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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Today Apple announced they are rethinking the entire design of the Mac Pro after three years without an update.
The current Mac Pro is an extremely impressive piece of design and engineering. Unfortunately the design was too clever and over-engineered and it neither met customers' needs nor allowed Apple to easily upgrade it.
Apple issued an apology, which is extremely rare, and it's great to see they have recognized and taken ownership of the issue. It's almost unprecedented for Apple to announce unfinished products without a ship date and they're timing this right before NAB, so I'm assuming this move is to do with damage control.
The only problem is that I'm spotting a pattern here. Apple abandoned the old (pre-2013) Mac Pro and barely updated it, then after a customer outcry they released a completely redesigned model, which they then abandoned again. Now they are completely redesigning it again but it won't ship for at least a year and we don't know much about it except that it will be modular to some degree.
It sounds like Apple may be about to fall into the same trap again: over-thinking the problem in panic mode with an over-engineered solution. Apple behaves like this is a really difficult problem to solve but it's actually extremely simple. We want to use Macs, so all Apple has to do is not get in the way.
What Apple fails to grasp is that the design factors that made the iPhone successful have little relevance to the pro desktop market. Sure, design is important to creative people, but it's not #1 on the priority list - it's maybe #7 or #8. Our #1 priority is being able to do our jobs quickly with as few restrictions or workarounds as possible. I'm sure a sizable number of pro users would be happy enough with 2017 specs in the 2012 case.
If Apple wants to impress their professional customers they need to do two things: design their pro products backwards by thinking about what their capabilities should be first and then thinking about their physical design, and do a better job of maintaining a dialogue with pro customers (hint: dialogues are in both directions). There are a lot more options now and Apple should be competing for our business instead of assuming we'll just stick around like we have so far.
We've just released a major new update to our Kollaborate Server self-hosted workflow platform for video professionals, with a lot of new features and important changes. This follows on from the update we recently released on the cloud.
Workflows are an extremely powerful new feature that tells Kollaborate to perform certain tasks on a file when it is assigned a specific workflow. The tasks can range from labelling or marking the file to moving it to a specific folder. It's an easy way of quickly sorting files so they are easier for your team to access.
They are also the new way of getting file approvals from other people on your team. This is considerably more powerful than before and allows you to target specific people or departments as being able to approve files, rather than everyone with approval rights. You can also specify that every single marked person must approve the file before it is considered approved, as opposed to the old system where it was approved simply by the first person to approve it.
Each approval workflow has options for running another workflow when it is approved or rejected, so you could for example run another workflow to automatically highlight approved files and move them to an Approved folder. It also means you can chain approvals together so that an approval on one workflow triggers another approval workflow, allowing a file to filter up to higher members of your team for a decision before it is finally approved.
Another way you could use this is to implement milestones. So Milestone 1 would move the file to a particular project or department, someone works on the file and they then assign it Milestone 2, which moves it onto someone else to work on. Then they assign it Milestone 3 which asks a manager to approve it and then if it is approved it is automatically assigned an Approved status which moves the file to an Approved Files folder.
That's just an example - you can set it up however you like and it's extremely flexible.
We have lots of plans for this in future and are keen to know how customers plan to incorporate this feature into their workflows.
Need some files from a vendor but don't want to add the person to the project? Send them an upload link. Upload links work just like sharing links but show a file upload page instead of a video player.
The Team page has been completely overhauled. Each department now has a text box at the bottom that allows you to type in an email address to invite a team member. This is a considerably quicker and simpler way of setting up your team than the previous version.
Positions have been replaced by Roles, which apply a set of default permissions to a user. In a future update you will be able to add your own roles.
Inviting new users to the service is easier than before. Rather than assigning the user a default password, they now receive an activation link. Upon clicking the link they will be asked to choose a password for their account. We feel this is a more user-friendly way of doing things that should result in fewer forgotten passwords. You can also choose to manually send a user the activation link rather than having Kollaborate send it if you want to add a personal message.
Another change is that departments are no longer required to have users inside them. This is useful if you just want a private storage area for Admins, as they are not required to be part of a department to see inside it.
Don't want to receive alerts from a specific project but still receive alerts from others? You can now mute it. Hover over the project on the Projects page and click the bell icon next to its name.
You can now view SRT subtitles in the video player. Here's how to do it:
We plan to support additional caption formats in future.
The Admin Dashboard shows you statistics about your installation including software versions and configuration information. It can also alert you to problems that have occurred.
A full list of changes is available here after logging in.
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 a major new update to our Kollaborate cloud workflow platform for video professionals, with a lot of new features and important changes.
Workflows are an extremely powerful new feature that tells Kollaborate to perform certain tasks on a file when it is assigned a specific workflow. The tasks can range from labelling or marking the file to moving it to a specific folder. It's an easy way of quickly sorting files so they are easier for your team to access.
They are also the new way of getting file approvals from other people on your team. This is considerably more powerful than before and allows you to target specific people or departments as being able to approve files, rather than everyone with approval rights. You can also specify that every single marked person must approve the file before it is considered approved, as opposed to the old system where it was approved simply by the first person to approve it.
Each approval workflow has options for running another workflow when it is approved or rejected, so you could for example run another workflow to automatically highlight approved files and move them to an Approved folder. It also means you can chain approvals together so that an approval on one workflow triggers another approval workflow, allowing a file to filter up to higher members of your team for a decision before it is finally approved.
Another way you could use this is to implement milestones. So Milestone 1 would move the file to a particular project or department, someone works on the file and they then assign it Milestone 2, which moves it onto someone else to work on. Then they assign it Milestone 3 which asks a manager to approve it and then if it is approved it is automatically assigned an Approved status which moves the file to an Approved Files folder.
That's just an example - you can set it up however you like and it's extremely flexible.
We have lots of plans for this in future and are keen to know how customers plan to incorporate this feature into their workflows.
Need some files from a vendor but don't want to add the person to the project? Send them an upload link. Upload links work just like sharing links but show a file upload page instead of a video player.
The Team page has been completely overhauled. Each department now has a text box at the bottom that allows you to type in an email address to invite a team member. This is a considerably quicker and simpler way of setting up your team than the previous version.
Positions have been replaced by Roles, which apply a set of default permissions to a user. In a future update you will be able to add your own roles.
Inviting new users to the service is easier than before. Rather than assigning the user a default password, they now receive an activation link. Upon clicking the link they will be asked to choose a password for their account. We feel this is a more user-friendly way of doing things that should result in fewer forgotten passwords. You can also choose to manually send a user the activation link rather than having our system send it if you want to add a personal message.
Another change is that departments are no longer required to have users inside them. This is useful if you just want a private storage area for Admins, as they are not required to be part of a department to see inside it.
Don't want to receive alerts from a specific project but still receive alerts from others? You can now mute it. Hover over the project on the Projects page and click the bell icon next to its name.
You can now view SRT subtitles in the video player. Here's how to do it:
We plan to support additional caption formats in future.
The site has also had a complete architecture overhaul where every single page was modified and optimized. We're also running on faster servers and cache data more aggressively which should result in the site being faster than before.
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.
Kollaborate Encoder 1.1.3 - Feb 7 2017
Pro Maintenance Tools 2.2.1 - Jan 19 2017
CinePlay for iOS 1.6.5 - Jan 19 2017
Cut Notes for iPad 2.4.6 - Jan 19 2017
Marker Import 2.1.4 - Jan 16 2017
Kollaborate Folder Watcher 1.2 - Jan 16 2017
CinePlay 1.4.4 - Jan 12 2017
CinePlay for Apple TV 1.0.2 - Jan 9 2017
Last week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.2.1, a minor update to our suite of maintenance, troubleshooting and repair tools for your editing application.
Media Salvage can now repair files encoded with the ProRes 4444 XQ codec.
Plugin Manager can now install, remove, enable and disable VST2 and VST3 audio plugins used by popular DAWs.
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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.
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Kollaborate Folder Watcher 1.2 is a significant update to our automatic file uploader for our Kollaborate cloud platform.
Based on your feedback, encoding and uploading now displays progress bars directly in Finder, allowing you to see at a glance the progress of any file.
Kollaborate Folder Watcher works by listening for messages from macOS that tell it when changes to a folder have occurred. These messages do not get sent on network drives so before now the app didn't work with such drives. Now it manually scans for changes too so it will detect changes on these drives, albeit with a delay compared to a local drive.
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 CinePlay 1.4.4, a minor update to our Mac media player for video professionals.
Flip / rotation settings are now stored on a per-movie basis instead of being a global setting. This allows you to rotate movies and have the setting remembered when the file is reopened.
Additionally, flip/rotation is now taken into account when exporting movies and showing hover thumbnails.
Playlists are easier to use in full screen with a bug fix that prevents a sizing issue, as well as a new feature to show you the name of the clip when a new clip loads.
You can read the full list of changes here.
 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.
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.
| Plan | Old Storage | New Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance | 25 GB | 30 GB |
| Small Business | 50 GB | 60 GB |
| Business | 75 GB | 100 GB |
| Production | 140 GB | 200 GB |
| Studio | 225 GB | 250 GB |
| Studio Plus | 400 GB | 500 GB |
| Network | 1 TB | 1.5 TB |
| Network Plus | 2 TB | 3 TB |
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.
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.Â
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.
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:
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.
AMD's RYZEN Outshines Intel's Best In 7 Different Benchmarks & Demos - WCCFTech
AMD's new RYZEN processors look excellent.
New MacBook Pros Fail to Earn Consumer Reports Recommendation - Consumer Reports
New MacBook Pros not recommended by Consumer Reports due to battery issues.
30 of the Most Important Photoshop Features and How to Use Them - PetaPixel
There's something in here for everyone, from beginner to professional.
Making Final Cut Pro Great Again (for Pros) - Sean Lander
Wishlist for future FCPX versions.
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator