Startrails.de Error - Question

I'm attempting to produce my first star-trails video. I have 398 primary frames, 5 dark frames. All were shot at ISO 400, f3.5, 20 seconds, 10 second gap between images. Shot with my 50D and EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm.

The Startrails.de software produces the single star-trail image, from the 398 images, just fine. However, when I attempt to produce the video, I just get a small pop-up that states 'Error!'

I'm using Windows XP with all updates installed.

I was able to produce a video using PhotoLapse software, but it doesn't utilize the dark-frames.

Any ideas regarding the Startrails.de error message?

I first re-sized all the images to 1280 pixels on the long side, also tried images at 640 pixels on the long side. Both sizes produce the same error message.

AtDhVaAnNkCsE

GJim wrote in post #12814856
I'm attempting to produce my first star-trails video. I have 398 primary frames, 5 dark frames. All were shot at ISO 400, f3.5, 20 seconds, 10 second gap between images. Shot with my 50D and EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm.

The Startrails.de software produces the single star-trail image, from the 398 images, just fine. However, when I attempt to produce the video, I just get a small pop-up that states 'Error!'

I'm using Windows XP with all updates installed.

I was able to produce a video using PhotoLapse software, but it doesn't utilize the dark-frames.

Any ideas regarding the Startrails.de error message?

I first re-sized all the images to 1280 pixels on the long side, also tried images at 640 pixels on the long side. Both sizes produce the same error message.

AtDhVaAnNkCsE

I've had success making videos, and then at times got same error message.
The program is bugy for making videos, make sure you do a fresh re-start and then run it.

Also, I used it to make video of 3,500 images I took of a storm.
There seemed to be a limit to 450-475 images at a time I could process, more than that and it would say "error".

(my system also WinXP at latest updates, however done under emulation using VMWare on a MacOSX machine, still it worked but buggy)

good luck.

Mike:

Thanks for the feedback. I got it to work - I think the software does not like the fact that I have two monitors on this machine (have found similar issues with other software programs). I happened to find that the window asking for the compression settings was hidden behind the main window. When I down-sized the main window so that the compression window appeared, I was able to create the video - but, only on a 'fresh-start'.

Still have a few 'hot' pixels in the final image - I would have thought the dark-frames would have been used to eliminate those. I did check the dark-frame images and the hot pixels are definitely there.

5 darks for almost 400 lights may not be enough to detect the hot pixels.