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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Pro Maintenance Tools 2.1.9 is a minor update to our suite of tools for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing applications.
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.
System Toolkit can clear out CloudKit metadata caches, which can resolve Finder performance problems in recent versions of OS X.
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.
Kollaborate Server 2.0.1 and Encoder 1.1.2 are now available for registered and trial customers of Kollaborate Server. This is intended as a bug fix release and the changes were already made available on the cloud version of the service.
Full upgrade instructions are located in the Quick Start Guide but the basic workflow is as follows:
1. Download the new update (available after logging in).
2. Copy the contents of the Installation Files folder except the config folder to the root folder of your web server, overwriting any existing files.
3. Visit yoursite.com/upgrade in your web browser and click Upgrade.
4. Delete the "upgrade" and "install" folders from the root folder of your web server.
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).
Kollaborate Encoder 1.1.1 - Jun 30 2016
Kollaborate Plugin Pack 1.1.2 - Jun 27 2016
Fixed an issue that could require FCPX users to re-authorize periodically
Kollaborate Plugin Pack 1.1.1 - Jun 15 2016
Fixed an issue where in-house customers might not be able to change the server away from kollaborate.tv.
Kollaborate Folder Watcher 1.1.1 - Jun 15 2016
Fixed an issue where in-house customers might not be able to change the server away from kollaborate.tv.
Kollaborate Transfer 1.4.2 - Jun 15 2016
Fixed an issue where in-house customers might not be able to change the server away from kollaborate.tv.
Kollaborate Transfer 1.4.1 - Jun 8 2016
Improved memory usage when creating hoverscrub thumbnails
WWDC is right around the corner and Apple will most likely be unveiling a new version of OS X. Here's what we'd like to see.Â
H.265 (also known as HEVC), promises to halve the bitrate of its predecessor, H.264. This means that you can deliver the same video at half the bandwidth, or alternatively double the quality within the same bandwidth. This could greatly increase the popularity of 4K video on the web.Â
The problem so far has been a legal one - instead of having everything tidily packaged within a single patent pool, there are two competing pools in competition with each other.Â
In particular, the HEVC Advance pool initially had onerous terms that would have cost hardware and software providers considerably more money than they paid to license H.264. Most of these provisions have now been scaled back fortunately.Â
Whenever a new codec comes out there is always a chicken-and-egg problem - there's no reason to make content because people can't play it and there's no reason to enable people to play it because there's no content. So now is a great time for Apple to take the plunge and kickstart the H.265 / HEVC format.Â
In OS X 10.11, Apple added a Dark Mode option which dims the menu bar to fit in better with dark-UI pro apps like DaVinci Resolve.Â
We'd like to see this taken one step further and offer the ability to toggle the entire UI of an app light or dark. For many apps this will require no changes so it could probably be an opt-out option for developers.
When Apple introduced OS X 10.9 they included Finder tags which allowed you to tag a file with additional metadata.
However, this is not particularly useful because the tags appear as color dots instead of text and they are very small and overlap each other. It also means you can no longer color code the entire filename, making it easy to miss color-coded files.
So my proposal is for two types of tags: color tags and text tags. Color tags affect the background color of the file in the list and can be easily spotted when scrolling. You can only assign one color to a file.
Text tags do not affect the background color of the file, even when colored, but appear in a bubble next to the filename. So you can tag it “VFX†and “Delivery" for example and anyone can see at a glance that it is a VFX deliverable. Any tags that can’t fit in can be expanded by clicking an ellipsis icon next to the filename.
It should be possible to stream video from a Mac video player like QuickTime or CinePlay to an Apple TV. This is something that can already be done in iOS but still hasn’t made it to the Mac.
There are some solutions to this but they are very hacky and developers would benefit from an officially-sanctioned method.
There are some very powerful tools in Apple’s AV Foundation media framework. Unfortunately many of the functions for scanning media files and extracting information are limited only to files that exist on the user’s local hard drive. This can limit the options you have for dealing with files on a remote web or FTP server.
There is no real reason for this because even though the data originates on a remote server, it still ends up in memory and/or cached to disk, depending on the situation. Because AV Foundation is built to be asynchronous, there is no reason why this data cannot be provided to an app as and when it is downloaded.
Apple needs better support for SVGs throughout the OS such as more accurate rendering in QuickLook and the ability to see thumbnails.Â
We'd especially like to see an easy way to use SVGs within a user interface, which could make the aforementioned Dark Mode a little more painless to implement.
Now that AV Foundation has matured and inherited many of the more advanced features of QuickTime, it's time for Apple to fix the biggest omission: third-party codecs. It would be even better if there were ways for developers to also override functionality such as streaming and caching with custom behaviors.
CinePlay 1.4 is a major update to our Mac media player for video professionals.
CinePlay is now compatible with the Split View feature of El Capitan. This allows you to hold down the mouse on the green full-screen icon and position two windows side-by-side.
This is extremely useful when using the Ganged Playheads feature to synchronize two movies and play them side-by-side.
This version is the first to support our new Kollaborate authentication API in a stable release (we have betas available for our other apps).
This is a completely new way of connecting your account to our service, which offers more security and flexibility. Your old logins should be detected automatically so you don't need to take any action with the new version.
CinePlay will now remember window settings on a per-movie basis. So if you prefer a particular movie to always open filling the screen, this preference will be respected.
Any in and out points you set will also be remembered upon relaunching the app.
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.
Earlier this week we released Pro Media Tools 1.4.4, a minor update to our suite of media management and workflow tools for video professionals.
We’ve added some new Quick Tasks to QT Edit:
The reel name tasks in particular are extremely useful when applying to multiple clips at once in a batch.
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.
We've just launched Kollaborate Server 2.0 - a major update to our in-house workflow platform for video professionals. This is the in-house companion to Kollaborate 2.0 that launched on the cloud last month.
We've rebuilt the Files page to behave more like a desktop browser like OS X Finder, including arrow key navigation, click to select, shift-click to select a range of files, etc.

QuickLook is also back but this time it behaves a lot more like the one in OS X. Press Space on a selected file to preview it without opening it. You can even QuickLook folders to peek inside them.


One of the key goals of Kollaborate is keeping people informed, but with the old system it could sometimes be difficult to balance the needs of people who wanted to know about every single change vs those who wanted a much looser connection to the project.
So we’ve now introduced the concept of subscriptions. By default, everyone will receive a periodic digest summarizing recent changes to the project in a single email. You can choose to receive this once an hour, every few hours, once a day or not at all. (If there are no changes to the project in that time you won’t receive an email.)
If you want to receive instant alerts like in the previous version, you can subscribe to a project, file or task. Subscribing to a project makes the behavior identical to the previous version and can be done by clicking the dropdown next to the project on the Projects page.
Subscribing to a file or task alerts you to instant changes involving that item but without switching on alerts for other files or tasks in the project. Some actions automatically subscribe you to a file - such as uploading or commenting on it. You can click the Subscribe button again on the file to unsubscribe.
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You can now toggle between the traditional list view and a new thumbnail view. This provides fewer power user options but is a great way of graphically browsing through your files. 

We've also added hoverscrub thumbnails like in FCPX so you can browse through a file just by scrubbing your cursor over it. You also get a thumbnail view when you hover your mouse over the playhead in the player.

Additionally, audio files now show a thumbnail of their waveform instead of a generic icon.
(Note: hoverscrub thumbs are currently only created by Kollaborate Encoder and the latest beta of Kollaborate Transfer.)
Tap the checkbox icon in a comment to turn it into a to-do comment, then tap it again to mark it done. 

You can filter by to-do and choose to only export to-do comments to your NLE. 

We've also launched an extension for Adobe Premiere that functions as both a file browser and task manager.
You can browse files in the cloud and download them directly into your project by double-clicking them. You can also import markers into your current sequence. 

View your current to-dos, click on them to jump to that position in your timeline and then click the tick to mark them as complete.
The extension is supported on Mac and Windows and Kollaborate Server is supported by version 1.0.2 and higher.
Dashboard is back - view recent project changes, assigned tasks, favorites, to-do comments and more at a glance. 

Kollaborate Server can send events such as uploads or new comments to a custom script either on the same server or another server for integrating with in-house databases and task managers.
Some examples of what you could use it for:
Note that web hook events are not immediate and will normally arrive after a few minutes. This is a beta feature so we're keen to hear how customers plan to use this feature and what additional data they need for integrating in-house.
Web Hooks can be switched on from the Configure page in the admin area. Only super admins can access this page.
We've made significant under-the-hood modifications to the software, not all of which are immediately noticeable to users, but they pave the way for significant features in the future.
If you are upgrading from a previous version, be aware that this version moves a lot of things around so please be patient if the upgrade script takes a while. Playable proxies are now stored separately from original media files and thumbnails are now stored in your media storage area (expect thumbnails to take up 2-3 times more space than before due to the new sizes and hoverscrub options).
Another area we've made significant changes to is our API. This improves security by allowing you to approve or deny access to your account on a per-app basis. Did your laptop get stolen? Did you log into an app on your friend’s computer and accidentally forget to log out again? Not a problem - you will be able to revoke access on those devices remotely once we fully switch over to the new API.
We’ve made the changes in such a way that the current apps still work, but this is only intended to be temporary. We currently have beta versions of our apps available that support the new API and will be revoking access to older versions in the next few months. We’ll make a public announcement when that date is set so that users know when to update to newer versions.
A corresponding Kollaborate Encoder update has been released that supports Kollaborate Server 2.0, can generate hoverscrub thumbnails and also fixes some bugs from the previous version. This is an essential update for Kollaborate Server 2.0 users with an encoding license.
Full upgrade instructions are located in the Quick Start Guide but the basic workflow is as follows:
1. Download the new update (available after logging in).
2. Copy the contents of the Installation Files folder except the config folder to the root folder of your web server, overwriting any .
3. Visit yoursite.com/upgrade in your web browser and click Upgrade.
4. Delete the "upgrade" and "install" folders from the root folder of your web server.
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.
We've just launched Kollaborate 2.0 - a major update to our cloud workflow platform for video professionals.
One of the key goals of Kollaborate is keeping people informed, but with the old system it could sometimes be difficult to balance the needs of people who wanted to know about every single change vs those who wanted a much looser connection to the project.
So we’ve now introduced the concept of subscriptions. By default, everyone will receive a periodic digest summarizing recent changes to the project in a single email. You can choose to receive this once an hour, every few hours, once a day or not at all. (If there are no changes to the project in that time you won’t receive an email.)
If you want to receive instant alerts like in the previous version, you can subscribe to a project, file or task. Subscribing to a project makes the behavior identical to the previous version and can be done by clicking the dropdown next to the project on the Projects page.
Subscribing to a file or task alerts you to instant changes involving that item but without switching on alerts for other files or tasks in the project. Some actions automatically subscribe you to a file - such as uploading or commenting on it. You can click the Subscribe button again on the file to unsubscribe.
We've rebuilt the Files page to behave more like a desktop browser like OS X Finder, including arrow key navigation, click to select, shift-click to select a range of files, etc.

QuickLook is also back but this time it behaves a lot more like the one in OS X. Press Space on a selected file to preview it without opening it. You can even QuickLook folders to peek inside them.


You can now toggle between the traditional list view and a new thumbnail view. This provides fewer power user options but is a great way of graphically browsing through your files. 

We've also added hoverscrub thumbnails like in FCPX so you can browse through a file just by scrubbing your cursor over it. You also get a thumbnail view when you hover your mouse over the playhead in the player.

Additionally, audio files now show a thumbnail of their waveform instead of a generic icon.
(Note: we're still converting some of the existing files on the server so it might be a day or two before you see the hoverscrub thumbs show up for files you've already uploaded.)

Tap the checkbox icon in a comment to turn it into a to-do comment, then tap it again to mark it done. 

You can filter by to-do and choose to only export to-do comments to your NLE. 

We've also launched an extension for Adobe Premiere that functions as both a file browser and task manager.
You can browse files in the cloud and download them directly into your project by double-clicking them. You can also import markers into your current sequence. 

View your current to-dos, click on them to jump to that position in your timeline and then click the tick to mark them as complete.
The extension is currently Mac-only but will be available for Windows soon.
Dashboard is back - view recent project changes, assigned tasks, favorites, to-do comments and more at a glance. 

We've given both subscribers and trial users a storage boost.
| Package | Old Storage | New Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | 1 GB | 2 GB |
| Freelance | 20 GB | 25 GB |
| Small Business | 40 GB | 50 GB |
| Business | 60 GB | 75 GB |
| Production | 120 GB | 140 GB |
| Studio | 200 GB | 225 GB |
| Studio Plus | 350 GB | 400 GB |
| Network | 750 GB | 1 TB |
| Network Plus | 1.5 TB | 2 TB |
Kollaborate can send events such as uploads or new comments to a third-party server for integrating with in-house databases and task managers.
Some examples of what you could use it for:
Note that web hook events are not immediate and will normally arrive after a few minutes. This is a beta feature so we're keen to hear how customers plan to use this feature and what additional data they need for integrating in-house.
Web Hooks can be switched on from your profile page and will only apply to projects you own.
We've made significant under-the-hood modifications to the service, not all of which are immediately noticeable to users, but they pave the way for significant features in the future.
One area we've made significant changes to is our API. This improves security by allowing you to approve or deny access to your account on a per-app basis. Did your laptop get stolen? Did you log into an app on your friend’s computer and accidentally forget to log out again? Not a problem - you will be able to revoke access on those devices remotely.
We’ve made the changes in such a way that the current apps still work, but this is only intended to be temporary. We will be releasing new versions of our apps in the coming weeks that support the new API and will be revoking access to older versions in the next few months. We’ll make a public announcement when that date is set so that users know when to update to newer versions.
As always, we take all feedback on board so please let us know what you think using the Feedback link on the site or by contacting us.
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.
We've just updated our Avid Media Composer timecode sync plugin for Cut Notes to version 1.1.
Because Avid renders several frames ahead of playback we have to offset that in order to keep timecode in sync and you can now directly adjust the offset in the plugin settings window.
The full list of changes is as follows:
Cut Notes is an iPad app for quickly taking notes while synced to various NLEs, time-of-day or cloud videos. To find out more, please see our product page or browse the app page on the iOS App Store.
I've been working on a feature film shot on the ARRI Alexa and Alexa Mini and had to come up with a workflow for syncing and rendering out dailies. DaVinci Resolve 12 proved useful because all of the prep work could be done in one application all at once, with the added bonus of being able to roundtrip again after picture lock.
I used our very own Auto Transfer tool to offload the memory cards to two hard drives at once with checksum authentication to ensure the copies were identical to the source files. The media files were then backed up to LTO tape at the end of the day.
Step 2: Organize and sync clipsIn Resolve 12, create a new project, then go to File > Project Settings and switch off Use local version for new clips in timeline from the Color page. This will be important later on.
Then bring the video and audio files into your Media Pool and organize them in whatever manner makes sense to you. I chose to create bins for each scene (be careful what names you choose for the bins).
On this particular movie no audio was shot in-camera so the only way to automatically sync audio and video is by timecode. Select the video and audio files in your bin, right-click and choose Auto-sync Audio Based on Timecode.
In theory this is all you should need to do to get perfect sync, but in practice timecode can drift or it may be set incorrectly (or not at all) in the camera or sound recorder.
An additional reason for splitting things into bins is because if you are shooting time-of-day timecode, you may have multiple clips with the same timecode that could confuse Resolve and cause it to sync clips up to audio from a different scene.
In the event that the audio is not synced correctly, open the video in the viewer, scrub to the exact frame that the slate hits on and write down the timecode for that frame. Then open up the audio file and stop it on the exact frame that you hear the clap of the slate (in a lot of cases this will be an obvious short spike in the waveform towards the beginning of the file). Then right-click the audio file in the Media Pool and select Clip Attributes. In the Timecode pane, enter the timecode from the video you noted down earlier. Then repeat the earlier step of selecting the video and audio files, right-clicking and choosing Auto-sync Audio Based On Timecode again.
(If you can't hear the slate, go to the Audio pane of Clip Attributes and make sure your extra audio channels aren't muted.)
This will modify the timecode of the audio file so it can then be matched up automatically. You may be wondering why automatic matching is so important when you could just manually sync clips in a sequence. There is an important reason for this that will be clear later on.
Now select all the video clips then right-click and select Create Timeline Using Selected Clips.
Open the timeline then switch to the Color tab and grade the clips as you normally would.
In the Deliver tab, choose the Individual source clips option under Render timeline as and Use source filename under Save as. This will export each clip in the sequence as an individual movie file with the same filename as its original source file - this is important to make it easy to reconnect back to the high-res source files later. Because these are offline clips we're rendering as ProRes Proxy to keep file sizes small but keeping the resolution the same as the source files.
This is why it was necessary to auto-sync the clips in the earlier step. I could find no way to manually sync audio clips and then link the audio back to the original source file. That synchronization will only exist in the sequence itself and is ignored if you choose the Individual Source Clips option.
Mark in and out points on the timeline at the bottom of the Deliver page to make sure it's going to render out all of the clips, then click Add to Queue. It's easiest to queue up lots of sequences and render them all out in one go.
Import the rendered proxy files into the NLE of your choice and edit.
After editorial, export an XML from your NLE and reimport back into your Resolve project. (With Avid you need to export an AAF and things become a bit more complicated but this is covered in the user manual.)
On the Load XML dialog, deselect Automatically import clips into media pool (because they already exist in the media pool) and deselect Use color information if you edited in FCPX. Then click Ok.
Resolve should present you with a timeline from your NLE, however often things will not translate fully and need to be fixed. A great way to do this is to render out the full sequence from your NLE and then navigate to it in the media pool's browser. Right-click the file and select Add as Offline Reference Clip. Then right-click the timeline in the media pool window and select Timelines > Link Offline Reference Clip and choose the clip you just added.
Switch to the Edit pane and click the icon that looks like a filmstrip underneath the left-hand viewer. Choose Offline and Resolve will show the file you rendered from your NLE. You can then scrub through or play your timeline and it will show the reference clip alongside the corresponding frame of your timeline so you can compare them.
If any clips are offline you can right-click the timeline in the browser and select Timelines > Reconform from Bin(s), then select the bins with your source media. If the clips still won't reconnect, select the relevant clip in the media pool then right-click the offline clip in the timeline and choose Force Conform with Selected Media Pool Clip.
(At this point you may want to media-manage the timeline onto another drive to save disk space but I opted not to.)
Now go to the Color tab. If you don't see the grades you did previously, select all of the clips (you may need to click the Clips button at the top to see them) then right-click and choose Use Remote Grades (you may need to right-click again and choose Update All Thumbnails to see the changes).
Because you switched off local grades by default at the start of the project your grades were remote, which means they will stick across different timelines and if you adjust the grade of a clip, any other copies of it on your timeline (and throughout the project) will also be updated. In some cases this may not be desired, so you can right-click and choose Copy Remote Grades to Local so that your changes only apply to that specific instance of the clip.
After grading you'll probably need to send it back to your NLE again for titling and syncing with the finished audio. You can do this one of two ways: export each clip individually like in Step 4 and then reconnect in your NLE (media managing before doing so will help a lot) or render out a single QuickTime file of the entire timeline. If you don't expect many editorial changes at this point the latter is simpler, which is what I opted for.
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator