Hi Bill,
I’m looking forward to seeing your hi-res meteor spectra with your new setup.
UFO Analyser should be able to extract astrometry and radiant data from your HD-quality videos but I don’t know how reliable the velocity measurements would be if the frame rate is variable.
A standard definition meteor video camera such as the Mintron or Watec has an internal clock that pumps out 25 PAL frames/second (50 fields/second) at a very reliable frame rate. Most old legacy PCs can cope with this bandwidth and are ideal for running UFO Capture.
When using a webcam or other imaging camera – especially at higher resolutions than PAL 720×576 – the PC has to be able to handle the data steam from the camera, which might not have a reliable and fixed transfer rate and the files can be big.
For HD-quality work SonotaCo recommend DSLR cameras that can deliver HD 1920×1080 video streams at fixed rates of 50 or 60 frames/second. This requires a beefy PC to cope with the demands on its data bandwidth and storage capacity. The cameras can overheat if they are left running for several hours.
All this is relevant for meteor velocity work, but isn’t important for your quality spectra.
Clear skies,
Alex.