Last updated: 2026-03-25

Need help with Strata? This guide covers common issues, troubleshooting steps, and how to contact support effectively.

Getting Help

Before contacting support, try these resources:

  1. Check your SER file — Strata supports SER v2/v3 files in 8-bit and 16-bit depth with Bayer or RGB color. If your file won't open, verify the format in another tool first.
  2. Try a different stacking method — If Multi-Point produces unexpected results on a particular capture, try AP-Dewarp or Simple Average to narrow down whether the issue is data-specific or method-specific.
  3. Use the in-app Help Book — Press Cmd+? or open Help > Strata Help for detailed guidance on every phase of the pipeline.
  4. Review this page — The Common Issues section below covers the most frequently reported problems.

If you're still stuck, we're here to help. The most effective support requests include:

  • A clear description of the problem
  • Which phase of the pipeline you were in (Import, Analyze, Stack, Derotate, Sharpen, Color, or Export)
  • Your SER file details (dimensions, frame count, bit depth, Bayer/RGB)
  • Your Strata version (shown in Strata > About Strata)
  • Screenshots if the issue is visual — especially for stacking or sharpening artifacts

Common Issues

SER File Won't Open

Symptoms: Dragging a SER file onto Strata shows an error or nothing happens.

Try:

  1. Confirm the file has a .ser extension — Strata identifies files by extension
  2. Verify the file isn't corrupted — a truncated recording (e.g., from a crash during capture) may have an incomplete header or missing frames
  3. Check the file size — a 0-byte or suspiciously small file indicates a failed capture
  4. AVI files are not currently supported — only SER video files work for the full stacking pipeline. TIFF and PNG images can be dropped in for sharpen-only workflows

Quality Analysis Is Slow

Symptoms: Frame quality analysis takes much longer than expected.

Try:

  1. Quality analysis runs on the GPU by default (~1,500 fps on Apple Silicon). If it's significantly slower, check that no other GPU-intensive applications are running
  2. Very large frame dimensions (e.g., full-disk lunar at high resolution) naturally take longer per frame than small planetary crops
  3. Try switching quality metrics — Laplacian and Sobel may perform differently depending on your hardware

Stacking Produces Soft or Blurry Results

Symptoms: The stacked image looks softer than expected, or fine detail is missing compared to individual good frames.

Try:

  1. Reduce the stack percentage — stacking too many frames (e.g., 50% or more) includes lower-quality frames that add blur. Try 10–25% for planetary targets
  2. Switch from Simple Average to Multi-Point — Simple Average doesn't perform local alignment, so atmospheric distortion smears detail. Multi-Point aligns each region independently
  3. Check your alignment point grid — if very few APs passed filtering (shown in the Stack phase), the capture may lack sufficient contrast for local alignment. Try lowering the structure threshold
  4. For lunar or solar surface targets, make sure target type is set to Surface rather than Planet — this changes the global alignment strategy

Visible Grid Pattern or Tile Seams After Stacking

Symptoms: The stacked image shows a faint grid pattern, tile boundaries, or brightness discontinuities between alignment point regions.

Try:

  1. This can occur when neighboring alignment points have significantly different numbers of contributing frames or very different local quality. Try increasing the stack percentage slightly to ensure more overlap between regions
  2. Switch between Multi-Point and AP-Dewarp to see if the artifact persists — if it disappears in one mode, note which and report it
  3. Extremely variable seeing (where some regions are sharp and others badly distorted in every frame) can stress the per-AP frame selection. This is a known challenging scenario

Alignment Points Not Appearing on Object

Symptoms: After running the stacking preflight, few or no alignment points are placed on the planet or surface.

Try:

  1. For planets, ensure the target type is set to Planet — this enables center-of-gravity detection which constrains AP placement to the disk
  2. Very small planetary disks (under ~80 pixels diameter) may not have enough area for meaningful AP placement. Consider whether drizzle might help on future captures
  3. Low-contrast targets (e.g., Venus with no visible features) will naturally have fewer APs because the filtering thresholds reject featureless regions. This is expected — there's nothing to locally align on
  4. Check that your AP size setting isn't too large for the object — smaller AP sizes (32 or 48px) work better for small planetary disks

Derotation Fails or Produces Artifacts

Symptoms: Multi-capture derotation shows errors, excludes files, or produces smearing in the combined result.

Try:

  1. Derotation works by registering consecutive pairs in your sequence. If one pair fails, all subsequent images in the chain are excluded. Try removing the problematic file from the session and re-running
  2. Ensure all SER files in the session are of the same target at similar scale and orientation — mixing captures from different nights or with different optics will fail
  3. Very large time gaps between captures (more than ~30 minutes for Jupiter) may exceed the optical flow registration limits
  4. The reference image defaults to the middle of your sequence. If that capture was poor quality, try right-clicking a different file and choosing Set as Reference
  5. Single-file sessions automatically skip the Derotate phase — this is expected, not an error

Sharpening Creates Ringing or Halos

Symptoms: Bright halos appear around the planet limb or along high-contrast edges after wavelet sharpening.

Try:

  1. Reduce the sharpening amount on the Finest Detail and Fine Features layers — these control the smallest spatial scales where ringing is most visible
  2. Increase the Denoise slider on the same layers — this suppresses the high-frequency artifacts that cause ringing
  3. Try Luminance-only mode (the default) rather than RGB mode — sharpening on luminance avoids amplifying color noise that can masquerade as halos
  4. If ringing persists, try Wiener Deconvolution as an alternative sharpening engine — it uses a different mathematical approach that can be less prone to ringing artifacts

WOW Solar Engine Shows No Effect

Symptoms: Switching to the WOW Solar sharpening engine produces little or no visible change.

Try:

  1. WOW Solar is designed specifically for solar surface imaging — it enhances local contrast across the disk to reveal granulation, filaments, and prominences. It will have minimal effect on planetary or lunar images
  2. Adjust the Gamma slider — this controls the overall intensity of the whitening effect
  3. If you have solar captures to test with, we'd love to hear your results. Solar imaging has been the hardest category to test — sample SER files sent to support@macobservatory.com would be extremely helpful

Wiener Deconvolution Produces White Blowout

Symptoms: The image turns mostly white or severely overexposed after applying Wiener deconvolution.

Try:

  1. Increase the Regularization slider — lower regularization amplifies noise and can cause extreme brightness. Start around 0.01–0.05 and adjust
  2. Use the Blend Raw slider to mix deconvolved output with the original — even 20–30% raw blending tames aggressive deconvolution
  3. Try fewer passes (1–2) rather than the maximum (5)
  4. Adjust the Brightness and Contrast post-processing sliders in the deconvolution controls to bring the output into a visible range

Auto RGB Channel Alignment Not Working

Symptoms: The Auto Detect button in the Color phase doesn't correct atmospheric dispersion, or the correction makes things worse.

Try:

  1. Auto channel alignment requires a color image — it is disabled for monochrome captures
  2. The detection works best on planetary disks with a clearly defined limb. If the planet is very small or very overexposed, the limb detection may fail
  3. After auto-detection, the computed offsets populate the manual ADC sliders. You can fine-tune the R and B channel offsets manually from there
  4. For targets at high altitude (low atmospheric dispersion), the correction may be negligible — this is expected

Export File Is Unexpectedly Large or Small

Symptoms: The exported file size doesn't match expectations.

Try:

  1. TIFF 16-bit files are roughly 6× the size of 8-bit PNGs for the same dimensions — this is normal
  2. FITS files (float32 RGB) are the largest format. If file size is a concern, use PNG or JPEG for sharing
  3. If you used drizzle (1.5×, 2×, or 3×), the output dimensions are scaled accordingly — a 3× drizzle produces 9× the pixel count of the original
  4. JPEG quality is controlled by the quality slider in the export settings

Metadata Missing from Exported Files

Symptoms: Opening an exported TIFF in another application shows no EXIF/IPTC metadata.

Try:

  1. Strata embeds metadata in TIFF files via EXIF and IPTC fields. Not all image viewers display these fields — try viewing in macOS Preview (Tools > Show Inspector) or ExifTool
  2. PNG files have limited metadata support — basic information is stored in PNG text chunks, but some viewers may not display it
  3. FITS export includes processing metadata in the FITS header

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Cmd+1 through Cmd+7 Navigate to Import, Analyze, Stack, Derotate, Sharpen, Color, Export
Cmd+R Run processing for current phase
Cmd+E Export
Cmd+N New session
Cmd+Shift+B Batch Process Folder
Space / Arrow keys Frame playback and scrubbing (Analyze phase)
T Toggle before/after comparison (Sharpen phase)
Cmd+Opt+I Toggle inspector sidebar
Cmd+? Open Help Book

Supported File Formats

Import (full pipeline): SER video files (v2 and v3, 8-bit and 16-bit, Bayer and RGB)

Import (sharpen-only): TIFF and PNG images — these skip directly to the Sharpen phase

Export: TIFF (16-bit and 8-bit), PNG, JPEG, and FITS (float32 RGB)

System Requirements

  • macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
  • Apple Silicon recommended (Intel Macs supported)
  • Metal-capable GPU required for GPU acceleration
  • No internet connection required — Strata operates entirely offline

Contact Support

If you've tried the troubleshooting steps and still need help, contact us:

Email: support@macobservatory.com

Please include:

  • Your problem description and steps to reproduce
  • Which pipeline phase the issue occurred in
  • Strata version (from Strata > About Strata)
  • SER file details: dimensions, frame count, bit depth, and Bayer/RGB
  • Screenshots — especially for visual artifacts in stacking or sharpening

Solar imagers: If you have solar SER captures and would like to help us test WOW Solar and solar color enhancement, we'd love to hear from you. Sample data can be sent to support@macobservatory.com.

We typically respond within 1–2 business days.

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