Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
Using a trial license with a small set of images I was able to successfully complete an integration and do some post-process work.
Now I'm using a larger data set of 130 images with flat, bias and darks. During my 1st attempt, the stacking process stopped at "Creating Lights stack...Completed 30%". I thought it was just going slowly and I went to bed. The next morning it was still like that.
2nd attempt, it stopped in exactly the same place.
Has anyone else had this happen?
FYI: My Macbook's HD is VERY full, with only about 8GB free space. The data and working directory are on an external drive that has over 400GB free space.
(Before you suggest I make more space on the internal...it's not possible. I've even deleted some things that I need. There is just no more room!)
As a followup: I tried a smaller piece of the same data, only 5 images. It completed successfully, but paused for quite a while at the same place...then finished.
Is it possible that the process simply takes a VERY long time? How long should it take for a large set of images?
I've got a 2015 macbook pro, with 8GB of ram. APP cpu usage is set to maximum.
Using a trial license with a small set of images I was able to successfully complete an integration and do some post-process work.
Now I'm using a larger data set of 130 images with flat, bias and darks. During my 1st attempt, the stacking process stopped at "Creating Lights stack...Completed 30%". I thought it was just going slowly and I went to bed. The next morning it was still like that.
2nd attempt, it stopped in exactly the same place.
Has anyone else had this happen?
FYI: My Macbook's HD is VERY full, with only about 8GB free space. The data and working directory are on an external drive that has over 400GB free space.
(Before you suggest I make more space on the internal...it's not possible. I've even deleted some things that I need. There is just no more room!)
Hi Cheetah,
I have encountered this problem myself. But I have a clue on where the problem is.
If the integration is at 30%, the images to be integrated are all loaded with registration and normalization parameters applied. At this point, the LNC module will start if turned on, or integration should immediately start. My guess is that LNC is turned on and that the LNC calculation does not finish, which should point to bug in that module that I need to fix. Is my assumption correct that you enabled LNC?
If you didn't enable LNC, then I really need more information:
- I would need output of the console (last several hundred lines up until integration starts at 30%)
- screesnhot of the bottom frame list panel with all analytical results
This information could really help in understanding what's happening.
Integration on an external drive is perfectly possible, but you will need to be aware that MacOS doesn't natively support writing on NTFS or FAT drives very well. I had all sorts of problems with my macbook 2016 and a NTFS formatted external drive (formatted with windows 7) using MacOS's native support for the NTFS file system. Only after installing paragon NTFS the problems were solved. So perhaps, this could be the problem that you face, an incompatibility between MacOS and your external drive. Can you write files to the external drive without problems from your Macbook, if so, then disregard this option.
Kind regards,
Mabula
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As a followup: I tried a smaller piece of the same data, only 5 images. It completed successfully, but paused for quite a while at the same place...then finished.
Is it possible that the process simply takes a VERY long time? How long should it take for a large set of images?
I've got a 2015 macbook pro, with 8GB of ram. APP cpu usage is set to maximum.
I assume then, that there is abug with LNC if you turned that on. Else, I suspect write problems to the external drive.
No the process shouldn't take very long. Integration of 400 16MP RGB frames only took about 70 minutes with 4 CPU cores and 4GB of memory:
See test 4 for results on both an M2 SSD as a conventional SATA 600 drive. Integration time is almost the same.
So you do encounter problematic behaviour which needs to be solved. Cna you share the extra information that I asked for in my previous post?
Kind regards,
Mabula
Â
Hi there. Thank you for your response!
I switched the external hard drive from USB 2 to Thunderbolt. That sped things up. I also removed about half of the frames (which were bad and I hadn't realized it). The processing completed in about 4 hours.
Yes, LNC was enabled.
I've done several more batches of photos. All seem to pause at the 30% mark, but then continue quite quickly to 100%.
Perhaps I should start a new thread, but is APP suitable to Lunar photography? I tried processing images with NO stars and the process stopped. Is there a way to make this work?
Hi @cheetah,
While LNC is running, progress stays at 30% so that's normal. If you are using a lot of frames, then LNC can take very long. I probably will adjust and upgrade LNC to solve this within the coming months. When LNC is finished (check in console) then the progress indicator will start running again indeed.
No, lunar photography are planetary is not possible (yet). That requries a different registration engine. It's something for the future to implement. APP will only register images with stars currently. The star locations are what APP uses for registration.
Kind regards,
Mabula
