Kollaborate Server 3.7 Beta 1 is now out. This version has a few new user-facing features but the biggest change is a signficant architectural overhaul. It has thousands of backend improvements and several key components have been rewritten. These changes improve reliability, customization and performance.

This version has been well tested and we're not aware of any issues, but we've given it a beta label due to the sheer number of changes that occurred.

We now support PHP 8.1 which provides performance improvements. The Docker images now use MariaDB instead of MySQL, which also improves database performance. Please note that the Docker image is configured to convert the database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise.

On the feature side of things, link recipients can now view captions, while history can be filtered and exported to a CSV file from the History page for a project.

We've also made numerous small UI changes including new interface controls for interacting with timecode, copying links and displaying thumbnails.

Some deprecated features have now been removed from the site: namely the App Storage section and Python scripting.

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 Kollaborate Server 3.6.2, a minor update to our self-hosted file sharing and workflow management system.

The main features in this update are batch exporting of comments and captions, downloading of the current playback frame as an image, the option to import folder structures from an existing project when creating a new one, the option to search for a file by its age, and various user interface improvements.

Server-Specific Changes

• Added LimitRequestBody to .htaccess file for compatibility with recent versions of Apache
• Fixed an issue where avatars could not be uploaded
• Admin - Workflows - Fixed an issue where file workflows may not be editable
• Admin - Roles - Fixed a crash when deleting a role

Other Changes

• Comments - New comment design that is more space-efficient on narrower screens
• Files - Support for batch exporting captions and comments
• Player - Allow downloading the current frame as an image
• Projects - Added the ability to import folder structures from an existing project when creating a new one
• Advanced Search - Add option to search by age in days
• Preview - Remember previous volume setting for quick look previews
• Share - Added 21 day expiration option
• Metadata - Add extra frame rates to list on Edit Metadata page
• Transcript - Made caption overlap checking less strict
• Player - Show Actions button on mobile
• Player - Prompt before deleting comment annotations and attachments
• UI - Better support for popups on mobile screens
• Player - Comments and transcripts are no longer refreshed when the browser tab is not visible
• Files - Limit number of emails sent when a batch of files is moved at once
• Files - Prevent text box clicks from navigating to files/ folders when renaming
• Files - Prevent the rename textbox from appearing multiple times if the file is already being renamed
• Player - Improved the accuracy of timecode shown when hovering above play bar
• Captions - Fixed an issue where Premiere couldn't import SRTs and improved caption timing accuracy in general
• Comments - Fixed an issue where the first Davinci Resolve marker wouldn't be imported
• Download Folder - Fixed an issue preventing link recipients from downloading folders
• Files - Better logic for detecting the correct frame rate of a video if multiple frame rates are returned
• Files - Fixed an issue where renaming a version in a version stack would not reload the file correctly
• Files - Fixed an issue where a numeric filename like "1.20" could be shortened to "1.2"
• Player - Fixed a crash if reviewers are not accessible
• Player - Fixed a crash if user tries to view a file after the project has been deleted
• Adobe Panel - Various bug fixes and changes to how information is displayed
• UI - Various minor interface tweaks
• Various small bug fixes, optimizations and code modernizations

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 Kollaborate Server 3.6.1, a minor update to our self-hosted file sharing and workflow management system.

Server-Specific Changes

• Hardened default security settings
• The default installer password has been changed (only affects new installations)
• Admin Dashboard - An encoding job is now considered unassigned if the server has been removed or is offline
• Admin - Number of available encoding licenses is now shown on Servers page

Other Changes

• Player - All admins can now remove original files / proxies, not just the file's owner
• Comments - Right-click a comment and choose Copy Direct Link to copy a direct link to that comment. To send to someone outside the project, create a shared link as normal, then visit that link and copy the comment link from the player.
• Comments - Markers can now be imported from a CSV file (Timecode, Author, Comment format)
• Player - The maximum height of a vertical video is now dependent upon your screen size, to ensure it's always visible
• Files - Even though it is valid for a URL to contain an exclamation mark, some email apps interpret it as punctuation and mangle pasted folder URLs. This has now been prevented.
• Sharing - The default link name is now the title of the file
• Tasks - Various fixes for importing tasks from a CSV file
• Password Reset - Fixed an incompatibility with users with special characters in their email addresses
• Sharing - Fixed an issue where share link connection could be lost when an error appears on the screen
• Encoding Servers - Follow redirects when communicating with servers
• Files - More robust support for getting a file's frame rate
• Player - Ensured download info box is still visible on small size videos
• Various small bug fixes, optimizations and code modernizations

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 had some enquiries from customers about the Log4j vulnerability currently causing havoc across the internet. Log4j is a Java library and none of our products or backend processes use Java. Therefore, none of our products, including customers' self-hosted Kollaborate Server installations, are affected by this security flaw. (Self-hosted customers could still be vulnerable if they run other software on their servers that uses Log4j.)

Kollaborate Server 3.6 is out now - a major update to our self-hosted workflow platform.

Direct SMTP email sending

Kollaborate Server can now send emails directly using a user-supplied SMTP server, which is much more user-friendly than the old system utilizing Postfix. If you were using Postfix with a previous version, you will need to add your SMTP server information in the Configure page of the Admin Area to resume sending emails with version 3.6.

Your email provider will be able to supply information about connecting to their SMTP servers, or alternatively you can use Gmail or Amazon SES. Note that if you have two-factor authentication switched on with your email provider, you will likely need to set up an App-Specific Password for Kollaborate Server; your provider will be able to provide more details on this if it is necessary.

This is now our recommended way of sending emails from Kollaborate Server so we are also deprecating the Email Routing subscription service. This service will shut down in March 2022 (the exact date depends on your billing renewal date) and we have contacted affected customers about this directly. To avoid disruption, customers should upgrade to 3.6 and setup their SMTP information before the shutdown date.

Customize Default Workflows

The default workflows added automatically when creating a new project can now be customized from the Admin Area. Setup rules for automatically color coding files or complex approval chains that will be applied when the project is created.

(It should be noted that actions requiring specific files (such as adding a watermark image) cannot be set in default workflows as those files won't exist in new projects.)

Codec and track information in player

The Metadata tab in the player now shows information about the video codec of the original file and the audio track configuration. This information will not show for older files but will be gathered for all files uploaded from now on.

Set language on a per-file basis

The audio language setting is used to determine which caption language to show by default. Previously this could only be set on a project-wide basis but now can be overriden for specific files. This can be done from the Edit Metadata page.

Other Changes

• Admin Dashboard - Only calculate average encoding time for files from the last 24 hours
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where clearing the render queue doesn't requeue jobs correctly
• Admin Dashboard - Added the ability to clear failed encoding jobs only
• Fixed an issue where errors wouldn't be shown when creating a new user from the Admin interface
• Roles has been moved to the main navigation bar in the Admin Area
• You can now override the "From" name shown in emails from the Configure page (by default it is the site's name)
• Uploads - Show remaining upload count in page title
• History - Show file move events on the History page
• Share - Show the file upload link's description to users when uploading
• Player - Added n / p shortcut keys to go to next / previous file
• Fixed an issue causing potential conflicts with similar folder names
• Files - Various page performance improvements when navigating and uploading files
• Files - Fixed strange behavior when interacting with a file immediately after upload (e.g. favoriting or Quick Look)
• Player - Disabled browser player download button on mobile
• Files - Fixed page scrolling unnecessarily when dragging in files to upload
• Player - Fixed an error when subscribing / unsubscribing to a file
• Various minor fixes, code modernizations and refactorings

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).

Pro Media Tools 2.1 is an important new update to our suite of media management tools.

M1 Mac and Big Sur support

The suite natively supports Apple Silicon processors and works well on macOS 11 Big Sur.

Auto Transfer

Our camera offloading tool, Auto Transfer, has had a UI refresh with new icons that look better on Retina displays, as well as a lot of small tweaks to improve the intuitiveness and usability of the software.

Edit Detector

Edit Detector can now export each shot to a separate QuickTime reference movie, meaning that you can have applications see each shot as a separate file without taking up a lot of disk space.

QT Edit

QT Edit received a lot of bug fixes and polish in this release, particularly around metadata handling.

We also added a new "Use gamma value" option when specifying a Color attribute manually, which takes the transfer function directly from the Gamma attribute. In other words, if someone asks you for a movie tagged with 1-2-1 color, this is how to achieve that.

Video Check

Video Check can now open audio-only files and check them for peaks (previously only video files could be opened).

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.

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).

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.

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.