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.
I'm processing a 10-panel composite.
Panels 1-9 worked perfectly, but the last one failed with registration errors.
All the usual tweaks failed to solve the problem.
So I removed the lights and removed the integrations, kept the calibration frames.
I loaded the same lights without restarting the program, and it's working fine.
Do finished integrations required StarTools to reserve memory? Does that cause registration failures?
@tailspin45 Tom,
I get the impression that you are giving a summary of the whole process. What do you mean with "panels 1-9 worked perfectly"? What steps did you take and where does StarTools get in? Why would the memory used by StarTools affect the memory used by APP? It is an external tool. What were the "usual tweaks" that you applied on panel 10?
Thanks, Wouter
What do you mean with "panels 1-9 worked perfectly"?
What steps did you take and where does StarTools get in?
Why would the memory used by StarTools affect the memory used by APP? \
It is an external tool. What were the "usual tweaks" that you applied on panel 10?
Yike! No wonder you're confused.
I meant to write Astro Pixel Processor not StarTools. StarTools is, indeed, an external tool and irrelevant to this issue.
To create a composite, I planned to process each of 10 panels individually using Astro Pixel Processor—from Load to Integrate (and Light Pollution Removal). After processing panel one, I removed the lights and added new ones for panel two using the same calibration files. After panel two, I removed the lights and added new lights for panel 3. Etc.
Each iteration worked fine until I got to panel 10 when the registration error window appeared with suggestions to increase the number of stars, remove same camera, etc. (the "usual tweaks" I referred to in OP). I tried all the recommendations and in combination and the process would not run to completion.Â
So, to try something else, I removed integrations 1-9 from the bottom of the file list and reran panel 10 and it worked fine. For some reason, I'm guessing a memory issue, the presence of earlier integrations prevented Astro Pixel Processor from working properly.
Yes, I could have restarted Astro Pixel Processor fresh after each panel. But without a way to save a config file which would ensure each process was identical, I was afraid of ruining the finished composite because some panels might be processed with different settings if I was careless.Â
I'm not trying to make a deal out of this issue, just raising my hand to alert you that there is apparenty a problem if integrations are not removed.
@tailspin45 Thanks for the clarification. I'll pass this on to Mabula to hear his opinion.
