Vidoxide

Copyright (C) 2020-2024 Filip Szczerek ([email protected])

This program is licensed under MIT license (see LICENSE.txt for details).

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Features
• 3. Building
  • 3.1. Linux and alikes
  • 3.2. MS Windows
• 4. Troubleshooting

1. Introduction

Vidoxide is a video capture tool with features targeted at Solar System astrophotographers.

Demonstration video: link

2. Features

Cross-platform

• Builds & runs on any platform supporting Rust and GTK

Supported camera APIs:

• IIDC (DC1394)
• FlyCapture2 (FLIR, formerly Point Grey)
• Spinnaker (FLIR)
• ASICamera2 (ZWO)
• Video4Linux2 – extremely basic support (only YUYV video modes, no camera controls); Linux only

Supported telescope mounts:

• Sky-Watcher direct serial connection (tested with a 2014 HEQ5)
• iOptron direct serial connection
• ASCOM (tested with ASCOM/EQMod and a 2014 HEQ5), MS Windows only
• ZWO Mounts direct serial connection (tested on AM3/AM5)

Supported focusers:

• FocusCube 3
• DreamFocuser mini

Image feature tracking:

• self-guiding (with supported mounts): selected image feature (or a planet – via centroid) stays in the same place of the FOV
• live crop: only a ROI around a selected image feature is recorded
• preview stabilization (e.g., for focusing in windy conditions)

Game controller support:

• slewing the mount
• focuser operation

Dispersion indicator: helps to adjust an Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector down to 0.1-pixel accuracy (of R-G, B-G channel offset)

Collimation helper: shows a live stack of a star image to aid collimation in less-than-perfect seeing conditions

Output formats:

• TIFF or BMP image sequence
• SER video
• upcoming: AVI video

3. Building

Clone the repository:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/GreatAttractor/vidoxide.git

Camera drivers to build are selected as features in invocation of cargo, e.g.:

cargo build --release --features "camera_iidc camera_v4l2 camera_flycap2 camera_spinnaker camera_asi"

will build Vidoxide with the IIDC, V4L2, FlyCapture 2, Spinnaker and ASI drivers.

3.1. Linux and alikes

Install the Rust toolchain. C & C++ toolchain is also required, as are GTK3 development libraries, and those needed by camera drivers you wish to use.

Detailed instructions: to be provided. prerequisites (Fedora): libusb-devel, libudev-devel, lib1394-devel (V4L2 needs (on Fedora): llvm-devel, clang)

3.2. MS Windows

Building under MS Windows has been tested in MSYS2 environment and the GNU variant of the Rust toolchain.

Download MSYS2 from http://www.msys2.org/ and follow its installation instructions. Then install the Rust toolchain: go to https://forge.rust-lang.org/infra/other-installation-methods.html and install the x86_64-pc-windows-gnu variant. The warnings about "Visual C++ prerequisites" being required and "Install the C++ build tools before proceeding" can be ignored. Note that you must customize "Current installation options" and change the "default host triple" to "x86_64-pc-windows-gnu".

Open the "MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit" shell (from the Start menu, or directly via C:\msys64\msys2_shell.cmd -mingw64), and install the build prerequisites:

pacman -S git base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk3

From now on it is assumed that the FlyCapture2, Spinnaker and ZWO ASI camera APIs are to be used. Download and install the FlyCapture2, Spinnaker & ZWO ASI SDKs, go to the location of FC2 binaries (by default, "C:\Program Files\Point Grey Research\FlyCapture2\bin64") and check if the FlyCapture2_C.dll file exists. If not, make a copy of the corresponding versioned file (e.g., FlyCapture2_C_v100.dll) in the same location and rename it FlyCapture2_C.dll (this is required due to the libflycapture2-sys crate's expectations).

Pull Rust binaries into $PATH:

export PATH=$PATH:/c/Users/MY_USERNAME/.cargo/bin

then change to the Vidoxide source directory and build it:

SPINNAKER_LIBDIR="C:\Program Files\FLIR Systems\Spinnaker\bin64\vs2015" FLYCAP_LIBDIR="C:\Program Files\Point Grey Research\FlyCapture2\bin64" ASICAMERA_LIBDIR="C:\Downloads\ASI SDK\lib\x64" cargo build --release --features "camera_flycap2 camera_spinnaker camera_asi mount_ascom"

Initially it will take several minutes, as all dependencies have to be downloaded and built first. Note that the location of FC2 DLLs must be given in FLYCAP_LIBDIR, Spinnaker DLLs in SPINNAKER_LIBDIR, and ASI DLL in ASICAMERA_LIBDIR.

After a successful build, Vidoxide can be run locally with:

PATH="$PATH:C:\Program Files\Point Grey Research\FlyCapture2\bin64:C:\Program Files\FLIR Systems\Spinnaker\bin64\vs2015:C:\Downloads\ASI SDK\lib\x64" target/release/vidoxide.exe

Upcoming: creating a binary distribution

4. Troubleshooting

Unable to switch camera to a 16-bit video mode under Linux

Increase the USB-FS buffer size, e.g. (run as root):

echo 1000 > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/usbfs_memory_mb

Slow preview frame rate under Wayland

It appears sometimes GTK3 will not use HW acceleration for bitmap scaling under Wayland, resulting in slow preview frame rate if the preview area occupies a large area on screen. (Seen in 2024-12, Fedora 40 / 6.12.6-100.fc40.x86_64, Mesa Intel(R) Xe Graphics (TGL GT2) (0x9a49), 24.1.7.)

As a workaround, force the GDK backend to X11 when running Vidoxide, e.g.:

GDK_BACKEND=x11 /target/release/vidoxide