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.
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.
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.
Improved performance for catalogs with lots of extended properties. You should notice a performance improvement when switching videos if your catalog has more than 1000 extended properties.
Added new option when auto assigning keywords from filename, the new option will only consider text inside brackets as keywords, i.e [this text] or {this text}.
Add new sample scripts.
If you used a hotkey that was a plain key (i.e no ALT/Shift/CTRL) and had keyboard focus in the script console window the shortcut action was executed. Now the character is written to the text window.
When updating multiple keywords in the keywords manager to set color the first keywords text also got updated.
When the write metadata option is enabled metadata is now also written for multi-selected videos.
If metadata writing fails because a file is locked by a program fast video cataloger will keep trying. (this typically failed because the video was playing in the internal or an external video player).
