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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We've just released a new beta of Kollaborate Folder Watcher, which is a free tool for automatically uploading files to Kollaborate when they're added to a watch folder on your hard drive.
This version has a Finder Sync extension which allows you to see the status of files in your watch folder when you browse to it in Finder. It will show an orange icon if the file is currently processing and a green icon if it has been successfully uploaded to the cloud (note that these icons will only appear for files added to the folder from now on). You can also right-click files and either reupload them or cancel an existing upload.
Kollaborate Folder Watcher will work on OS X 10.6 and up but the Finder integration requires OS X 10.10. After installing, the extension may not automatically be enabled so please go to Extensions in System Preferences and tick the box marked "Finder" under the "KollabWatcher" heading (you may need to restart your computer for this to appear).
Please be aware that this version is beta quality, which means that it may have bugs and other limitations that could cause problems in a production environment. If you find any issues or have any feedback about integrating the tool into your workflow, please file a bug report on our support site.
Earlier this week we released Pro Versioner 2.1 which provides many tweaks and improvements to our project backup tool for creative professionals.
Due to several under-the-hood changes we are no longer providing a 32-bit version of Pro Versioner and all updates will be 64-bit only from now on.
We've improved compatibility with Final Cut Pro X, which boosts performance and cuts down on erroneous backup notifications.
Pro Versioner is a comprehensive backup tool to keep your project safe, complete with screenshots, annotations and cloud sync. To find out more, check out the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
We've given our higher-end Kollaborate subscription packages a massive storage space boost completely free of charge. Subscribers now get the following:
| Subscription Package | Old Storage | New Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Production | 75 GB | 100 GB |
| Studio | 125 GB | 150 GB |
| Studio Plus | 150 GB | 250 GB |
| Network | 300 GB | 500 GB |
| Network Plus | 600 GB | 1 TB |
The full list of packages and prices can be viewed here.
Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform for video professionals, centered around Digital Rebellion's post production apps. To find out more, visit the Kollaborate site, view the feature list, watch the overview video or sign up for the free 15-day trial (no credit card needed).
Today marks the launch of a brand new website design for Digital Rebellion. This isn't just a new skin though - it's a massive rewrite from top to bottom that adds a host of useful features for our customers.
The first thing you'll notice is that it's much cleaner, organizes information more clearly and displays well on mobile devices. It's designed to get you the information you need as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Instead of being a separate section on the site, user accounts are now front and center and underpin many of the site's features. Being logged into the site saves time by auto-filling certain information and some functions such as blog comments now require an account.
We've also revamped our support section and reorganized it to make it much easier to find the information you need. Bug reports and feature requests are now handled through support tickets instead of email. This makes it easier to keep track of the current status of your support ticket.
Not only does the new site offer useful features to our customers, it's also much better for us too. Our backend was 8 years old and extremely clunky. The new dynamic site allows us to more easily update things and even automate many of the tasks we currently do manually.
This is just the first phase of the site redesign. The ultimate goal is to create a powerful foundation for delivering new features and cloud services through our apps. We will be launching additional features later in the year so stay tuned.
Last week we released Pro Media Tools 1.3.8, a minor update to our professional toolkit for managing media.
Pro Media Tools is now fully compatible with the Adobe Creative Cloud 2015 update.
QT Edit has had numerous improvements to playback functionality including a full screen mode and JKL shortcut key support.
Pro Media Tools is an essential toolkit for media professionals. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
Earlier this week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.1.3, a minor update to our suite of maintenance, repair and troubleshooting tools for video professionals.
Pro Maintenance Tools is now fully compatible with Adobe Creative Cloud 2015 and we have made Preference Manager more intelligent at detecting future versions of CC.
Have you noticed that you suddenly have very little free disk space available? The culprit is probably After Effects' disk cache, which is set by default to consume up to 10% of your drive space. While that might not sound like much, 10% of a 1 TB drive is 100 GB, which is a lot of space for a temporary file cache that is only useful while AE is open.
Now you can easily clear out this cache with Housekeeper, or even schedule a basic housekeeping clean periodically.
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Housekeeper can also trash Adobe Audition plugin caches, which can help to solve launching issues.
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 list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
Kollaborate Server 1.3.2 was released late last week, offering some great new additions to our in-house cloud workflow platform for video professionals.
Kollaborate Server will automatically play back files where you left off, making it seamless to switch between home and office or desktop and mobile. This is also supported by the latest versions of CinePlay for Mac and CinePlay for iOS.
This setting can be disabled in Actions > Playback Settings in the player.
It's now easier than ever to share files with clients outside your project. We've reduced the number of clicks required to share a file and made it much easier to track links across the entire project.
Plus you can get additional statistics including when a recipient last viewed the link and the timecode position at which they stopped viewing.
You can also relink to a different file so that you can silently fix problems without needing to send the person another link.
The Python scripting beta has been incorporated into Kollaborate Server 1.3.2. It is considered beta so we welcome all feedback. You can find more about how to script Kollaborate Server in the Scripting Guide.
We've also released Kollaborate Encoder 1.0.1 which adds support for higher-resolution encoding (you need to activate this from Kollaborate Server itself by visiting yoursite.com/beta) and offers several encoding optimizations.
Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform designed to help you work better with colleagues and clients. Upload files to the cloud, have them reviewed by others and then export their notes back to your editing application.
Kollaborate Server gives you all of those features in-house on your own servers and storage. To find out more, view the feature list or sign up for the free no-obligation 15-day cloud trial (no credit card needed). Trials of Kollaborate Server are available on request.
With WWDC around the corner and a likely unveiling of a new version of OS X, here’s six improvements we’d like to see.
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.
One of the most annoying things about OS X is how it frequently refuses to perform an action like moving a file or emptying the trash because the file is in use, even when you can’t figure out what’s using it and haven’t opened that file in months. This bug has existed for a very long time.
I have a theory that it may be related to QuickLook scanning the file to update its icon but I haven’t been able to exactly pinpoint it.
There are some workarounds such as copying a file instead of moving it or securely emptying the trash.
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.
OpenGL ES is a cut-down version of OpenGL that is intended for mobile devices. Metal is a low-level iOS API by Apple intended to improve performance of graphical apps.
Because neither of these are supported on OS X, it means porting graphical apps between platforms requires a lot of work. With some parts of OpenGL ES it’s easy because all you have to do is slightly modify the name of a function, but in other cases it’s trickier because there are no direct equivalents for certain commands.
One rumor making the rounds is that Apple will forego major new features in favor of polishing and optimizing its codebase.
I feel that Apple’s software quality has slipped in the past five years and the annual release cycle means that Apple is often introducing new features (and therefore new bugs) before it has finished fixing the bugs introduced in the previous version.
The last time Apple did this was for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and I have spoken to many people who consider it to be the best release of OS X. In fact, more of our customers are on 10.6 than 10.7 or 10.8.
I would therefore be willing to sacrifice all of the above feature requests in favor of a massive codebase polish from top to bottom.
Earlier this week we released Pro Media Tools 1.3.7, a minor update to our suite of Mac media management tools.
QT Edit can now rotate, flip and flop QuickTime movies, either individually or in a batch. This is useful if videos were shot in landscape on a phone but are incorrectly rotated to portrait. It can also be helpful in situations where a lens adapter or other camera accessory is causing video to be recorded upside down.
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Pro Media Tools is an essential toolkit for media professionals. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
Kollaborate 1.3.2 is now live on the cloud, offering some great new additions to our cloud workflow platform for video professionals.
Kollaborate will automatically play back files where you left off, making it seamless to switch between home and office or desktop and mobile. A corresponding update for our Mac / iOS player apps will be released soon.
This setting can be disabled in Actions > Playback Settings in the player.
It's now easier than ever to share files with clients outside your project. We've reduced the number of clicks required to share a file and made it much easier to track links across the entire project.
Plus you can get additional statistics including when a recipient last viewed the link and the timecode position at which they stopped viewing.
You can also relink to a different file so that you can silently fix problems without needing to send the person another link.
Easily see the most recent changes to a project with the project alert dropdown at the top right of the screen.
We've enlarged the size of thumbnails to make it easier to locate and tell the difference between clips. This affects all uploads from now on but if you want to apply it to existing files, you can go to Actions > Set Thumb to Current Frame in the player.
A new Kollaborate Transfer 1.3 beta has been released with support for the larger thumbnail size. Our other uploading apps will be updated later this week.
Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform designed to help you work better with colleagues and clients. Upload files to the cloud, have them reviewed by others and then export their notes back to your editing application. To find out more, view the feature list or sign up for the free no-obligation 15-day trial (no credit card needed).
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator