Kollaborate Server 2025.1.4 - Apr 23 2025

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this BEFORE copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Telemetry has been removed from this version due to a low signal-to-noise ratio
• Allow importing comments and captions from another file
• Player - The comment count is now shown in the Comments tab
• Player - The approval section is now collapsible
• Player - Allow more easily switching workflow from the Player page
• Fixed an issue preventing removing the original file if the file is in My Private Files
• Uploads - Fixed an error that could occur when uploading to My Private Files
• Player - Fixed an issue where disabling player tabs wouldn't work
• Player - Fixed a crash if tags are corrupt
• Emails - Fixed an issue where it could inadvertently send alerts about a user's actions to that user
• Files - Fixed an issue where deleting a version stack might not delete all files in the stack
• History - Fixed an issue where user names could appear empty
• Folder Downloading - Fixed an issue causing empty zip files when downloading a subfolder inside a department
• Fixed several permissions issues with My Private Files
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 2025.1.3 - Apr 11 2025

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this BEFORE copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Added CPU optimizations to improve performance - requires a CPU made in the last decade
• Fixed several issues with the installer, including an issue preventing licenses from being installed
• Comments - Fixed user tagging not working on Chrome
• Fixed a crash when generating thumbnails manually
• Projects - Show error message when deleting a project if it can't be found
• Files - Fixed a crash when viewing the Files page if a user doesn't have permission to view workflows
• Sharing - Show error if linked file doesn't exist
• Quick Share - Fixed an issue where the Quick Share dialog wouldn't show Delete Link and Email Link buttons
• Fixed a crash when viewing tasks
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

In case you missed it, here are some recent software updates for our products.

Kollaborate Server 2025.1.2 - Mar 31 2025

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this BEFORE copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Added compression and caching to pages and static files, which should improve page load times, especially on slow connections
• Thumbnails - Fixed an issue where thumbnails wouldn't be cached by the browser
• Fixed an "unable to transition state" error that could occur when auto-logging in
• Redis - Support for connecting with a username and password
• Database - Automatically retry failed transactions up to 3 times
• Reduced unnecessary telemetry logging
• Fixed an issue preventing comments from being exported
• Comments - Fixed an issue where tagging a user in a comment could fail
• Global Search - Fixed an issue where no results would be produced if caches hadn't been generated yet
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 2025.1.1 - Mar 16 2025

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this BEFORE copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• We've changed the version number format. Versions now include the year, the current major version this year and a minor version number
• Apache has been replaced with our own custom Rust web server. This provides significant performance, security and robustness improvements
• The Rust backend will eventually replace all PHP code on the site. As of right now, file streaming, downloads, heatmaps, captchas, some parts of the upload cycle, some background tasks, and some file operations are using the new backend, with the rest being forwarded to the old backend
• User login sessions have been completely rewritten and now use Redis Stack Server
• No need to visit /upgrade and run the upgrader manually anymore. Database upgrades now happen automatically when Kollaborate Server launches
• We've added traffic management features including load shedding (to mitigate DDOS attacks) and rate limiting
• You may have seen lots of 404 errors in your logs for URLs like /wp-admin. These are users scanning for vulnerabilities (Kollaborate does not use these technologies and is not vulnerable to these issues). Those users are now automatically banned for 3 days or until the server is relaunched
• Kollaborate will now automatically backup your database periodically, including before running the database upgrader
• We've upgraded MariaDB to 11.4, which provides performance improvements. Remember to backup your database before copying the files across, as the upgrade will happen automatically when Docker restarts
• Synced Sessions have been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. In the long term we are still committed to solving this problem, but will solve it in a different way
• The Favorites page has been removed - use filters on the Files and player pages to view favorite files / comments
• Kollaborate will now show you in the Projects and Admin UIs that a software update is available
• Easier setting of maximum uploaded file size inside server_config.toml
• Kollaborate Server now uses telemetry. This sends any log entries marked Error, Warn or Debug to us to help us fix problems. To switch this off, go to the Configure page of the Admin Area, scroll to the Telemetry section at the bottom and then restart the server once complete.

• Admin - Added a new tool to regenerate proxies
• Admin - Fixed an issue where it would not correctly show whether a user was suspended
• Import Captions - Only show .srt and .vtt files in the file browse dialog
• Upload page - Fixed an issue where the breadcrumb path would be incorrect when uploading a revision or replacement
• Share - Various UI tweaks to the URL / password copy dialogs
• Uploads - Fixed an issue where not all files would be uploaded when dragging in a folder containing hidden files
• Fixed an issue where it would be unable to connect to the database if certain characters existed in your password
• Player - Fixed a crash that could occur when viewing a link to a file that doesn't exist
• Player - Fixed error page having navigation in the wrong place when trying to view a link that has been deleted
• Account - Better error handling if uploading an avatar fails
• Files - Fixed an issue where it would be difficult to tell if color-coded files were selected
• Comment Export - Fixed an issue where exporting comments from a group of files would produce the error "No comments to export" if one of them didn't have comments
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Changes since Beta 3:

• Added configuration options for turning off software update checks and automatic malicious user banning (see Installation Guide for more details)
• Several fixes to make user sessions more reliable
• Fixed an issue that could prevent folders being downloaded
• Files - Fixed an issue where pinning a file didn't work correctly

We've just launched a major Kollaborate update with significant changes. To minimize disruption, we are making it opt-in for now and will gradually roll it out to everyone.

Note that if you're opted in but your colleagues are not, you may have access to features they do not. For example, if you grant a user permission to modify others' files, they will only be able to modify them if they are also opted in. This will become less of a problem as more users are opted in, but you may prefer to manually opt in your entire team at the same time.

File Tags

Add tags to files to give them new context. Click on a tag to view all other files with this tag.

Tags are also integrated with Workflows. You can have an Upload Workflow automatically add tags to a file if it meets certain criteria (e.g. adding a "vfx" tag if certain terms appear in its filename). File Workflows can add tags that can disappear when the file is assigned a different workflow, which is great for adding context-specific tags.

Tag Users in Comments

You can now tag a user in a comment to get their attention by pressing the @ key. (Chrome and Firefox only)

Global Search

Trying to find a file but don't know what project it's in? Global Search allows you to locate files wherever they exist.

Template Projects

Template projects can be created with teams, folder structures, saved searches and tasks. You can then create a new project from this template and these elements will be automatically created in the new project.

View by Last Comment

A custom column is available on the Files page to sort by the date of the last comment on a file.

There is also a filter to show files with unviewed comments (i.e. comments added since you last viewed the file), which is very useful for cutting through the noise on a big project and getting to the information you need faster.

Search and Sort by Duration

There is an optional Duration column that can be added to the Files page for sorting, and you can also search by duration.

Update Hold Timecode

There is now a button in the comments tab next to the timecode display to set it to the current playhead position. This is useful if you start typing elsewhere and need to correct where the comment will be inserted.

Higher quality thumbnails

Thumbnails have been upgraded to be double the size.

Saved Searches

Searches can now be turned into filters by saving them.

New Permissions

We've added new permissions: modifying others' files and modifying others' comments. This allows you to grant users control over others' resources without having to make them an admin.

Additionally, links now have the option to make the transcript viewable to recipients.

User Interface Improvements

This isn't a full UI redesign (that's being worked on) but we've updated the color scheme, icons, fonts and made other UI tweaks. This includes new user interface controls for thumbnails, timecode and copying text.

Backend Overhaul

Kollaborate's backend has been significantly improved and modernized, providing security, reliability and performance improvements. Currently the old and new backends coexist and the majority of the user-facing areas are still on the old backend, but we plan significant performance improvements as we switch more things to the new backend.

Deprecations / Removals

The Favorites page has been removed from the user dropdown. Please use the filters on the Files and player pages to filter by favorites.

Custom file permissions have been removed. Please use departments to control access to files.

The App Storage section of My Private Files has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version.

Synced Sessions have been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. We remain committed to solving this problem but plan to do so in a different way in future.

Other Changes

• History can be exported to CSV
• Download the current frame as an image
• Require Multi-Factor Authentication before accessing a project
• Player - Improved JKL key behavior to be more in line with NLEs
• Files - New filters: Uploaded by Me and Uploaded by Others
• File rename events are now stored in history
• File move events for each individual file are stored in history when moving a folder
• New file browser offers better performance for large projects
• Show link users when a comment is marked as "to-do" or "done"
• Sharing - Show search bar on folder links
• Comment Export - Fixed an issue where exporting comments from a group of files would produce the error "No comments to export" if one of them didn't have comments
• Files - Fixed an issue where it would be difficult to tell if color-coded files were selected

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 released a major new update for Kollaborate Server, our self-hosted workflow platform for pro video.

New version number format

The first thing you'll notice is that we're now numbering versions by the current year, the major version number for this year, and a minor version number.

New backend

We've replaced Apache with our own custom web server. This provides performance, security and robustness improvements. Our plan is to eventually rewrite all of the PHP code on the site with the new system. As of right now, file streaming, downloads, heatmaps, captchas, some parts of the upload cycle, some background operations, and some file operations are using the new backend, with the rest being forwarded to the old backend.

So both backends currently coexist and we had to completely reimplement user login sessions to work with both systems at the same time, which now make use of Redis Stack Server. If you have a non-Docker installation you'll need to install Redis Stack Server - see the Installation Guide for details on how to do this.

Automatic upgrades

No more having to visit /upgrade and run the upgrader manually. Upgrades will now happen automatically when Kollaborate Server launches.

Security / traffic management

We've added several security and traffic management features to increase the availability of your site under load or malicious abuse. Kollaborate Server will now shed load at times of extremely high traffic, which can help mitigate DDOS attacks. It will also rate limit requests and return an error if a user makes too many requests too quickly.

You may have seen lots of 404 errors in your logs for URLs that don't exist like /wp-admin. They are users scanning for vulnerabilities (Kollaborate does not use these technologies and is not vulnerable to these issues). Those users are now automatically banned for 3 days or until the server is relaunched. This setting can be switched off if desired - see the Installation Guide for more details.

Automatic database backups

Kollaborate Server will now periodically backup your database, including before a database upgrade.

Synced Sessions deprecated

The Synced Sessions feature has been deprecated and will be removed in a future update. We remain committed to solving this issue in the long-term, but plan to solve it in a different way.

Favorites page removed

The Favorites page has been removed. Please use the filters on the Files / player pages to filter favorites.

Easier setting of maximum uploaded file size

It's now much easier to set the maximum uploadable file size - just edit max_upload_size_gb in server_config.toml.

Update notification

Kollaborate Server now checks for updates automatically and will show an icon to let you know that an update is available.

There are lots of additional changes - see the release notes for more details. We're excited to take this big step with our new backend and we welcome feedback about the changes.

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 Server 2025.1.1 Beta 3 - Feb 27 2025

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this BEFORE copying the newer version's files over.

Note: This release is a beta version. Although it has been extensively tested, we have given it a beta label due to the major changes it contains. You should therefore be cautious before rolling it out to a production server.

Changes since Beta 2:

• Fixed an issue where some scheduled tasks were not running
• Fixed an issue where deleted files may not be deleted on disk
• Fixed an issue where it would be unable to connect to the database if certain characters existed in your password
• Fixed an issue where it would sometimes not be able to determine the correct IP address of the user if the user was connecting through a proxy, which would cause them to get kicked out of their session
• Fixed an issue that could cause a "you are not logged in" error to incorrectly appear
• Admin - Fixed an issue that would incorrectly ban a user if they visited certain admin pages
• File Downloading - Fixed an issue where files would be downloaded without a file extension on Chrome
• The Favorites page has been removed - use filters on the Files and player pages to view favorite files / comments
• Added telemetry. This sends any log entries marked Error, Warn or Debug to us to help us fix problems. To switch this off, go to the Configure page of the Admin Area, scroll to the Telemetry section at the bottom and then restart the server once complete.
• Fixed an error that could occur when marking a file as viewed / unviewed
• Malicious users are now banned for 3 days
• Installer - Fixed an issue where it could fail silently at the licensing step
• Player - Fixed a crash that could occur when viewing a link to a file that doesn't exist
• Player - Fixed error page having navigation in the wrong place when trying to view a link that has been deleted
• Account - Better error handling if uploading an avatar fails
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 2025.1.1 Beta 2 - Feb 17 2025

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this BEFORE copying the newer version's files over.

Note: This release is a beta version. Although it has been extensively tested, we have given it a beta label due to the major changes it contains. You should therefore be cautious before rolling it out to a production server.

Changes since Beta 1:

• Admin - Added a new tool to regenerate proxies
• Fixed an issue where scheduled tasks wouldn't run
• Fixed an issue where pages would fail to load if the browser sent unnamed headers
• Fixed an issue where checking for updates produced an error
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 2025.1.1 Beta 1 - Feb 13 2025

We've just released a major new update for Kollaborate Server, our self-hosted workflow platform for pro video. This version is beta due to the number of major changes involved.

New version number format

The first thing you'll notice is that we're now numbering versions by the current year, the major version number for this year, and a minor version number.

New backend

We've replaced Apache with our own custom web server. This provides performance, security and robustness improvements. Our plan is to eventually rewrite all of the PHP code on the site with the new system. As of right now, file streaming, downloads, heatmaps, captchas, some parts of the upload cycle, and some file operations are using the new backend, with the rest being forwarded to the old backend.

So both backends currently coexist and we had to completely reimplement user login sessions to work with both systems at the same time, which now make use of Redis Stack Server. If you have a non-Docker installation you'll need to install Redis Stack Server - see the Installation Guide for details on how to do this.

Automatic upgrades

No more having to visit /upgrade and run the upgrader manually. Upgrades will now happen automatically when Kollaborate Server launches.

Security / traffic management

We've added several security and traffic management features to increase the availability of your site under load or malicious abuse. Kollaborate Server will now shed load at times of extremely high traffic, which can help mitigate DDOS attacks. It will also rate limit requests and return an error if a user makes too many requests too quickly.

You may have seen lots of 404 errors in your logs for URLs that don't exist like /wp-admin. They are users scanning for vulnerabilities (Kollaborate does not use these technologies and is not vulnerable to these issues). Those users are now automatically banned for 24 hours or until the server is relaunched.

Automatic database backups

Kollaborate Server will now periodically backup your database, including before a database upgrade.

Synced Sessions deprecated

The Synced Sessions feature has been deprecated and will be removed in a future update. We remain committed to solving this issue in the long-term, but plan to solve it in a different way.

Easier setting of maximum uploaded file size

It's now much easier to set the maximum uploadable file size - just edit max_upload_size_gb in server_config.toml.

Update notification

Kollaborate Server now checks for updates automatically and will show an icon to let you know that an update is available.

There are lots of additional changes - see the release notes for more details. We're excited to take this big step with our new backend and we welcome feedback about the changes.

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 Server 3.9.2 - Dec 31 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Files - Support for deleting the base version of a version stack
• Comment Importing - Added the ability to specify the encoding of the marker list when importing. This can resolve some issues when importing Avid marker lists with non-English characters, but for most use-cases the default of UTF-8 is sufficient
• Player - Changed next / previous file shortcuts in the player to Shift + N / Shift + P
• Uploads - Added a navigation breadcrumb to the Upload page so you can easily go back to where you were before
• Share - Links now show the full link title when hovering over them on the Share page
• Files - Fixed an issue where renaming a file in a version stack would incorrectly show it as Version 1
• Files - Fixed an issue where audio uploads could hang
• Trash - Fixed an issue where files deleted from archived projects could not be removed
• UI - Fixed an issue where certain accented characters may not display correctly
• UI - Fixed an issue where the Share and History pages might not render correctly
• Config - Fixed an issue where database passwords with semicolons in them would not be saved correctly
• Fixed an issue that could cause the mail queue to hang
• Fixed an issue where cookies wouldn't be set when viewing the Adobe panel in Premiere 25.x
• Web Hooks - Fixed an issue where Kollaborate could not communicate with a script if the web server changed the case of the header key
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

We’ve become aware that Kollaborate’s existing architecture makes certain features hard to deliver, so after considering all available options we recently embarked on a Rust rewrite of the backend.

The benefits of rewriting in Rust are improved performance, increased reliability, greater efficiency / better use of resources,
and much greater control of the overall experience. We have focused so far on areas where a lot of data was being processed, such as delivering media files and thumbnails, as well as downloading a folder as a zip file, and have seen noticeable performance increases.

Some of the features the new backend will eventually enable are a public API (for self-hosting), background file transfers, and WebDAV support, among many others. For self-hosted customers, it will also eventually offer simpler licensing and an openly-accessible trial version. We have also laid the groundwork for a lot of features that we will enable once we are less reliant on the old backend. We’re still working on rewriting backend parts in Rust, but when we’re ready to start converting user-facing areas of the site we will be conducting a big UI overhaul.

This project will take a long time to complete, but we’ve structured it in such a way that the old and new backends can run concurrently and we can switch features over to the new version as and when they become available. We will be releasing a preview version soon for self-hosted customers and will be rolling it out to the cloud in the next couple of months.

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 1.8.1 - Oct 16 2024

• The Docker image now uses Ubuntu 24.04 and ffmpeg 7.1
• Added num_threads configuration option to limit the number of threads encoding will consume (0 = the number of cores in your system)
• Fixed an issue where custom encoding parameters would not be received from Kollaborate Server
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 3.9.1 - Oct 16 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Admin - Support for adding announcement banners to the top of certain pages or a one-time full-page announcement upon next login
• Player - Shows a dropdown on player page to switch between creating a new shared link and showing existing links to this file
• Templates - Tags and color coding are now preserved when importing from a template
• Dashboard - Overhauled page styling and made it display better on mobile devices
• SSO - Kollaborate now sends X-Forwarded-For headers for better compatibility with certain SAML providers
• Admin Dashboard - Added a progress spinner when clearing out deleted projects and files
• Fixed an issue where the user's last login time was incorrect, making features that depend on this operate incorrectly
• Admin - Fixed an issue where SSO couldn't be switched on
• Admin - Fixed an issue on the SSO page where entering any invalid information would reset all fields to empty
• File Browser - Fixed some instances where the file browser was rendering incorrectly
• Fixed an issue where it wouldn't redirect to a login page if the user's session expired in some instances
• Encoding - Fixed an issue where custom encoding settings might not be sent to the encoder (please also update Kollaborate Encoder to 1.8.1)
• Player - Changed an assumption when downloading proxies that only one proxy would exist for a given frame size
• Synced Sessions - Fixed an issue that could prevent new sessions being created
• Files - Fixed an issue that could prevent filtering by unviewed files
• MFA - Added some time leeway when entering MFA code
• Synced Sessions - Fixed an issue where session user list would show garbled participant names
• Synced Sessions - Fixed an issue that could prevent users joining a session
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where it would show files and projects that had already been marked for deletion as still in the trash
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where it would run out of memory if trying to delete large projects with thousands of files
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where deleting trashed files would not clear out deleted files in other users' private storage areas
• Player - Fixed an issue where the option to view earlier revisions' comments did not appear
• Player - Fixed an issue where choosing the Print option when exporting comments did nothing
• Player - Fixed an issue where selecting another revision's comment view wouldn't disable the comment text field
• Player - Fixed the player changing size when pausing in full screen on macOS
• Comment Importing - Better support for Avid marker lists exported from recent versions of Avid
• Comment Importing - Fixed an issue where the comment author's name may not be read correctly from Avid marker lists
• Tags - Fixed an issue where moving a file between projects could cause tags from other files to point to the new project
• File Browser - Fixed an issue where it would not be possible to select files inside departments
• Share - Fixed an issue where filtering by links to a folder and then clicking on the folder name would produce an error
• Global Search - Ignore archived projects when searching
• UI - Fixed an issue where comment areas could be too small
• Comment Exporting - Fixed an issue where duplicate comments could appear when combining comments with the same timecode
• Tasks - Fixed crash when sorting by task creator
• Tasks - Fixed sorting by due date not working as expected
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 3.9.1 is now out, which is mainly a bug fix release but has some small new features.

Announcements

You can now add banners to the top of pages to communicate information to users. This could be information like tutorials or details about scheduled maintenance. You can add site-wide banners or just add them to specific pages. Banners support HTML input so you can add styling and URLs to banners.

Additionally, you can choose to add a full-page announcement to users upon their next login. This will show a page that they need to click past to get to the Projects page. This page will only appear once for users.

Announcements can be accessed from the Tools page in the Admin Area.

Share Dropdown

Clicking Share under the player now gives you a choice between sharing a new link or viewing existing links to a file, instead of creating a new link immediately.

The remaining changes are bug fixes and the full list of changes can be viewed here after logging in. There is also a corresponding Kollaborate Encoder 1.8.1 update that is required for compatibility with this Kollaborate Server version.

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).