Kollaborate
Pro Maintenance Tools
Pro Media Tools
CinePlay
Post Haste
Preference Manager
FCS Remover|
Maintain, optimize and troubleshoot your NLE
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Professional cloud workflow platform
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Simplified media management
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CinePlay for iOS 1.7.2 - Jan 22 2019
We've listened to customer feedback on our cloud workflow platform and Kollaborate 2.7.2 has a lot of great new features, both large and small, that customers have been asking for.
Kollaborate now supports segmented uploads, meaning that not only can you upload larger files to the site, but your uploads should be both faster and more reliable.
This will soon be the default option on the site but for now it is opt-in. To enable it, head to the beta page and tick the box marked Large file uploads then click Save. Note that this is a per-browser setting so you will need to re-enable it if you switch to a different browser or computer.
Once enabled, segmenting will work automatically for all files over 20 MB. For now the new upper limit is 50 GB per file, but we will likely raise it further as we get closer to making it the default option.
We're keen to hear feedback on this feature, especially from people outside of the US. Your feedback will help us tune it further and make it even faster.
Renaming a file no longer launches a dialog box or takes you to a different page - it now happens directly in the Files view. This is a better user experience and matches what you would expect in Finder or Windows Explorer.Â
Audio files now show a playhead over their waveform, allowing you to easily skip to specific points in the file.Â
Dates on comments and files now update dynamically to ensure they are accurate without needing to reload the page - i.e. instead of saying "just now" until you hit refresh, it will now say "x minutes ago" automatically depending on how much time has elapsed.
You can also click on a date on a file or comment to toggle between relative and absolute dates.
We've made lots of user interface improvements including new button styles and a new avatar style with a greater range of colors.Â
A lot of the changes in this version are on the back-end, including an overhaul of how we manage logins and active sessions. These features may not be noticeable but they pave the way for a lot of exciting things we plan to deliver in the near future.
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.
Kollaborate - We made lots of enhancements to our cloud workflow platform over the year including Upload Workflows to automate tasks when uploading a file, including embedding LUTs and overlays; restoring deleted files; improved DaVinci Resolve integration; folder uploading; lots of new workflow tasks and much more.
We also reduced our month-to-month pricing on the cloud and added some additional options for self-hosted customers such as the ability to hide unused pages or options.
Pro Maintenance Tools - Our suite of maintenance and repair tools gained support for downgrading Adobe Premiere projects to open them in earlier versions, support for running scripts inside plugin installers, plus bug fixes and improved FCPX support.
Pro Media Tools - Our suite of media management tools had many improvements including Auto Transfer transfer logs, Video Check sensitivity improvements, Timeline Tricks can now strip audio/video transitions, QT Edit conform improvements and new Quick Tasks, plus several Batch Renamer usability improvements.
CinePlay for Mac - Our professional desktop media player gained many improvements to its Ganged Playheads feature, plus many UI and usability improvements to speed up your workflow. Â
In total we released over 50 updates for our products.
Our most-downloaded and used app was Post Haste. Our most popular paid product was Kollaborate. Our most popular iOS app was Video Space Calculator.
Over 650,000 unique visitors visited digitalrebellion.com and our products were downloaded over 175,000 times.
The most popular blog posts in 2018 were:
Understanding render options in Premiere Pro
How to import sequences into Premiere Pro from XML without duplicating files
Thoughts on 32-bit codecs being phased out in macOS
We're planning some big new things in 2019. You can keep up to date with new products, features and tips by subscribing to this blog, following us on Twitter or by subscribing to our mailing list.
Last week we released CinePlay for Mac 1.5.5, a minor update to our professional media player with some useful new changes and fixes.
We've made significant changes under-the-hood to our Ganged Playheads feature, which allows you to play two or more files together in sync. We've improved the reliability and accuracy of the feature and fixed a couple of situations where it was possible for the videos to become unsynchronized from each other.
When entering Gang mode, the windows now automatically tile to fit on the screen, making it easy to compare videos side-by-side. We also now indicate Gang mode in the title bar of each window to make it clearer when the feature is enabled.
As well as occuring automatically in Gang mode, you can also manually tile documents to fit on the screen at any time from the Window menu.
We've made lots of improvements to the UI, including adding a blue area to show the in/out range and fixing some issues with drawing markers and in/out points.
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 1.5.5 - Dec 5 2018
Pro Media Tools 1.7.3 - Nov 16 2018
Marker Import for Mac 2.1.10 - Nov 16 2018
Kollaborate Plugin Pack 1.1.4 - Nov 12 2018
Kollaborate Transfer 1.5.3 - Nov 11 2018
We recently released a minor update to our suite of media management tools. Here's what's new in Pro Media Tools 1.7.3:
We've added Quick Tasks in QT Edit for the following actions:
These tasks can be run in single-file or batch modes.
Additionally, while you won't be able to see the difference by looking, we've completely overhauled Quick Tasks under the hood to make it more efficient and to make it easier for us to deliver more Quick Tasks in future.
We've improved how Auto Transfer handles situations where volumes are offline. It now informs you which volumes are offline when you click the Transfer button, instead of the transfer just failing.
You can also now switch off transfer logging in preferences.
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.
You may have read Apple's article about "legacy media" being phased out in the next version of macOS or even been alerted by an error message in the new version of FCPX. The article is fairly sparse and doesn't go into detail about the change or explain why it is occurring.
To be clear, it's not that 32-bit codecs are going away, it's that all 32-bit software is going away. But it affects video software the most because the only reason for an app to still be 32-bit in 2018 is because it uses QuickTime.
Why would an app still use QuickTime over the newer and non-deprecated AV Foundation? Because AV Foundation does not support third-party codecs. I filed an enhancement request to support third-party codecs several years ago and Apple closed it as "won't fix" so their position on that seems pretty clear. (Sure, you can go to a lower level and write your own parser but if you've reached that point, why bother using Apple's media frameworks at all?)
There is a Reddit thread with quite a lot of misunderstandings about what the change means. So to clear up some of the misunderstandings in that thread: there isn't really such a thing as a 32-bit file. You can have a file stored on a 32-bit file system or in a container with a 32-bit size header but the result of this is that these files will be limited to 2 or 4 GB in size. It has no bearing on which apps can read them, so they can still be read by both 32- and 64-bit apps or codecs. Also, do not confuse the QuickTime container (.mov) with the QuickTime API - the container is alive and well and still supported by the new frameworks. (The MP4 standard's container is about 99% identical to a regular MOV container after all.)
This isn't really about 32- vs 64-bit, it's about Apple no longer allowing extensibility. Next year's version of macOS won't support third-party codecs at all, so converting 32-bit codecs to 64-bit isn't a solution. A codec is a central piece of code that handles reading and writing to a particular format. Now instead of using that central code for free with no extra effort, every app needs to create its own version of that code.
But remember: this only affects macOS's native video frameworks. Developers don't have to use them and there's nothing to stop someone writing their own DNxHD parser. You don't need to worry about your files becoming unreadable because ffmpeg will always be there. (It still supports ancient long-dead codecs like Indeo!)
This is unlikely to change much with Adobe or Blackmagic. They use their own parsers for a lot of formats so will be immune to this change. The people it affects the most are small developers, who now have to come up with solutions to problems that Apple was taking care of for them in the past. By licensing certain codecs or allowing users to install their own codecs, Apple was providing an easy, free and legal way for these developers to read these files. They may not have the manpower to write their own parsers or the legal or financial ability to license the codecs in question. ffmpeg is a solution to the technical problems, but legal ones still remain - the code has to be compiled directly on the user's computer in order to be legally compliant, which can be complicated and user-unfriendly.
It may also affect FCPX negatively too. If the cross-platform NLEs are immune to this change, it means that FCPX is the only major NLE that will be affected by it. Apple's advice in the article is essentially "buy a new camera" but will people really shelve the cameras they paid thousands of dollars for to continue using FCPX? Or will they go for the cheaper option of switching to an NLE that can open them? I think the FCPX team are great, but they are sometimes hamstrung by corporate Apple which may not have the same interests as them or may be unable to see the bigger picture of how large changes like this affect Apple's smaller divisions.
Some people have speculated that the reasons for this are because Apple is planning to merge iOS and macOS or create ARM chips for desktop computers. Apple may well do these things in future, but I think this change was made for two more mundane reasons: security and efficiency. AV Foundation is fast because it is efficient so inefficiently-coded third-party codecs may cause performance or battery life problems. Supporting third-party codecs opens up the operating system to maliciously-crafted movie files meant to exploit bugs in third-party codecs that Apple doesn't have the ability to fix themselves. (I would argue that the benefits are still worth it despite these two potential costs.)
You may be wondering what solution we are planning for our products. The majority of our apps don't use QuickTime and the only one that relies on it heavily is QT Edit. For the apps that use QuickTime, we will convert them to have some level of base functionality with the default OS frameworks. When you launch the app for the first time, it will ask if you want to enable additional codecs and if you answer yes, it will install ffmpeg for you (the exact technical way this will work and the exact codecs that will be supported is still being figured out). Advanced users will also have the ability to compile ffmpeg themselves and link the executable to our apps to ensure they can definitely read the files they need to or to have greater control or better support for their hardware. We feel that this is the best we can make of both worlds: trying to make it as user-friendly as possible while still giving power users control.
If this change affects you, here are the feedback links for macOS and FCPX. But Apple shouldn't postpone or cancel the death of QuickTime (it absolutely should die) - the solution is to allow third-party extensibility in the new frameworks. I'm not holding out hope that this will happen, and our ultimate goal is to be cross-platform so we'd probably go down the ffmpeg route regardless, however if enough people complain they may at least continue to support some additional codecs in FCPX.
CinePlay for iOS 1.7 - Oct 23 2018
Kollaborate Encoder 1.3 - Oct 18 2018
Changelog:
Kollaborate Server 1.7.1 - Oct 18 2018
Server-specific features
Full changelog:
CinePlay 1.5.4 - Oct 10 2018
When we created Kollaborate we set out to encourage long-term subscriptions, with short-term subscriptions intended for situations where you might only work on a project for a few months and therefore not need a whole year's subscription. So for this reason there was a significant price difference between annual and monthly subscriptions.
While more than 80% of our customers are on annual subscriptions, we know that some customers prefer to be billed monthly and have in fact been using our service for years on the monthly plan even though it costs more. Based on feedback we have decided to reduce pricing on the monthly plans so there is less of a difference between month-to-month and annual plans, although it will still remain better value to subscribe for the whole year.
| Plan | Old monthly price | New monthly price | Annual price |
| Freelance | $45 | $25 | $180 ($15/month equivalent) |
| Small Business | $65 | $40 | $300 ($25/month equivalent) |
| Business | $79 | $60 | $480 ($40/month equivalent) |
| Production | $119 | $99 | $780 ($65/month equivalent) |
| Studio | $149 | $129 | $1188 ($99/month equivalent) |
| Studio Plus | $199 | $169 | $1548 ($129/month equivalent) |
| Network | $279 | $239 | $2388 ($199/month equivalent) |
| Network Plus | $379 | $339 | $3599 ($299/month equivalent) |
You can view our entire list of packages including storage space and features here.
Existing subscribers will be charged the new prices the next time their account bills and don't have to do anything to receive the lower price. Customers who were charged within the last 10 days have received a credit on their account for the difference, which will be subtracted from next month's bill (so if you were charged $45 your next bill would be $25 - $20 = $5).
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.
Last week we released a major new update for CinePlay, our iOS app for local and cloud media playback that's aimed at video professionals.
The most significant change in this version is that markers are now supported on iPhone devices. Why was this not supported before? The main reason was screen real-estate, but with iPhones now increasing in screen size plus the repeated recent requests we got for iPhone support, we decided to re-evaluate the feasibility of adding this feature. You can now add, edit, view and delete comments directly from your phone.
Other changes include improved stability and minor bug fixes.
CinePlay for iOS is a powerful mobile playback and note-taking tool for video professionals. To find out more, see the feature list, read the user manual or watch the overview video. Kollaborate customers can get cloud functionality in CinePlay free of charge with the CinePlay: Kollaborate Edition app.
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator