At the beginning the main purpose of PGMania was to construct the movie from sequence of numbered images. It helps to recover continigous numbers in images sequence after image files were deleted, renamed or moved. It works well with thousands of frames.

PGMania helps to filter source images and build movie from image sequence based on selected file type and name template.
Also it is possible to build one movie from several parts by concatenating them.
PGMania works with many of known 8/16/32 bpp images/movies formats and can convert images or image sequences from one type to other. The program also supports the batch operations of image converting.
PGMania shows the image preview or 1-st frame of a movie before, while and after processing. Available preview zoom modes: fit in window, original image size, 3x zoom.

PGMania can navigates over the list of frames/images, apply filter images by template to help in filtering or deleting the bad images (manual filtering).
PGMania can convert whole images/image sequence from one image format to another based on defined template.
PGMania supports 16/8 bpp gray/color movies in lossless ffv1/raw video codecs.
PGMania can align and make composition from pair of image with many available modesv (screen. plus, blend, difference, etc.)
PGMania can calibrate astro images with star fields (not only in the nearest future). The technology needs only 2 images (lights) without of using dark and bias frames. Automatic and manual aligning and/or calibration of image pair, images series or selected images with free order.
When shooting in 16 bit, some cameras can not write 16-bit video, but writes monochrome raw or 16-bit images (as an option) like .pgm, .fit, etc., creating a series of numbered image files on disk.
There is a problem to receive video with them without losing quality and convert it to the stacking program. Capture programs are not supports all cameras.
In addition, some native software, for example from PGR is more convenient to use, because of its broad capabilities, flexibility, and for a specific purpose "iron". Thus, the problem was not solved by conventional means.
Further, the reconstructed sequence of images PGMania glues into one video file.
This uses the ffv1 codec, with processing in 16bpp gray.
You can use other codecs supported by ffmpeg and other capacity (for example, 8 bits), defining them in parameters of the program.
Recently, with the advent of "planetary" high-resolution cameras, become actual question of deep sky imaging by planetary monochrome camera using narrowband or RGB filters.
This technique is gaining popularity and has become a real alternative to using expensive deep sky cooling cameras with a large sensor and 2 " filters because of their high cost, high hardware requirements (accuracy of reference, the percentage of marriage, setting the polar axis) and restrictions on traditional shooting accumulation signal (illumination gradients and long expositions).
When we talks about processing images taken with a monochrome planetary camera, PGMania particularly effective and have no alternatives at the moment.
The first question - how to prepare the image sequence for stacking sums via programs such as DSS or Auto Stackert? They supports ser, fits, tiff or raw files.
And they don't guarantee the high precision processing in 16/32 bpp. So, PGMania can prepare images for stacking without lost of precision.
When we sho
ot planets we make 16 bpp video from single images and then convert 16bpp avi to SER and stack it. When we shoot Deep Sky we convert images to fits format and also stack calibrated images. This work is too expensive for manual processing.
After cleaning a series of images from the marriage, in the numbering sequence of the files appear "holes".
If you try to glue these pictures in the video file using ffmpeg, video will be created, but on the first "hole" in sequence the process will be aborted.
Manually correct the file numbering in the series, including a few (tens of) thousands of frames is unrealistic.
PGMania successfully performs the work to remedy the file number. If we are dealing with dozens or hundreds of files, no problem arises.
This operation can be done manually. But when the bill goes to the tens of thousands, the problem becomes intractable and require very time-consuming.
Typical "planetary" session contains up to 100 thousand frames, and up to 100 gb of material, so think it yourself. This "black" work performs PGMania as no one can.
The advantages of the program is the fact that it shows the real picture and video format, color space, including encoder, bit depth of images, the frame size and number of frames in the video.