Hugin - How to increase "align_image_stack" detector image number limit or create script to automate current limits?

Question

I've been trying to use Hugin to align an image sequence of 360 equirectangular photos and found that using "align_image_stack" as a control point detector works the best and fastest for my useage of reorientating subsequent images to match the starting anchor image.

When attempting to create control points for over 120 images or so, I get the error "Too many arguments (images). Try using the %s parameter in preferences." [* I cannot find any documentation on the %s parameter btw)

My brute force solution has been to 1) "Create control points" for 101 images at a time, 2) Calculate optimization incrementally from image #0 (Anchor Image), 3) Export the now aligned 101 images as TIFF files, 4) Start a new project and Repeat the process for the next 100 images using the now aligned image #101 as my new "image #0 (Anchor image)"

A) Is there a way to increase the number of images the "align_image_stack" can process?

and / or

B) Would it be possible to write an automated script to repeat my above process for 100 images at at a time?

Thanks for any insights.

Answer 1

I'm not that knowledgeable about align_image_stack, but what I'm googling up seems to indicate that running align_image_stack on smaller batches of files with the -p option to create a .pto project file, and then using pto_merge to combine the project files together is a viable solution for larger batches of images.

See:

• An internet archived nabble discussion thread on aligning 1000 images for a timelapse.
• hugin-ptx Google group threads on aligning more than 250 images and pushing align_image_stack to its limits.