Today (28/1-2023), we are super happy to announce that Fast video cataloger 8.5 is available for download.
Download from our website or by clicking update in the installed software (you will find it in the Help menu)
Thumbnail Notes
We added a new mode for the video thumbnail where you can edit the text to each thumbnail next to it. Select this mode from the Start menu.
Scrub the video
When moving the mouse over the thumbnail in the video catalog window, you scrub through the captured thumbnails for the video. Double-click to play from that time. This is not accessing the video file, so it will still work with disconnected videos.
Add in between thumbnails
When hovering over a thumbnail, you now get a button to add a thumbnail in between that thumbnail and the previous/next. This should help you quickly add more thumbnails where it makes sense.
In Fast video cataloger, you can assign actors to a video cast. Actors can have names, portraits, and more. Actors could be used as actual actors, but you can also use them for clients or other entities related to a video and where you want to add some more metadata than just a simple tag.
You can search for actors from the search window, but what if you want to search for videos that do not have an actor assigned or videos that do have an actor?
You can not do that kind of search from the search window, but it is possible from the scripting API. Remember that you can also bind buttons or shortcuts keys to scripts if these kind of searches are important for your workflow.
Here is an example script that will select all videos that have an assigned cast from the current search result. Simply copy and paste this into the script window of Fast video cataloger.
script to select video cast
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Runtime;
using VideoCataloger;
using VideoCataloger.RemoteCatalogService;
class Script
{
static public async System.Threading.Tasks.Task Run ( IScripting scripting, string arguments )
{
scripting.GetConsole().Clear();
List selected = new List();
var catalog = scripting.GetVideoCatalogService();
VideoQuery video_query=new VideoQuery();
VideoFileEntry[] all_videos = catalog.SearchVideos( video_query );
long[] VideoToSearch =new long[1];
foreach ( VideoFileEntry entry in all_videos )
{
VideoToSearch[0] =entry.ID;
Actor[] video_actors = catalog.GetCast(VideoToSearch);
bool has_cast =true;
if (video_actors.Length == 0 )
has_cast =false;
if (has_cast) // use !has_cast to select video without a cast
selected.Add( entry.ID);
}
ISelection selection = scripting.GetSelection();
selection.SetSelectedVideos(selected);
}
}
Today (3/9-2022), we are happy to announce that Fast video cataloger 8.4 is available for download.
Download from our website or by clicking update in the installed software.
Parent Keywords
Keywords can now be set up to have parent keywords. This allows you to tag and search faster.
For example, you can create an “animal” parent keyword, and create a keyword “parrot” with the parent “animal.” Tag a “parrot” video with the “parrot” keyword and also get that result when searching for “animal”.
Add folder filters
We improved the filter when adding videos to make it easier to exclude videos when adding videos in a folder. This should help when you have temporary videos mixed with “good” videos.
Scene search
Better video scene search results. Scene search results can now be presented and organized by video.
File organizer
We made several improvements to the file organizer as well as bug fixes. Preview videos not in your catalog and quickly add the videos you want to be included.
Update (11/9-2022), release a minor bug fix update with fixes to reported issues.
Update (17/9-2022), release a minor bug fix update search issues, 8.4.0.2 is now the latest version
Update (24/9-2022), release a minor update:
Preferences now has a reset button to restore settings to default settings.
Video player handles videos without audio better. Some videos without audio that did not play in earlier versions should work now.
Keywording panel shows used keywords in this session separately.
Added shortcut to toggle scene keyword.
Added info of number of broken video in the repair broken video links dialog
Added Name column in the repair broken video links dialog
Added context menu to copy path of broken video to clipboard
New in this version is a complete rewrite of the integrated file organizer. It still looks very similar to the windows file organizer, but the integrated organizer ensures that your catalog is automatically updated as you work with your video files. It now also makes it easy to play videos, not in your catalog and then add them with the click of a button.
SmartBins
The new SmartBins feature helps you organize videos automatically into bins from a set search query. The bins get updated as you add videos to your catalog. A SmartBin could, for example, use XMP data to sort all new videos from a specific video camera into a bin.
XMP Extended properties
We have improved the support for Extended properties, including XMP video data. Extended properties are now sorted into folders that help if you have many properties. In the search window we also list all the possible values an extended property has in the catalog.
These are the big improvements, but there are a lot and lots of other minor improvements and bug fixes. Check the documentation for the complete list.
Managing videos for DaVinci Resolve with Fast video cataloger
Introduction
DaVinci Resolve is probably the best professional video editing software currently available, developed by Blackmagic design for professional movie and tv editing. In addition to the software, Blackmagic design also offers a wide range of professional hardware.
Recently, Blackmagic released a free version of their software that includes just about everything a regular user would need for video editing. It has much more functionality than you would find in other free alternatives at professional quality. There is quite a steep learning curve and a pretty high demand for your computer hardware. But if you have the hardware and are serious about video editing, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Video editing software DaVinci Resolve
Fast video cataloger is a video file manager, a local content management system for all your video files. It is the perfect complement to your favorite video editing software.
Managing videos in Davinci resolve
DaVinci Resolve has decent support for managing video from the media pool page. But it is best to keep the media pools for clips you know you want to use in the video you are editing. A less cluttered workspace will allow you to work more efficiently.
Managing videos in Fast video cataloger
Fast video cataloger is made for searching, browsing, and finding videos. It is kind of like dedicated software for your media pool. You get a good overview right away when you click on a video, even if it is not accessible and is much faster than Resolve.
Fast video cataloger keeps a meta-database about all videos ( all in one single vcat file). That metadata includes the thumbnails you need to get an instant overview of the entire video, as well as all metadata you might need for finding videos with searches.
Since the metadata is separate from the video, the program can instantly give you an overview of the view without accessing the video file. Not only is this faster than doing the heavy job of decoding and seeking in video files, but it also allows the program to give results without having to spin up or connect external drives.
To finish a project, add the final render to Fast video cataloger, and you will always have access to your previous work portfolio.
In addition to your previous work, you can index all your stock videos, reference videos, b-rolls, and source material.
You can also arrange your video library into bins and playlists.
That way, you can easily do a rough first search and browse for the material you might want to use in production and then put potentially interesting videos in bins.
You can also create playlists, clips, or segments from clips to play in sequence right inside of Fast video cataloger. You have a rough preview without actual editing, but it allows you an easy way to try ideas and do the first pass without even bringing in the videos to Davinci for actual editing.
Bringing videos to Resolve
The easiest way to bring a video over from Fast video cataloger to DaVinci Resolve is to drag n drop the video from the FVC video list to DaVinci Resolve.
You can also drag directly from your Bins or export Playlists and then import them in Resolve.
Editing on the cut page with Resolve
Things to be aware of
Fast video cataloger handles many more video formats than Davinci Resolve, especially for older video formats. If this is the case, you will need to convert the videos before bringing them into Resolve.
We want to make it easier to integrate Fast Video Cataloger into your video workflows and with FVC 8.2 we have added more Command line arguments. To get started thinking around the possibilities of this feature we have made a short video that describes creating and editing a shortcut in Windows. Passing arguments and commands to a running instance of Fast Video Cataloger, you can integrate Fast Video Cataloger into your video workflow without heavy programming. This has its limits of course and for deeper integrations and special flows please see our post on scripting at videocataloger.com/blog or contact us for guidance.
We changed the default way thumbnails are scaled. Don’t worry; you can still switch to explicit scaling as in the earlier versions with a simple check-in box.
The why and what on autofit of thumbnails?
We had a bunch of similar feature requests from several users explaining a challenge in their everyday use of Fast Video Cataloger and it goes something like this. Sometimes or quite often when browsing your video catalog you need to look through the inside multiple video clips in a fast manner. This can be time-consuming, depending on your setup of monitors, layout, and video catalog structure, as you might find yourself scrolling a lot in the Video scenes window to make sure you cover everything in all your videos. Since this is a hinder that slows down a common use case we wanted to find a way to speed it up.
The idea of the Fit feature for thumbnails in Fast Video Cataloger 8.1 is to make this as easy as possible. You can switch it on by checking the Fit feature, situated to the far right, in the View menu.
When the Fit is checked the program will do its best to fit all of the thumbnails for the selected video in your window. The goal is to do so without you needing to scroll at all making a browse through of videos much faster. It comes in very handy when you are working on larger screens or multiple screens.
To help the program to fit the thumbnails in the best way for you we have added a setting in the new Interface tab in Preferences(ctrl+p). You can decide between which scaling you allow the Fit feature to function by using the Min scale(20%,25%,50%,75%,100%) and Max scale (100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%)
There will always be cases when this approach can not work, for videos with many thumbnails or setups with a small thumbnail window. But, for the cases that do match, this will be a good improvement to speed up general browsing.
A new version of Fast video cataloger is now available for download. This version has quite a few improvements, and I think it is worth the time to update.
Scale to fit
We changed the default way thumbnails are scaled. Don’t worry; you can still switch to use the same explicit scaling as in the earlier version from the view menu.
When you click on a video, the thumbnails of that video are displayed. The new “Fit” mode looks at the size of the thumbnail window and tries to set the scale of thumbnails so that all thumbnails are visible without scrolling.
The idea is that you should view the entire video without doing any scrolling, even when you switch between videos having few and many thumbnails.
In Preferences, you can limit the max and min scaling allowed. You find these settings on the new Interface tab.
There will always be cases when this approach can not work, for videos with many thumbnails or setups with a small thumbnail window.
But, I hope that this will be a good improvement in most cases and speed up general browsing.
Exclude keywords
There is now a section in the search window to pick excluded keywords. All videos tagged with the excluded keyword are excluded from the search results.
Performance
Performance has been important since the first version of this software, and I think you will be pleased with the improvements we have made in this version. Thumbnails should be significantly faster to load, especially when you have large catalogs containing thousands of videos.
Keyword manager
The keyword manager got a pass of improvements. You can now import keywords from a comma-separated text file and filter keywords in the dialog.
Bins
Bins now better support working with multiple files, and you can drag n drop videos between bins. Drag the videos over the bin dropdown and pick the target bin.
Login credentials
Connecting to a remote windows share now allows you to provide credentials. Credentials are sometimes required to access shares. If this is needed depends on the configuration of your local network.
C# scripting
We improved error handling. In previous versions, sometimes exceptions in a user script could lead to a crash dialog in Fast video cataloger ( just the dialog, not a real crash…). In this version, the error gets printed in the Console Window.
We also went through all sample scripts and created separate visual studio projects for each script.
Bug fixes
Lots of bug fixes as usual. The most severe issue fixed was probably a bug that essentially broke the video wall in version 8.05.
We also fixed a few cases where layout loading failed, and we updated the Avalon docking framework to get all fixes from there.
You can view the complete list in the documentation.
We changed the default way thumbnails are scaled. Don’t worry; you can still switch to explicit scaling as in the earlier versions with a simple check-in box.
