker
-- this avi file is compressed. LiMovie needs an uncompressed avi file, so you need now to uncompress it with VirtualDub - it'll be much bigger!
Run Virtual Dub (free software off the web). Goal is to make
an .avi file which LiMovie can read. (maybe can skip this step if you use an
S-video connection above) . Or use AVIsynth
if your file is very long. Steve Preston's
instructions for AVIsynth
-- file | open | and navigate to your file
-- drag the narrow little box on the frame number line to the spot you want
to begin recording, and click the right half arrow. Then move the little box
to the stop recording point and click the left half arrow.You should see your
newly restricted range in light blue for your output file.
-- file | save as | AVI and give file name. I like
to append a 'VD' to the end of the original file name root.
-- close Virtual Dub
Run LiMovie (there's a lot of options, but for the basic use, here goes...)
-- file | AVI file open | and your filename. You'll
see the first frame show
-- click on your target star and adjust the red circle (radius
in number of pixels / radius box) until it encloses
all of your star and as little sky as possible
-- adjust the blue annulus to be beyond the red circle and not include any other
stars or bad pixels. Make sure your star can't slop over into this donut.
-- make sure Kiwi is checked (middle right edge of
the screen) if you have Kiwi OSD, then LiMovie will read the time stamps
For my telescope, I find that the tracking isn't perfect. It's probablly a mixture of field rotation, gear slop, and not perfectly centered alignment star procedure. If your stars wander at all, you'll want to click on 'drift' in the tracking box for the target. Then pause just before LiMovie arrives at the D, and switch the tracking for the target to 'anchor'. This keeps the circles from moving very much while it's out and better enforces that the star will R inside the red circle. If drifting is real bad, you may have to track using the guide star. In that case, the circle for the target will dance strictly in synch with the guide star and because of seeing, they may not in fact dance in synch, so be careful and consider upping the size of your circles. Anyway, to do linked tracking...
-- with just your target star visible, then click off in the tracking box
-- if you have a second star in the field, then right-click your occulted star
which brings up a window where you click add object
-- then click on your second star and a yellow circle will appear around that
star. Make sure the Synch-APT (synchronize aperatures)
is clicked. Now you're guiding on the second star which will be really helpful
during the occultation when the target star is gone. Click Link under the Link Tracking box. Make sure your second
star aperature is identical to that for the target, and it has drift clicked in the tracking box.
-- click Start and watch the video and make sure the
red circle encloses all of the star especially as it reappears.
-- Adjust red circle if necessary. Before clicking Start again, you'll have to delete the .csv data just created by clicking DataRemove and repositioning to the beginning by clicking on the double left arrow
-- It'll run through the video creating a .csv output. Save it by clicking save
to CSVfile
-- click GRAPH to see the light curve
-- shift+PrtScr and then open Photoshop and file | new and then CNTRL-V to paste in the screen shot, and trim to include just the light curve so you
can make a .jpg for it for your scrapbook!
Run Occular V4.0 - Will Statistically Analyze Your .csv File To Find the Best Timings Possible
-- select file and get your file. It'll show the .csv files
-- click on the gray box left of the header line with No. next
to it, immediately above the first data line. This should highlight the entire
top row. Make sure the entire row is highlighted. This tells Occular the headers
titles
-- find the Object1 Result Measurement column and
click on the first data entry to highlight it.
-- use the vertical positioner to go all the way to the last data entry in this
column and Shift left-click on it, to highlight the entire column
-- click Analyze Data and it'll warn you you need
a time stamp, click yes and you then navigate to the
row 1 column 1 entry (which is frame number 0.0) and double-click on it to bring
up a box for you to work with. It should show a complete date time in a text box; click and then OK. If that doesn't work, then...
-- follow the format they suggest and enter the month/day/year/hr/min/sec in
the white space provided, and click OK. It will populate the individual boxes for date, hr etc. More likely, if you click on a valid record, it'll fill in the proper format along the text line in the bottom, and when you ask it to take the time from the text, it'll fill in the boxes correctly.
-- click Analyze Data. You may find it fails the data integrity check. Occular verifies that your captured VTI times are spaced .033 or .034 sec apart. If there are any frame spacings which are different than this, it'll fail the integrity check. For me, I find that LiMovie reads my KIWI time stamps sometimes confusing "6", "8" and "9". It'll flag them and they're pretty easy to see what the digits should have been read as, from the records on either side. Click on the bad records right there within Occular, fix them, then click on write 'error marked' csv file, and it'll resave your .csv file w/o the errors. You need to do this or it won't re-read it later and produce a final report but instead give you a scary hexadecimal unhandled exception error.
--Again click Analyze Data. It should bring up a box which
includes your light curve and parameter boxes. I like to prt-screen this over
to Photoshop as it's a bigger light curve plot than is done by LiMovie. You can
click drag a box around the part of the light curve you want displayed. Occular will search through a range of occultation
time lengths to search for a range which includes an obvious occultation.
-- for Event Bottom it wants the duration, in frames, of the occultation. For minimum and maximum enter the shortest and longest durations
it could be. No need to go overboard, if you can see the obvious occultation by eye, then just go comfortably above that and below that.
-- for Wing Length choose a number of frames as long as possible but less
than the un-occulted time length before the D and after the R.
-- click on Star Magnitude and fill in the available
magnitudes of the star, using Steve Preston's "detailed information" link on the event.
-- click Use Mr as Star Magnitude and it'll bring
up a new box for you to enter the asteroid magnitude, red magnitude being more relevant for most videocam's.
-- and click Use Mr as Asteroid Magnitude
-- click Calculate MaxFOM to calculate
the best figure of merit from the possible occultation parameters you've entered.
It'll take a bit of time to generate the 100 trials. Click on show noise histogram and you'll see the
distribution of errors to the model, and it should look single-peaked and roughly
Gaussian. Do PrtScr and CNTRL V to cut/paste to Photoshop for the graphs you
want.
-- click final report to generate, and ignore the
warning about the magnitude drop, unless it's obvious you made a mistake. I like to shift-PrtScr and CNTRL-V in Photoshop so you can save
the final report as part of my webpages on these events.
Reporting Observations to IOTA
Use OccultWatcher to populate the spaces in the report form with the right numbers, but you must first have claimed a station, and that must be done BEFORE the event happens!