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Fast Video Cataloger Changelog

What's new in Fast Video Cataloger 8.5.0.0

Jan 28, 2023
  • 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.
  • When moving the mouse over the thumbnail in the video catalogwindow, you scrub though the captured thumbnails for the video. Doubleclick to play from that time. This is not accessing the video file so it will still work with disconnected videos.
  • 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 to quickly add more thumbnails where it makes sense.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 8.4.0.0 (Sep 4, 2022)

  • Video Keywords can now have Parent keywords.
  • New type of presentation of scene searches
  • Improvement of the video file manager

New in Fast Video Cataloger 8.3.0.2 (Jun 11, 2022)

  • Complete update of the file organizer
  • SmartBins helps you organize videos automatically into bins from a set search query
  • Extended properties improvements (XMP video data)

New in Fast Video Cataloger 8.00 (Jun 24, 2021)

  • Features:
  • About box shows stats on the loaded video catalog. You can see how many videos are in your catalog, how long total video playtime there is, and more.
  • You can assign up to five shortcuts to set keywords. Edit the keywords from the metadata tab in preferences.
  • In the video catalog in detail view, you can now edit columns. Right-click the column header to get a list of columns to toggle.
  • New context menu to import videos in the same folder as the selected video.
  • You can now search on unrated videos, just check the rating checkbox in the search window. Right-click on the stars to reset them.
  • Feature: Added a freeform note field that you can set on each video scene thumbnail. You can also search on the note field when doing a scene search.
  • New function to filter videos on the same folder or subfolder as the current video.
  • Column sorting now sorts numbers as you would expect (and not strictly alphabetical), including filenames i.e a filename 1.mp4,100.mp4,2.mp4,200.mp4 will be sorted as 1.mp4,2.mp4,100.mp4,200.mp4).
  • Attract video wall, and Videowall now has a context menu to add the video to a bin.
  • In the search dialog, we now sort keywords on color.
  • Newly added videos are automatically placed in a special bin.
  • Metadata:
  • The extraction of metadata has been greatly improved in version 8. We have also opened up the API so you can write your own extensions. You control what metadata is extracted from the preferences
  • When extracting metadata from videos we now also extract rating, keywords, and description from Windows metadata.
  • When extracting metadata from videos we now also extract XMP metadata if they are present in the video file.
  • We have added a new auto-keywording feature that assigns keywords based on the path to the video.
  • Extended properties:
  • Metadata is extracted as extended properties and you can add your own extended video or thumbnail properties. There are a lot of improvements for extended properties in version 8.
  • Extended video properties are now sorted into groups.
  • Extended video properties can now be filtered
  • For extended video and thumbnail properties, you can now create a list of drop-down options. You do this when you create the extended property.
  • Added the ability to show up to five extended properties in the video detail view. Edit the extended properties by right-clicking the columns and select more.
  • Playlist:
  • Video playlists let you order sections from videos into playlists as if it was a single video, without altering the source material. This can be used to quickly draft ideas for videos. The playlist was added in version 7 and there are lots of improvements in version 8 to allow them to work as your first draft before continuing video editing work in a professional video editor.
  • Selecting a clip in the playlist view, now select the clip in the catalog.
  • Thumbnails covered by the selected clip in the playlist are now marked with blue.
  • Playlists clips now show clip duration
  • Playlists can be saved as edl text files (CMX 3600, but with a full path to video files). Tested with OpenShot.
  • Playlists can now be exported in Final cut pro 7 XML format, this can be imported in video editors like DaVinci resolve.
  • Setting the start and end of a playlist with the camera icons did not work correctly when no video clip was captured (shift pressed).
  • Layout improvements:
  • Fast video cataloger is build on you setting up and being able to quickly work with different layouts. In version 8 we continued to build and improve on the layout system.
  • On multi-monitor systems, we save where the main window was last used and restore it to the same screen.
  • New context menu in the thumbnail window to increase/decrease the number of thumbs visible per row in the window.
  • Vertical scrollbars now render on top of content and are only visible if you have the mouse pointer in the window. This gives more space for content in the windows.
  • User interface improvements:
  • There is a whole lot of small tweaks and improvements to the user interface. Most improvements come from feedback from users who had specific requests to improve their workflows.
  • Windows now have icons that match the icons in the view.
  • Improved rendering of thumbnails, it’s now more compact. Also, the program will try to auto-adjust the zoom to make efficient use of the space in the window.
  • Changed the type of Window used for web Browser, Video thumbnails and scene search results. Now they work just like all the other windows.
  • Columns can be sorted in ascending and descending order.
  • Fullscreen video player now also has a volume control
  • Drag n drop in general from the video list should work better, and it is now possible to drag n drop more than one video to other programs.
  • Drag n drop now works even if the file browser/bins windows are not open.
  • The keywording window now has a button to “Manage catalog keywords”.
  • Video description now has a splitter bar in the middle to let you decide how much space to use for video data and how much for scene data.
  • You can now assign a shortcut to the shortcut editor.
  • Fixed issues with small windows. For example, the actor window did not work well when it was smaller than the portraits.
  • Fixed layout for extended properties box.
  • Scripting:
  • Fast video cataloger has support for scripting in c#, scripts are entered in the console window. We made improvements to the user interface for scripting as well as to the scripting api.
  • Scriptwindow now have c# syntax highlighting
  • Scriptwindow now show line numbers (useful if you get an error when running a script)
  • Script window now has undo/redo on the shortcuts keys: ctrl-z ctrl-y
  • Script window now has cut, copy and paste on the shortcut keys: ctrl-x, ctrl-c,. ctrl-p
  • You can now access the video player from the scripting interface.
  • Search for extended video properties now accepts “null” for an aspect to search all extended properties for a value.
  • Extended API, to allow you to query for a specific companion image giving id.
  • Extended API to let you get a random selection of companion images.
  • Performance:
  • Performance has been key to the program from the start. Version 8 continued to improve on this to make sure that Fast video cataloger is the fastest video database available.
  • Memory optimization for the whole program. You should see much less memory usage, faster at startup and in general.
  • Performance: Improved speed of loading and updating extended properties. Most noticeable when using connected to a remote server or when you have lots of extended properties.
  • Performance: Video wall will load new videos much quicker than before. Also, less time between videos in the attract video wall.
  • Optimized searches. Some types of searches should now be twice as fast ( searching for Actors, Extended properties etc). You probably won’t notice a difference unless you have a very large catalog.
  • Optimized the combo box for extended properties in video detail edit.
  • Switching video should not also update the companion image much faster.
  • Actions:
  • Actions let you extend the program, automate tasks and connect Fast video cataloger to your other workflows. We continued to improve on this system and have hopefully made it much more user-friendly.
  • New Wizard to make it easier to create custom actions, you find it in the start screen just above the preferences button.
  • Moved old create actions away from preferences.
  • Actions can now have different button styles.
  • Changed the action window to allow more than one action per row.
  • Actions can now be enabled/disabled based on selection.
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the action window to not add newly created actions.
  • Indexing:
  • Indexing now runs in its own process using a WCF service. This should increase stability by preventing codec-related crashes during indexing. It should also make the program more responsive during indexing.
  • Added a test at startup to verify that videocatalogservice.dll exists. If this component is missing, it will not be possible to open or create a catalog. Sometimes antivirus software interferes and prevents this necessary file to be installed. If this happens now, you will get a dialog at startup.
  • Preferences:
  • Preferences are where you set your own preferences for how the program should behave.
  • New page for auto keywording.
  • New option to activate and show the video scene window when a video is selected.
  • Added preference option to Hide the default actions in the action window.
  • Web Browser:
  • Fast Video cataloger 8 now had an integrated web browser to help you download video files straight into your catalog.
  • Webbrowser can now have tabs.
  • The web browser now supports a download queue. Max four files will be downloaded at the same time, the next ones are placed in the queue.
  • Use the web browser to create actors straight from images.
  • Use the web browser to download videos and get them indexed.
  • Webbrowser now has context menus to search for videos, actors etc
  • When the actor dialog is open you right-click on the text in the browser and get it straight into the dialog, as name, bio or link.
  • After downloading a file from the web browser, if you hold down shift, the next file will be saved in the same folder without showing a save file dialog.
  • Files being downloaded are displayed at the bottom of the browser with a progress bar.
  • Webbrowser is updated.
  • The web browser now has an address field, back, forward, and a progress bar.
  • Create an actor from the downloaded image uses the folder name of the image as the default name of the actor.
  • You can now set the URL of the start page from the menu in the browser address bar.
  • You can now set the browser zoom level from the menu in the browser address bar.
  • Context menu in the web browser could not be canceled, it did not close until you picked a menu item.
  • Context menu in the web browser now has an option to use the right-clicked image as a video thumbnail.
  • Context menu in the web browser now has an option to use right-clicked image as video actor portrait.
  • Context menu in the web browser now has an option to move the selected page into actors Firstname, lastname, link, or bio (Actor dialog is open).
  • Context menu in the web browser now has an option to download the video and add it to the catalog.
  • Actors:
  • Actors can be set to your videos and have seen some improvements as well in this version.
  • When adding an actor portrait from a file it will show the correct scaling as set in preferences (before it showed an unscaled image).
  • The actor window now scales windows on load to make it load quicker and use less memory ( Can be significant if you had images that were scaled down in the catalog as they should have been, for example, if they were added with a script).
  • Changed default portrait size to 320 pixels wide.
  • Improved portrait image quality when importing actors from folders.
  • The actor dialog now lets you search with the match all or match any (before it was always match all).
  • Actor dialogs link field now has a go button to open the URL in a browser.
  • Refreshing of the actor list after adding a new actor ignored the current filter.
  • Bugs:
  • We continue to work on fixing reported issues. Here are the things that we fixed in this version.
  • On some machines, when adding a video folder, the selected folder was not remembered the next time you added a video folder.
  • When adding the video list in icon mode, the list scrolled to the top.Fixed issues that it was sometimes hard to restore the program when it was minimized to the taskbar.
  • Several improvements to the repair dialog.
  • The new playlist did not clear clips.
  • BitRate and Encode_Date get extracted when using file metadata extraction.
  • The cover window did not load covers correctly if the companion image window was hidden.
  • Reset layout showed the wrong color for the view buttons.
  • Thumbnails in Bins were not updated when you changed a thumbnail for a video.
  • You can now use Extended thumbnail properties in searches without having a keyword set.
  • Fixed a crash in the keyword editor when sorting on color.
  • When you changed the playback speed, it was impossible to set it back to normal speed without changing the selected video.
  • The DeleteVideoClip() API call did not remove the video clip from the catalog.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 7.00 (Aug 16, 2020)

  • Share a catalog in a local network from the new share menu
  • Share a catalog over the internet from the new share menu
  • Improvements to user interface

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.40 (Jun 7, 2020)

  • Fixed issue with videos sometimes getting a 0 length when indexed.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.33 (May 20, 2020)

  • Search has been extended so that you can now exclude videos matching keywords.
  • Search on actor bio and links
  • Improvements to video player

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.31 (Apr 25, 2020)

  • Play videos from a web server:
  • We have added new support to let you set up videos to be served from a web server. Access this from the catalog/info screen and the “Use Hosted Videos” button. This enables you to put your videos on a web server and then share a catalog with other people so they can easily access your video files. You can then share the relatively small catalog file where they have quick instant access to search and browse without having to distribute all the large video files with them. And you can use this for a selected number of videos in a catalog, i.e. a catalog can have a combination of videos hosted on a server and loaded from your local filesystem.
  • Please note that not all videos can be served from a web server, we recommend modern containers like mp4 for videos hosted this way. It is also always slower to load over a server so if you do not need this functionality you should not use it. Also, note that indexing currently needs to happen through the Windows file system.
  • Save to other than the selected layouts:
  • You can now save a windows layout to another layout than the currently selected one. This new functionality is available from the view menu. Select the layout you want to save to from the dropdown list and then click Save. By default, the dropdown will be the current layout.
  • Chrome browser:
  • The browser for the start page has been switched to a Chromium-based browser from internet explorer. We have also extended the scripting interface with a new function to give you direct access to the browser window. This will allow an easy way to either write out results to a web page integrated into the software or to gather data from a web page into your solution.
  • Scripting improvements:
  • The execution of scripts can now be asynchronous. This will allow you to have scripts running as you interact with the rest of the user interface.
  • The load script dialog will now default to open in the sample script folder, and then the last opened folder.
  • A new sample script get_actors.xaml.cs will show you how to integrate Fast video cataloger with an external web service. This script is explained in detail here
  • Progressbar:
  • The program icon in the taskbar now shows progress when a video is being indexed. The progress is per videos not for all videos in the current batch.
  • And other minor fixes:
  • It is now possible to multiselect images in the companion image gallery and remove them from the catalog. The Update dialog has gotten an improved layout.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.30 (Apr 11, 2020)

  • Metadata written to video files:
  • We now support writing New option to save out metadata inside the video file. This option will save basic metadata like keywords, descriptions, and ratings into the metadata section of the file. This will make it available in Windows properties of the file. This also means that it will be available for Windows search. Please note that this type of metadata is not supported by some of the older video containers but it should be supported by modern formats like mp4. This option is disabled by default but can be enabled from preferences on the metadata tab.
  • .nfo metadata next to video files:
  • We have added a new requested feature to write out .nfo file next to the video file. The nfo file will contain basic metadata like keywords, description and ratings in the Kodi format. This option is only recommended if you want to share the metadata in the catalog with another media manager. It is disabled by default and can be enabled from preferences. If the video file already has a .nfo file it will be updated with the data from Fast video cataloger.
  • More shortcuts:
  • It is now possible to assign shortcuts to show and hide Windows. No default shortcuts are set for these, but you can assign them if you have a need. We still recommend using layouts in most cases.
  • Bug fixes:
  • And we have continued to fix reported bugs. Import videos can now handle special folders correctly and can detect if a video has been imported already. I.e. if you import videos already in the target catalog they will be skipped. If you had the playlist window undocked and floating and then tried to change the order of playlist items the program crashed, this is now fixed.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.29 (Mar 26, 2020)

  • Companion images:
  • It is now possible to delete multiple selected images in the companion image browser window.
  • If adding or removing images to the companion image browser the window was not refreshed until another video was selected.
  • Usability:
  • Improved tooltips for the views.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.28 (Mar 22, 2020)

  • Ctrl+I:
  • The interactive search, Ctrl+I, now selects the search text when you show it after hiding. Just start typing to get a new search or move with arrows to edit the previous search text. If you have not used the interactive search do give it a try.
  • More Companion image optimizations:
  • We have continued to optimize the companion image browser. This time we did optimizations for when the companion image windows are not visible in a layout. This should make loading of video thumbnails images in cases a video had a very long list of companion images. We have also optimized the companion image browser itself even more.
  • Crash fix:
  • Fixed a crash when dragging an actor from a floating (non-docked) window into the cast window.
  • Check for update:
  • Added a new check for update button, and we do a check for updates in the background now when the program starts.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.26 (Feb 3, 2020)

  • The largest change is probably an update to the docking framework which should fix a number of bugs as well as improve performance.
  • The “Find duplicate videos tool” has been further improved, Select “Clean” from the start menu. We also removed the old tool from the repair dialog.
  • And, finally, this is pretty small. We added a new shortcut to “refresh search” (Shift + Alt + R). This shortcut just refreshes the current search and is useful if you have added new videos to a catalog after the search.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.10 (Aug 19, 2019)

  • You can add your own extended properties to thumbnails, for example, a description.
  • You can create virtual video playlists. A virtual video playlist is a combination of segments from videos in your catalog. This feature has been requested as a way to quickly create drafts for video editing. But I am sure you can find it useful for other reasons as well. We also added API support for it if you are writing scripts.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 6.00 (Jan 25, 2019)

  • We have redone the user interface to make it easier to get started for new users and more efficient for experienced users. We kept all the advanced features from previous version so you can still save layouts over one or several computer screens.
  • We have added a general “Search All” functionality for quick searches.
  • We now automatically extract meta data from the video file, like how its compressed, video dimension and so on. Meta data is stored as extended video properties and can be enabled / disabled from the preferences.
  • You can now reassign shortcuts to your liking.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 5.02 (Jan 29, 2018)

  • 64 bit, i.e. allow for higher resolution videos and thumbnails.
  • Improved performance.
  • Scripting support.
  • Improved search.
  • Custom extended video properties.
  • New keyword manager and keyword colors.

New in Fast Video Cataloger 4.33 (May 25, 2017)

  • Improvements to the integrated video player.
  • Integrated video player now supports MadVR (To improve video quality).

New in Fast Video Cataloger 4.27 (Mar 28, 2017)

  • Improvements to the search engine, its faster, much more powerful and queries can be saved and reused later.
  • Keywording and layouts has been simplified and is easier to use.
  • Documentation update and hopefully easier to follow.