Kollaborate Server 3.5 was released last week - a major update to our self-hosted workflow platform.

As well as a massive under-the-hood overhaul, it introduces the following new features:

Security improvements

For improved security and privacy, we're now encrypting parts of the database. This happens automatically when running the upgrader for this release. Encryption keys are stored in config/keys.php and you will need to backup this file if you reinstall or move to a different server otherwise the database will be unreadable.

New admin tools

We've added new tools to the Admin Area to easily export a backup of the database, manage the number of days files remain in the trash and regenerate thumbnails if they are missing.

Project tags

You can now add tags to projects to categorize them, such as "in-progress" or tagging them with the name of the client. Clicking on a tag shows you other projects with that tag.

Multi-speed fast forward and rewind

Press J, K or L multiple times to increase or decrease rewind / fast forward speeds.

Edit custom department names

Department names can now be edited after they are created. Previously you would have to remove and re-add the department under a different name.

More export options

Captions can now be exported to CSV and comments can be exported to Reaper.

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).

Post Haste for Mac 2.7.1 - Apr 7 2021

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the built-in software updater from working, which could prevent notification of new software updates. This issue did not affect users who had installed our app suites as an external software updater gets installed that overrides the built-in one. Please download and install this update manually from https://www.digitalrebellion.com/posthaste if it is not appearing directly in the app.
• Fixed an issue where the warning icon next to the path preview could become misaligned

Kollaborate Folder Watcher 1.4 - Mar 16 2021

• Support for M1 Macs and macOS 11 Big Sur
• Massive under-the-hood overhaul which should result in improved performance and reliability
• Added a menu bar icon showing the number of files in the queue
• Added an option to delete the local copy of a file after uploading it
• Added an option to hide Notification Center alerts
• As part of the performance and reliability improvements, we have removed the feature that showed progress directly in the file's Finder icon, as the process of updating the icon was constantly triggering the part of the app that watches for changes. For now, the menu icon shows the size of the remaining queue, while further progress information and queue management features will be added to the menu icon in a future update.
• Various improvements to Kollaborate account authorization
• Various small tweaks and UI optimizations

CinePlay 1.7 - Mar 11 2021

• M1 Mac and macOS 11 Big Sur compatibility
• UI refresh with better support for Retina Macs
• Hoverscrub thumbnails are now cached, which should improve performance when scrubbing with very large files or slow drives
• Various small tweaks and polish, particularly to Kollaborate integration

CinePlay 1.7 is a major update to our media player for video and audio professionals.

M1 and Big Sur support

CinePlay runs natively on M1 Macs and is compatible with macOS 11 Big Sur.

UI refresh

We've improved the icons and UI elements to look nicer, especially on Retina displays. In particular, we overhauled the Kollaborate file browser to be more user friendly and up to date with the icons currently used on the site.

General polish

We've made small bug fixes and tweaks to improve the software in a lot of areas, but especially Kollaborate integration. The whole workflow of authorizing your account, opening a cloud file and making comments / annotations on it is much smoother.

We're also now caching hoverscrub thumbnails, which should improve scrubbing performance for very large media files or slow storage drives.

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.

Cut Notes for iPad 2.6 - Mar 2 2021

• Exporting now uses the default iOS share dialog. This provides a wider range of services you can save your notes to.
• Dropbox support has been removed from the app - install the Dropbox app and you can save files to it from the new share dialog

Post Haste for Mac 2.7 - Feb 23 2021

• Native support for M1 Macs
• Compatibility with macOS 11.0 Big Sur
• Added Adobe CC 2020 project templates
• Updated default templates to use new Adobe project formats
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

FCS Remover 3.2 - Feb 18 2021

• Native support for M1 Macs
• Compatibility with macOS 11.0 Big Sur
• Improved visual quality of app icons
• Various fixes and code modernizations

Preference Manager 4.5 - Feb 17 2021

• Native support for M1 Macs
• Compatibility with macOS 11.0 Big Sur
• Improved visual quality of app icons
• Various fixes and code modernizations

We recently released Kollaborate 3.5, a major update to our cloud workflow platform.

Major overhaul

While the site may look largely the same as before, under-the-hood it's actually a massive rewrite of large parts of the code, with a focus on improving performance and reliability.

There are over 4000 changes in this update, which amounts to about a two-thirds rewrite of the entire backend. The remaining third will be taken care of in future updates. This version improves performance, but we'll be able to take performance improvements even further once that final third is rewritten.

New features

While this version was primarily intended as an infrastructure update, not a feature update, there are a few small new features:

Project tags

You can now add tags to projects to categorize them, such as "in-progress" or tagging them with the name of the client. Clicking on a tag shows you other projects with that tag.

Multi-speed fast forward and rewind

Press J, K or L multiple times to increase or decrease rewind / fast forward speeds.

Edit custom department names

Department names can now be edited after they are created. Previously you would have to remove and re-add the department under a different name.

Auto-transcription for French

French-language audio can now be automatically transcribed from the Transcript tab of the player.

More export options

Captions can now be exported to CSV and comments can be exported to Reaper.

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.

2020 is over - and not a moment too soon. This was a grueling year that somehow managed to pass by both quickly and slowly at the same time.

Kollaborate

The pandemic meant our users relied on our Kollaborate cloud service even more, so much of the year was spent on infrastructure and making sure we could accommodate the spike in usage. We did however deliver major new features such as folder downloading, heatmaps and transcription improvements.

Our self-hosted version of Kollaborate received Docker integration, which greatly simplifies installation and management for customers.

We embarked on a mission to rewrite Kollaborate in its entirety, which we designed in such a way that the new components could be slotted into the existing site so that we could roll it out in stages.

Some of the new parts are already live on the site and we're just about to roll out a new release in which the vast majority of the site is running under the newer backend. There are still a small number of features using the old system that we plan to address in a future update. The new version provides speed and reliability improvements, and once all features are running on the new system in future we'll have even more options to improve speed further.

We are planning to do the same for the frontend next, which will also be done in stages.

In addition, we plan to focus on the Kollaborate helper apps over the next year, including new workflow plugins for Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci Resolve.

And of course, we have lots of new ideas for features that we want to keep under wraps for now...

Digital Rebellion apps

We've been wanting to create cross-platform apps for a while now and the big barrier to that was one of tooling (it was difficult to find tools that met all of our needs and were also reasonably pleasant to use). This is an issue that is almost fixed now and so we plan to look more seriously at Windows support in 2021.

Since this would require products to be rewritten from scratch, we will do so on a priority/ease-of-development basis and so not every product will therefore be cross-platform by the end of 2021.

We also plan Big Sur / Apple Silicon compatible versions of our apps after the upcoming Kollaborate release.

This is intended as a list of our major goals / priorities and we are planning many more things not listed here. Thanks to all of our customers for their support and we hope Digital Rebellion products continue to improve your projects in 2021.

Pro Media Tools 2.0 - Nov 30 2020

• QT Edit has been rewritten to use the modern AV Foundation framework, allowing it to work in Catalina and Big Sur. This is a preview release that should largely be stable but we recommend operating on a copy of your media files just in case. The majority of features from the old version still exist, with the exception of a few small features that no longer exist in the new API. Chapter support is not present in the new version because chapters are different in the new API and it makes more sense to implement them in a new way instead of directly porting the old implementation, so chapters will be returning in a future update.
• Video Check - It's now possible to run audio scans without scanning video
• Video Check - Improved the reliability / accuracy of audio scans
• Video Check - Performance improvements
• Edit Detector - Reliability improvements
• Various other optimizations and modernizations

Kollaborate Server 3.1 - Oct 7 2020

Kollaborate Premiere Panel for Windows 1.0.4 - Oct 6 2020

• Improved compatibility with Adobe Premiere Pro 14.4
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

Kollaborate Premiere Panel for Mac 1.0.4 - Oct 6 2020

• Improved compatibility with Adobe Premiere Pro 14.4
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

Kollaborate Plugin Pack 1.1.5 - Sep 9 2020

• Improved compatibility with macOS 10.15
• Various small tweaks and fixes

Last week we released Kollaborate Server 3.1, a major update to our self-hosted workflow platform for creatives.

Edit default roles

You can now modify the default roles for projects server-wide from the Tools page of the Admin Area.

Installer passwords

The installer and upgrader are now password protected for added security on Docker installations by default. You can find the password inside the config.env file.

Non-Docker manual installations do not have the password set by default but it can be set through the environment variable KOLLAB_INSTALLER_PASSWORD.

Folder downloading

The contents of folders, departments or entire projects can now be downloaded all at once as a single zip file.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps show how a video has been viewed - where people skipped ahead and where they watched more than once. Click the Heatmap button in the player for all results combined, or go to the Users tab to view heatmaps for individual users.

Currently heatmaps are recorded only for team members but we plan to record them for link recipients in future.

Quick Share

Clicking the Share button on the player or Files page now generates a link that you can copy and paste immediately, which can dramatically speed up the process if you need to generate lots of links at once. You can edit the link options in the dialog and they will be remembered for future links.

If you clicked the button by mistake, you can also delete the link from that dialog.

Task tags

You can now add tags to tasks. Some uses for this could be:

• To segment tasks into categories such as "sound" and "VFX"
• To tag tasks with milestones such as "v3.0"
• To convey a task's status - e.g. "Needs verification" or "Successfully reproduced"
• To add additional context or information to a task - such as "5.1 mix" if the issue only appears in a particular mix

Keyboard shortcut overhaul

While Kollaborate has supported keyboard shortcuts for a long time, these weren't easily discoverable. Now whenever a page has available shortcuts, a keyboard icon will appear at the bottom of the screen that will show you shortcuts available for that page. This update also added lots of new shortcuts for things like image zooming and PDF page navigation.

Other changes

• Import / export metadata to CSV files
• Pin important tasks to the top of the Tasks view
• Improved icons
• You can now add captions in languages other than English
• Language can now be specified when creating a project - this controls which caption language displays by default
• Lots of bug fixes and improvements

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 3.1 - Aug 20 2020

• Massive under-the-hood overhaul
• Folder downloading
• Heatmaps - show where people skipped ahead and where they watched more than once
• QuickShare - faster sharing of links
• Task tags
• Custom Roles
• Keyboard shortcut overhaul - click the Keyboard icon at the bottom left of the screen to discover available keyboard shortcuts
• Import / export metadata from CSV files
• Pin important tasks to the top of the Tasks view
• Improved icons
• You can now add captions in languages other than English (although automatic transcription is still English-only)
• Lots of bug fixes and improvements

CinePlay 1.6.5 - Aug 11 2020

• Improved scrubbing performance
• Fixed several issues with Kollaborate Synced Sessions not working correctly
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations