Thank you for the investigation! So in INDI v1.8.5 I updated the stream manager code a bit so that now it does not downscale from 16 to 8 when recording (only done for the streaming frame). I haven't yet check the cropping/ROI part, I know this works for streaming but have to check for recording as well.

I was out last night after upgrading all software on the StellarMate.
I shot some videos of the moon.

This time i experienced KStars crashing after a very short time with LiveView open when the camera setting was Mono 16-bit (this is a new issue, maybe related to the change knro mentioned above).
After trying a few times with the same result I changed my setting to Mono 8-bit and that still works fine with Live View.

I don't know if I can avoid the crashing if i play around with the USB speed for the camera, but I guess I will give it a try next time.

However, I continued shooting movies of the moon with Mono 8-bit.
If I use the "drag a subframe" functionality on the live view, the SER video files are still corrupted, but that makes sense since you mentioned above that you did not look at it yet.

Full frame recording in Mono 8-bit works fine as it has all the time.

I just started playing with planetary... Can confirm that "If I use the "drag a subframe" functionality on the live view, the SER video files are still corrupted" is still not good.

Yes, for that reason I only use KStars/Ekos for Deep Sky Photography.
It works fantastic for that purpose.

But when I do planetary, I always use FireCapture.
It would be nice if the video recording feature of Ekos could integrate with FireCapture somehow.
Or if the issues with video recording could be fixed.

FireCapture is very resource demanding on a Raspberry Pi.

Yes. I installed and tried FireCapture on RPI4 once - it is very resource demanding.
Don't want to go to Windows for that. Would be really nice if StellarMate provided some useful tool for video capture.

You can try using oacapture for planetary. I use it on my NUC. I haven't tried it yet on a RPI4 yet.

I added this to my TODO, hopefully I'll get time to tackle it shortly.

I tried to install oacapture on RPI4 a few months ago but was not successful..

Jasem,
I do realize that you are busy with other things.
But can this be fixed please?
-- 16bit SER files are not readable (which is probably OK - 8bit are readable).
-- cropped to ROI SER files are corrupted and not readable. (this feature is advertised as functional).

It would be great if Ekos had at least some basic planetary capabilities.

At present it only can record full frame 8-bit SER files.

Thanks!

What camera is this? I can do both 16bit and also subframes.

I have same problem. Recording with ASI1600 ROI in 16 bit mode result in just bunch of noise. Also the timestamps are all over the place like year 10000 and such. I am using ser-player to play back recorded files. But with some ROI sizes it seems like it can record properly. Like 500x500 it is recording fine but tanything smaller result in noise. Also I am not entirely sure but there may be difference where I set image size if in Image tab or Streaming tab of control panel. Also when I set 300x300 pixels it change it to 296x300

Last time I tried it was ASI071MC Pro.
-- 16 bit. It records but frames look weird. As if they were grossly overexposed.
-- 8 bit. OK.
-- 8 bit. ROI. Noise. But I haven't tried square ROI. ROI was selected in Live View window.

Will experiment more tonight.
Thanks!