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Stable Visualisation

Session Cinema

Your stack building itself on video, and the zoom from the whole sky down to your image: your sessions become movies.

Download ↗ Source code (GitHub) ↗ Documentation ↗

Overview

A night of acquisition is hundreds of subframes nobody ever looks at. Session Cinema turns them into a movie.

First mode, the progressive stack: feed it your raw camera subs, it registers them internally (correcting dithering and meridian flips), composites your filters into colour (SHO and HOO palettes, optional SCNR green removal), grows the integration from darkness to the optimal stretch, and cross-fades to your finished image aligned onto the stack.

Second mode, Zoom Odyssey: the "where is it in the sky?" video, starting from the whole sky and diving down to your image as it reveals itself, driven by its plate solve (bundled catalogues plus a DSS2 bridge through hips2fits).

Overlays stay scientific and sober: frame counter, cumulative exposure, UT clock, actually measured signal-to-noise gain, angular scale. Exports in 16:9, square or vertical, encoded in H.264 whenever ffmpeg is available. More modes are on the roadmap, starting with the automatic processing making-of.

On video

Features

Progressive stack

Raw camera subs in: internal registration (dithering and meridian flips corrected), the integration grows from darkness to the optimal stretch, frame after frame.

Colour and reveal

Multi-filter colour composite (SHO and HOO palettes, optional SCNR), then a final cross-fade to your finished image. An Auto button places it on the background by star matching; manual placement stays there for starless images and for fine-tuning.

Zoom Odyssey

The "where is it in the sky?" video: from the whole sky down to your image revealing itself, driven by the plate solve (bundled catalogues plus a DSS2 hips2fits bridge).

Honest overlays

Sober and scientific: frame counter, cumulative exposure, UT clock, actually measured SNR gain, angular scale. All optional.

Share-ready export

16:9, square or vertical for social platforms, H.264 encoding through ffmpeg. And when ffmpeg is missing from the machine, one click installs it from the CaeloWorks mirror.

Bilingual UI

English and French. A session folder in, a few simple settings, and the movie comes out on its own.

Screenshots

Session Cinema, Zoom Odyssey tab (the one the script opens on): plate-solved (WCS) image and image to reveal as inputs, a Render options group (constellation and star names, horizon, coordinate grid, real-sky survey bridge, simulated shoot location), and on the right the overlays, the video and the output
Session Cinema, Progressive stack tab: the list of subframes, rendering (fixed stretch computed on the final stack, debayering, registration), the SHO colour composite, and the finished image revealed at the end with its align button

Install

  1. 01

    Add the CaeloWorks repository

    In PixInsight, open Resources → Updates → Manage Repositories and add the CaeloWorks repository URL:

  2. 02

    Check for updates

    Run Resources → Updates → Check for Updates and accept: PixInsight downloads and installs the script.

  3. 03

    Restart PixInsight

    Relaunch the application: the script shows up in the Script menu. Future updates then arrive automatically.

Once installed, the script shows up under Script → CaeloWorks → Session Cinema. Video encoding uses ffmpeg when present on the machine. Requires PixInsight 1.9.4+, Windows, macOS or Linux.

Changelog

  • 1.1.1 2026-08-17

    Fixes for silent behaviours. A reveal alignment saved by 1.0.0 or earlier and re-run under 1.1.0 was rendered at twice its angle, without a word: the original value cannot be recovered, so the rotation is left untouched and the doubt is reported (in the window, the console and the result JSON); redoing the alignment once (Align… then Auto) settles it, and configs now carry the build that wrote them. Zoom Odyssey ignored Framing: a vertical (9:16) or square export of a landscape image ended letterboxed even on Fill; the end field of view now follows the framing mode. Finally, the measured SNR gain was never drawn on a colour composite (the default configuration): the colour path now measures each filter's noise, and a gain that was requested but could not be measured reads "SNR —" instead of vanishing.

  • 1.1.0 2026-07-13

    Automatic alignment of the image to reveal: an Auto button computes the placement by star matching (StarAlignment), deep crops and mirrored images included; manual placement remains the fallback and the fine-tuning surface. Important fix: in Zoom Odyssey a rotated crop was rendered at the wrong angle — a video produced with 1.0.0 from a rotated crop needs re-rendering. Zoom Odyssey becomes the first tab and the default style. And when ffmpeg is missing from the machine, one click installs it from the CaeloWorks mirror.

  • 1.0.0 2026-07-11

    First stable release: both styles, the progressive colour stack and Zoom Odyssey, are validated end to end on real sessions. The script now has its icon in PixInsight (menu entry and dialog emblem) and joins the CaeloWorks menu category.

  • 0.1.0 2026-07-05

    First public release (beta, GPL-3.0), distributed through the CaeloWorks update repository: progressive stacking (from raw subs to colour) and Zoom Odyssey.