Lunar and Planetary Webcam User's Guide (Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series)

As a very novice astronomer, and knowing absolutely nothing about webcams, I purchased this book based on the reviews and the title. While the planetary and lunar photos were nice, the first portions of the book was basically worthless, unless you wanted an introduction to individuals world wide who have been at this for a long time and have great equipment. Damian Peach takes terrific photos, but that sure doesn't help a beginner know how to use the equipment. The installation of the camera is probably a no-brainer. But getting the initial images loaded is really glossed over. The chapter entitled "Beginner's Guide to using a Webcam" has a superficial procedure to get the camera installed and focused. The final step, #13, says "Call up the webcam's Capture menu and choose a time and frame rate and a filename, e.g., 120 seconds, 10 frames per second, Jupiter1. Hit return!" That's it, nothing more. Then he jumps into using Registax to stack images. Well guess what, my new webcam, a Philips SPC900NC, has software which doesn't have these options, let alone saving the files in an .avi file. So where do I turn now? How do I convert any saved video into an .avi file for use by Registax? If you are counting on this book to help you are out of luck. And assuming you could figure out how to import .avi files into Registax, the explanations of Registax for image processing and stacking is also very lightly touched upon. This is NOT a beginner's guide book to answer your every question. It will give you a brief exposure to webcams, their usage, and photos possible.