1. UFOCaptureV2 Time-Shift-Motion-Detect-Video-Recording software for complete records of un-expected events
April / 2010 UFOCapture

2. Design Concept of UFOCapture
1) Record what was happened in the past.
2) Recognize known objects and reject them from detection and capture the rest of all.
unwanted objects in night sky :
- Blinking of stars
- Air planes, helicopters, satellites
- Birds and insects
- Cosmic ray noise
- Ground objects
3) Using full performance of latest PC and achieve what was impossible in the past.
April / 2010 UFOCapture

3. Features 1) Record movies from a few seconds before the trigger
2) Flexible trigger condition for variety of targets
Combination of level, size, duration + external trigger (audio)
Noise level auto tracking for stable observation
3) Trigger masks for unwanted objects in night sky
Scintillation mask for star blinking
Slow object mask for air planes
Dark object mask for birds and insects
Area mask bit pattern for ground objects
4) Time-averaged image creation for star position measurement
Real time digital process for time and space domain filtering
( dramatic S/N improvement to find faint stars, on each event )
5) Compatible with variety of video capture devices on PC
6) Resolution and frame rate free
April / 2010 UFOCapture

4. April / 2010 UFOCapture

5. Scintillation Mask Real time image processing
Input video image Time domain filtered image
Generated scintillation mask pattern Star map correspondence
April / 2010 UFOCapture

6. Motion detection logic
April / 2010 UFOCapture

7. Remaining problems on current UFOCapture
Super imposed time stamp has random errors around 0.3 sec, even the clock of PC was precisely corrected.
-- Inevitable by Windows task switching mechanism
Under-run happens when computation or HDD writing cannot catch up the input stream. This cause frame drops or creating of broken avi files.
-- Data flow of un-compressed video stream is tremendously large.
PCI bus itself or one IEEE1394 interface chip barely handles only one 720x480 16bit 30fps stream.
Recognition cannot be perfect. Manual check is essential.
There is no good way to recognize clouds that reflects moon light.
Tremendous capture happens on thunder storm night.
April / 2010 UFOCapture

8. Future of UFOCapture What will come (waiting for proper device)
HD video ( real time detect-encode for HD ? )
GigE interface
16-bit pixel / monochrome dedicate format
Parallel / GPU processing
64bit version for 64bit OS
????????
Average observation quantity computation ( km^3*mag*hour )
GPS time stamp recognition for frame synchronized analysis
What will not come
UFOCapture + UFOAnalyzer, back ground measurement
Compressed input (decode-detect-encode) handling
File input
April / 2010 UFOCapture

9. Compatibility DirectShow video capture interface
PCI, PCI-ex, IEEE1394(DV), USB2.0, Card Bus, (GigE)
Windows 2000, Xp, Vista, 7
Inner video format ( most of un-compressed brightness formats )
UYUV, YUY2, I420, IYUV, YV12, DVSD, DVHD, RGB8, Y800
(Device driver must support one of these.)
(Hardware encoding (mpeg..) equipment cannot be used)
Resolution and frame rate ( depends on PC performance)
320x240,640x480,720x480,720x576 Up to 1280x1024
10, 15, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 60 frame/sec or else
NTSC 640x fps -> Pentium M/Core series 2.0GHz
PAL 720x576 25fps -> Core series 2.4GHz
April / 2010 UFOCapture

10. Summary
UFOCapture creates perfect record of variety of unexpected event.
Enhanced star image of the moment is useful for measurement.
Scintillation mask improve the motion detect sensitivity a lot n night sky.
It requires powerful PCs.
Current sensitivity and accuracy is mostly decided by devices (camera and lens).
Unwanted object recognition is not perfect, so manual (or multi camera based) confirmation is necessary now.
High Definition meteor observation is waited, but it will not come within a few years, because there is no proper device yet (Most of current HD cameras uses compressions).
April / 2010 UFOCapture