513 replies to this topic

[Domdron]

For anyone wishing to do planetary processing on their Mac, so either "lucky imaging" image stacking or wavelet sharpening, I just released Planet Stacker X. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. It's fully native to MacOS and Apple Silicon.

 

• Download on the Mac App Store: https://apple.co/4dyTdry
• Learn more: http://raincityastro.com

 

Clear skies,
Rain City Astro

Awesome, a good Mac planetary stacking app is definitely missing, looking forward to testing this.

 

However "This app is currently unavailable in your country or region." -- why?

[raincityastro]

 

 

However "This app is currently unavailable in your country or region." -- why?

The app was just released by Apple onto the about 4 hours ago... it can take 24 hours before it's available in every country.

 

Also it's possible the link I posted only is only valid for the US App Store, try searching for "Planet Stacker X" and see if that gets it to show up.

Edited by raincityastro, 26 May 2025 - 03:22 AM.

[Domdron]

The app was just released by Apple onto the about 4 hours ago... it can take 24 hours before it's available in every country.

 

Also it's possible the link I posted only is only valid for the US App Store, try searching for "Planet Stacker X" and see if that gets it to show up.

Right, thanks, will try tomorrow. Search doesn't find it yet. But I think that links work globally, i.e. it will redirect to the store of one's country if available there.

[DeepSky Di]

This is awesome news!

 

I downloaded it will report back how it goes.

[Domdron]

For anyone wishing to do planetary processing on their Mac, so either "lucky imaging" image stacking or wavelet sharpening, I just released Planet Stacker X. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. It's fully native to MacOS and Apple Silicon.

 

• Download on the Mac App Store: https://apple.co/4dyTdry
• Learn more: http://raincityastro.com

 

Clear skies,
Rain City Astro

I don't have a camera that can record raw files so I only had a .mov one. Planet Stacker X doesn't seem to support .mov so I converted it to .set with Siril. It would be helpful to indicate in the file selector which file types are supported.

 

The .set file became 70GB in size. Planet Stacker X showed a very slow progressing progress bar so I went to bed. When I came back to my computer in the morning, the window asking to shut down apps was open because it ran out of memory. Planet Stacker X showed as using 80GB, so I guess it tries to load the whole video into memory all at once? It's a 5 minute 1280*960 video by the way.

 

I'll try to split the video into smaller parts; my MBP has 16GB Ram and a .ser seems to be about 14GB/minute, so I guess 30 seconds is the max. I should try. Will report how that went later.

Edited by Domdron, 27 May 2025 - 10:37 PM.

[Domdron]

The smaller .ser loads ok (still using a log of memory though), but it shows all black images. In Siril I can see the planet in Linear view mode.

[Sctom]

Need a little bit of advice on equipment, please.
I’ve been processing in PI on my M3 MBA and it works great. I just bought an M4 Mac Mini (so small!) and it will start life in my observatory to remote into the Eagles on my scopes.  Later it will move to the house for processing in PI.

 

This next part is above my head so apologies in advance if these are really stupid questions.

 
1) Does a router stop malware from getting into my Mac Mini? Right now I use cellular (tether from ipad or iphone) for the little bit of Internet I need. If so, suggestions on a router with enough speed but not over spending for such a small usage situation. Wi-Fi will only be to update some apps and maybe down the road remote into the observatory. OK to plug into router, not connect by wifi, so wifi speed is not an issue.

 

2) I have a gaming keyboard, but of course it’s not Apple and does not have the command or Apple logo buttons. Can I map the command and Apple logo keys to a regular keyboard, or do I need to get an Apple keyboard? Or is this not an issue?

 

3) The Mini has only 512G storage, and I always back up to external Samsung 2TB T7 SSD‘s. But in this case I will be using the external SSD’s as the Astro storage, not actually in the MM.  Transfer speed is fast enough for now. So is there a way to attach two of these Samsung SSD‘s and configure them in a RAID 1 to mirror each other, not mirror the Mac Mini?  On my 2TB MBA I just use Time Machine to back up everything to external SSD’s but I’m looking at almost a terabyte of data, well over the MM storage available.  This is only a temporary solution as I trade in my Macs about every year or two for a refurbed newest, maxed out model.

 

Many thanks

 

[raincityastro]

Planet Stacker X showed as using 80GB, so I guess it tries to load the whole video into memory all at once

 

 

Thanks for this.

 

Planet Stacker X actually does NOT read whole video into memory at once... however looks like I did have a memory leak that was leaking frames during the Analyze phase. I've fixed the memory leak and just submitted v1.01 to the App Store... you should see that update hopefully in the next day or so.

 

 

 

The smaller .ser loads ok (still using a log of memory though), but it shows all black images

Are you comfortable sending me the video? That will do a lot to help me understand why you are seeing all black frames here. If you disable "Frame Normalization" does that make a difference?

 

 

 

I don't have a camera that can record raw files so I only had a .mov one

As mentioned on the App Store description, I only support RAW file formats right now, so SER and raw AVI files.

 

I could add mov support, but I typically associate with .mov files with compressed file encoding which typically aren't great for planetary. The compression removes a lot of the recoverable signal. Can you tell me more about your camera and the type of mov file it records? If you want to send me a sample file I'm happy to look more into adding support.

[Domdron]

Thanks for this.

 

Planet Stacker X actually does NOT read whole video into memory at once... however looks like I did have a memory leak that was leaking frames during the Analyze phase. I've fixed the memory leak and just submitted v1.01 to the App Store... you should see that update hopefully in the next day or so.

 

Are you comfortable sending me the video? That will do a lot to help me understand why you are seeing all black frames here. If you disable "Frame Normalization" does that make a difference?

 

As mentioned on the App Store description, I only support RAW file formats right now, so SER and raw AVI files.

 

I could add mov support, but I typically associate with .mov files with compressed file encoding which typically aren't great for planetary. The compression removes a lot of the recoverable signal. Can you tell me more about your camera and the type of mov file it records? If you want to send me a sample file I'm happy to look more into adding support.

Awesome news about the update, thank you! I've found it on the store and loaded the smaller segment. It still showed 37GB Memory and VM Compressed though, albeit a much smaller 3GB Real Mem. I will try loading the larger video on the weekend hopefully.

 

The video is from an older Logitech webcam recorded via OBS Studio. It doesn't support raw, so I'm using the least compressed codec which is Apple ProRes 4444 XQ. Not sure what codec the camera uses to send to OBS though, probably sth gets lost there. 

 

The point of this exercise is more to check what I can get out of this setup. So please don't be shocked by the bad quality compared to current planetary cams  I'm planning to get an IMX585-based camera sometime soon which will obviously be much better.

 

Anyway, I've further trimmed the .mov to just 1 second length, and uploaded this and the Siril-converted .ser (zipped) on my web space.

 

On another note, I still can find the app in the store only on one of my Macs, the other still doesn't see it. Both have the Region configured to be Kenya. Though the one that doesn't see it uses a different Apple ID that I had created in Germany and only later switched to Kenya, so maybe it's still using the German store? Is the app available in the German store?

[raincityastro]

 

 

It still showed 37GB Memory and VM Compressed though, albeit a much smaller 3GB Real Mem... Anyway, I've further trimmed the .mov to just 1 second length, and uploaded

Thanks for uploading the sample video. It was super helpful! Turns out that video used a SER encoding that I never added support for... I didn't think I needed to since none of the popular recording apps supported it. Who knew that SiriL does. 

 

Either way I just submitted v1.02 to Apple. This update adds support for this particular type of encoding so you should no longer see a dark screen. You should find the memory usage much more reasonable since I'm now properly reading in the frames instead of reading them as "junk". Watch for that update sometime in the next day or so

 

 

 

The video is from an older Logitech webcam recorded via OBS Studio. It doesn't support raw, so I'm using the least compressed codec which

Yeah. To be direct... the sample video you uploaded had so many compression artifacts in it I wasn't really able to extract any usable signal... not using my software or any other software out there.   With that said I don't think it would be too hard to add MOV file support for anyone that insists on using a compressed video format so I'll see what I can do after I'm out of bug squishing mode.

 

 

 

Is the app available in the German store?

Not yet... Apple isn't allowing me to release the app to EU App Stores due to EU regulations. I'm working to try and resolving the issues. If I can't get it resolved soon I might just upload an unsigned binary to my website for any EU based users.

[Domdron]

Thanks for uploading the sample video. It was super helpful! Turns out that video used a SER encoding that I never added support for... I didn't think I needed to since none of the popular recording apps supported it. Who knew that SiriL does. 

 

Either way I just submitted v1.02 to Apple. This update adds support for this particular type of encoding so you should no longer see a dark screen. You should find the memory usage much more reasonable since I'm now properly reading in the frames instead of reading them as "junk". Watch for that update sometime in the next day or so

 

Yeah. To be direct... the sample video you uploaded had so many compression artifacts in it I wasn't really able to extract any usable signal... not using my software or any other software out there.   With that said I don't think it would be too hard to add MOV file support for anyone that insists on using a compressed video format so I'll see what I can do after I'm out of bug squishing mode.

 

Not yet... Apple isn't allowing me to release the app to EU App Stores due to EU regulations. I'm working to try and resolving the issues. If I can't get it resolved soon I might just upload an unsigned binary to my website for any EU based users.

Thank you for the very quick updates, that's an awesome turn-around time! I will test the new version once I get home and find the update on the store.

 

Yes I know this recording is quite bad, I think it also has to do with the ROI that I set in OBS, which actually seems to have upscaled the content in the ROI. I have previously shot Jupiter using the same setup but not setting an ROI, and it came out much better (this one was stacked with Lynkeos IIRC, I don't think I still have the original video):

 

About the supposed EU regulation, I find that curious because the app doesn't collect any data? However for now I'm using the workaround of installing/updating in my Kenyan Appstore Mac, and then copying over to my other Mac. That works very easily by the way, and the signature is just as valid, so I don't need to do anything else to run it on the other Mac. So maybe you could just copy the signed store version on your website? Or do Apple's terms prohibit this?

[raincityastro]

 

 

About the supposed EU regulation, I find that curious because the app doesn't collect any data?

Correct. The app does not collect any data. The issue is less about the what the app itself is doing and more about jumping through the right hoops and checking the right boxes.

 

 

 

 

So maybe you could just copy the signed store version on your website? Or do Apple's terms prohibit this?

Not a bad idea but I'm too risk adverse to try anything that could potentially put my Apple Developer account at risk of suspension 

[Domdron]

Correct. The app does not collect any data. The issue is less about the what the app itself is doing and more about jumping through the right hoops and checking the right boxes.

 

 

Not a bad idea but I'm too risk adverse to try anything that could potentially put my Apple Developer account at risk of suspension 

Sure I fully understand.

[raincityastro]

It's now looking unlikely I will be able to get the app released on EU App Stores anytime soon, so I barely updated my website at https://raincityastro.com with a direct download link to an unsigned version of the software. You will need to remove the quarantine in order to run it, instructions are included in the download.