Mosaic is taking days to finish

For a mosaic, you should create the panels first, not creating a mosaic of all subs as that will get very complex internally indeed. So try to make panels first, then load those integrated panels back in as lights and make the mosaic that way. Use advanced normalization, increase the nr. of stars to 2000, switch on LNC and MBB to the % of the overlap you have between panels.

I'd also give the new beta a try maybe, it's quite a bit faster. 🙂

not sure what you mean by make the panels first.  There is quite a bit of overlap along the length of the California nebula, but I am not sure how much.  

I dont think there are 2000 stars in any single image, which LNC, and what happens if you dont know how much overlap, how do you choose?  

Is there a tutorial for mosaics settings?  

A mosaic consists of panels. For instance, if you make a mosaic of the heart nebula, you take pictures on the upper-left, upper-right, lower-left and lower-right. Those are called, panels. So I would first integrate all data belonging to the upper-left with regular standard settings, then move on to the next panel. In the end you'll have 4 calibrated and integrated panels.

You then clear or restart APP and load in the 4 integrated panels as normal lights (APP may ask if you really want to do that, click yes). No need to add calibration files anymore. Then you set APP up for a mosaic, like so;

1. Tab 3, analyse stars to about 2000. Doesn't matter if you don't have those, APP will simply try to find as many as possible.
2. Tab 4, Scale start to 5, scale stop to 10. Switch on dynamic distortion correction and switch off "same camera and optics". Registration mode is set to "mosaic".
3. Tab 5, normalize mode to advanced.
4. Tab 6, switch on LNC and MBB to the % of overlap you have between panels.

Press integrate and it should work, given all data is good for it.

How do I know when this is going to finish?  

I downloaded the Beta version and while it does seem much faster, I am on 24 hours of the next attempt.  It would be helpful to see progress meters to see the number of steps the program is going to do, and how far along it is on these steps.  The last attempt I stopped after a week of straight processing.  I even went frame by frame and cut down the frame number to 495 frames vs the original 600 frames.  

This particular attempt was made with the program with regular stacking, not even with mosaic registration: 

However, this was just half the frames.  It would not register the top half of the nebula and some other sections.  

So, are you first creating panels like I mentioned above?

Nope.  I want to just dump ALL the data into the program and hit the "go" button with as little work for me to do.  I dislike the processing portion, which is why I bought the program in the first place, but thats just me.

It actually registers the files now with your settings, but I am having this error now: