We've given Kollaborate subscribers a massive free storage space boost. Kollaborate was already one of the best-value review platforms on the market due to the fact you get 5 team members and all features on the base plan, in addition to free access to several of our products, and this increases the value even more.

Additionally, our higher-level plans now come with unlimited team members.

You can view the full list of package benefits, including pricing, here.

Kollaborate is an essential cloud workflow platform that allows you to share files with clients and team members while integrating with Digital Rebellion apps and services. To find out more, see the overview or register for the free trial.

Another year is over so let’s look back on the past 12 months.

Notable updates

We launched a new online store.

Kollaborate 2.0 - We significantly enhanced our cloud workflow platform with hoverscrub thumbnails, folder peeking, to-do comments, an Adobe Premiere panel, Web Hooks and numerous other improvements. 

Pro Maintenance Tools 2.2 - Our suite of maintenance and repair tools gained improved support for Avid and the ability to manage Quartz Composer plugins for FCPX.

Pro Media Tools 1.4.5 - Our suite of media management tools received support for importing timecode from BWF files plus many improvements to QT Edit’s conform mode.

CinePlay 1.4.2 for Mac - Our professional media player gained thumbnail hover previews plus various improvements to timecode accuracy.

Cut Notes 2.4.4 - Our iPad note-taking tool received multi-line and dynamically-sized button labels plus various cloud improvements.

In total we released over 60 updates for our products.

Stats

Our most-downloaded app was Preference Manager but our most-used app was Post Haste. Our most popular paid tool was Pro Maintenance Tools. Our most popular iOS app was Video Space Calculator. The number of daily Kollaborate users doubled.

The most popular blog posts in 2016 were:

• Understanding render options in Premiere Pro
• Avid codec guide
• ARRI Alexa dailies workflow with DaVinci Resolve 12

What’s next

This year we are planning to release at least one new product alongside major updates to Kollaborate coming in the next few weeks. We are planning significant overhauls of our desktop and mobile products to not only add new features but also make them cross-platform, and we will try to release as many of these major updates as we have time for in a year. You can keep up to date with new products, features and tips by subscribing to this blog, following us on Twitter or Facebook or by subscribing to our mailing list.

Pro Maintenance Tools 2.2, our suite of tools for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing system,  was recently updated with the following new features.

Manage Quartz Composer plugins

Plugin Manager now supports Quartz Composer plugins, allowing you to boost performance and troubleshoot FCPX issues by disabling or removing errant plugins.

Trash After Effects disk caches not in the default location

Housekeeper can now clear out After Effects disk caches that are set to a custom location. This a great way of freeing up space as the cache by default takes up 10% of your drive space (100 GB on a 1 TB drive).

Improved Crash Analyzer compatibility with Avid Media Composer

Recent versions of Avid have split up the app into different processes for improved stability and performance and Crash Analyzer can now analyze crashes in these extra processes.

Other changes

• CS Repair - Fixed an issue that could cause files to be erroneously flagged up
• Plugin Manager - Improved plugin installer compatibility with Xcode 8 and macOS Sierra
• Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
• Various other bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

Pro Maintenance Tools is an invaluable toolset to help working video professionals get up and running again quickly in the event of a problem. To find out more, see the feature overview, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.

Earlier this week we released Kollaborate Server 2.0.3, a minor update to our in-house version of our Kollaborate cloud workflow platform. These fixes have already been rolled out to users of the cloud version.

Kollaborate Server can now be run on PHP 7, as well as PHP 5.6. You will need to make sure you have the very latest version of the Ioncube Loader to do this. Even if you are not using PHP 7 you may still need to update the loader if you are using a very old version.

Other changes

• When emailing out a link through the site, the user's name is populated from their email address so they no longer need to enter it before commenting
• Users can hold down Shift to prevent the comment overlay showing in full screen
• Uploads from the FCPX plugin are now matched for revisions based on their title, not filename
• Black thumbnails are now shown instead of the "unknown document" icon if a video thumbnail is pending
• Prevented comments on archived projects
• The comments box is now sized proportionally to the height of your browser
• Added a popup alert to ask the user if they want to reset their password if they get it wrong too many times
• API - Shared links generated by apps now take the file's title instead of appearing as Untitled
• Forward and back slashes are now stripped from file titles
• Extended OAuth token expiration dates to prevent infrequent users from constantly having to reauthorize
• Improved the browser compatibility of annotation drawing
• Fixed an issue where admins could not email a link created by another user
• Fixed an issue on OS X where multiple link reminder emails may be sent
• Fixed an issue where admins could not add Approval permissions to other users
• Fixed an issue where revision uploads could fail if the parent folder contained invalid characters
• Fixed an issue where aliases may not be playable
• API: Fixed an issue where the server could choose the original file instead of the proxy when playing an alias
• Fixed an error that could occur when trying to move thumbnails for a file type that does not intrinsically support thumbnails
• Fixed an issue where comments may not show when a task with Japanese characters in the title is attached to it
• Fixed an issue where invisible users could exist and not be able to be removed from a project
• Fixed an issue where encoding jobs may not be distributed evenly across encoding servers
• Security improvements
• UI tweaks
• Various other minor bug fixes and improvements

Kollaborate is an essential cloud workflow platform that allows you to share files with clients and team members while integrating with Digital Rebellion apps and services. Kollaborate Server allows you to host the platform in-house on your own servers and storage. To find out more, see the Kollaborate Server overview or register for the free cloud trial (Server trials are available on request).

We've just released Pro Media Tools 1.4.6, a minor update to our suite of media management and workflow tools for video professionals.

Preserve timestamps in QT Edit

Batch mode now has an option to preserve timestamps. This allows you to modify a group of files but keep the creation / modification dates the same. This is helpful for situations where your workflow depends on the files having particular dates and times.

Other changes

 

• QT Edit - Added additional ARRI metadata presets
• QT Edit - Conforming is now aborted if the user does not have write permissions for the file
• QT Edit - Fixed an issue where exported timecode in marker lists could be incorrect
• Post Haste - Updated the default templates to use the new [template] filename syntax (go to Tools > Restore Default Templates to get the new ones)
• Post Haste - Added support for Premiere Pro 2015.3 project files
• Post Haste - Removed Kollaborate support (for now)
• Various other bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

 

Pro Media Tools is an essential toolkit for media professionals. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual or download the free 15-day trial.

CinePlay 1.4.3 is a minor update to our Mac-based media player for video professionals.

Default marker color

You can now set a default marker color in preferences. This means that whenever you press the M key it will default to the color you chose. This is a great timesaver if you have a specific marker color scheme within your company.

Quick insert markers

Press Shift+M to insert a marker without showing the marker edit dialog. This is great if you need to mark a specific position quickly and plan to edit the marker text later.

CinePlay is a powerful playback and note-taking tool for video professionals. To find out more, see the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial. Kollaborate customers get cloud functionality in CinePlay free of charge.

Last week we released Pro Media Tools 1.4.5, a minor update to our suite of media management and workflow tools.

Import timecode from BWF files

QT Edit has a new quick task to import timecode from Broadcast Wave (BWF) audio files. You can either select a single file to import from or an entire folder. If you select the latter, it will match audio files to video files with the same name in the batch.

Conform improvements

We've improved the accuracy and reliability of conforming video files to different frame rates in QT Edit.

Other changes

• QT Edit - Fixed an issue where the Discard button does nothing when closing a batch that hasn't been submitted
• Fixed an issue that could cause the Open dialog in several apps to show at startup even if a previous file was automatically reopened
• Various other fixes and tweaks

 Pro Media Tools is an essential toolkit for media professionals. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual or download the free 15-day trial.

CinePlay for Mac was just updated to version 1.4.2.

Thumbnail hover preview

When hovering over the timeline, you now see a thumbnail preview of the video under the mouse cursor. This is a useful way of quickly scrubbing through a video or finding the exact position to skip to. If desired, this can be switched off from the Preferences window.

Note that this currently only works for video files locally stored on your hard drive. It does not yet work with Kollaborate cloud videos but this will be coming soon.

Other changes

• Added a thumbnail preview when hovering over the timeline (local files only)
• When deleting a marker from the Markers window, the next marker along is now selected automatically
• Fixed an issue where video could not be flipped
• Fixed an issue where the app could display an Open dialog even when a movie loaded at startup
• More accurate frame stepping
• Improved timecode accuracy
• Various other fixes and tweaks

CinePlay is a powerful playback and note-taking tool for video professionals. To find out more, see the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial. Kollaborate customers get cloud functionality in CinePlay free of charge.

CinePlay 1.6.2 for iOS and Cut Notes 2.4.4 for iPad are now out.

CinePlay 1.6.2 changes

• New Kollaborate authentication system. It should detect your previous login automatically but if not, please reauthorize by clicking the + button in the media view. Self-hosted customers should be using Kollaborate Server 2.0 or higher. 
• Added 2:1 and 2.40:1 aspect ratio masks
• Fixed an issue where timecode may not update while scrubbing
• Fixed an issue where the UI may hang while generating thumbnails
• Various other bug fixes and tweaks

Cut Notes 2.4.4 changes

• Button titles span multiple lines and dynamically resize to fit in more text
• Fixed an issue where playback buttons may not work if the cut was initially loaded in portrait orientation
• Notes now reorder correctly when editing timecode
• Prevented users from accidentally switching back to the project view by swiping in the wrong place
• Fixed an issue where large button sets could not be scrolled after switching out of notes view
• Minor Kollaborate API tweaks
• Various other tweaks and improvements

To find out more, visit the product pages for CinePlay for iOS and Cut Notes for iPad.

Pro Maintenance Tools 2.1.9 is a minor update to our suite of tools for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing applications.

Clear DaVinci Resolve render caches

Housekeeper can now clear out DaVinci Resolve's render cache either manually or on a schedule via the Task Scheduler app. This can be useful both for troubleshooting and freeing up disk space.

Clear CloudKit cache

System Toolkit can clear out CloudKit metadata caches, which can resolve Finder performance problems in recent versions of OS X.

Other Changes

• Housekeeper - Support for trashing failed Mac App Store software updates
• Housekeeper - Improved loading times
• CS Repair - Fixed an issue where Premiere may not automatically close
• Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
• Various other bug fixes and tweaks

Pro Maintenance Tools is an invaluable toolset to help working video professionals get up and running again quickly in the event of a problem. To find out more, see the feature overview, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.