Castrator

Since ancient times, people looked at the sky in awe and wondered if we are alone in the Universe or if there are other races in the outer space. As technology evolved more and more with time, telescopes and other related instruments have been created to offer an easier way of looking at the stars. The NASA experts discover something new all the time using their satellites, including stunning images and videos of various planets in our system.

With the help of AutoStakkert! and other applications you can generate batches of stacked planetary pictures that would amaze even the most skeptic person. Castrator works together with the above-mentioned app to provide a simple yet efficient way to extract only the important frames from a file by cropping the original video.

The tool lets you reduce the overall size of the recording by preserving the essential parts. Plus, it can be used to decrease the disk space required by the planet without losing the photo quality. Castrator is wrapped in a straightforward and self-explanatory interface with only one window that contains five easy steps. At the bottom of the panel, you can follow the developer's instructions to properly crop your desired images.

To get started, simply open the AVI file, which is loaded in the right part of the pane. The next step is to select the planet detection threshold by dragging the slider to the specific value and mark the "show effect" function for a better preview. It's possible to invert and center the dark spots instead of the brighter ones (i.e. sunspots).

The program generates uncompressed movies and lets you process multiple recordings in only a few minutes. Plus, you can change the image's width and height to best suit your tastes, as well as the output color. Once done, you can proceed to process the AVI file, and if errors are encountered, they are displayed in the log panel.

The bottom line is that Castrator is a reliable and intuitive tool that comes in handy to planetary researchers and hobbyists to crop and extract only the necessary frames from a planet video. The app also helps reduce the item size and disk space while keeping the clip's quality high.