🎼 Create Standalone Composer Movie

It has been a long time coming! This build introduces our new Composer export. This export is like nothing we have ever seen and it is extremely fucking fast! You think Super Transcoder is fast, well this tops it! It took 3 different approaches to get this right, but we finally nailed it.

The new export supports Overlays, Clip Zooms, Multi-Angle Clips, and imported images and movies. It is what we call What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). So, however you have your angles, overlays and zooms setup for a clip, the exported movie will reflect exactly that.

There are few options:

• 1920x1080 or 1280x720 frame sizes
• H264 or HEVC codecs
• 25, 30, 50 or 60 framerates
• Audio - Includes audio in the exported movie.
• Single Angle - Export only the 'largest' angle in the movie collection. It works similar to the legacy Single Angle Export in the past.
• Overlays - Include overlays in the exported movie.
• Close Other Quicktime Movies - Cleans up open Quicktime movies, so you know which one was last exported.
• Open Movie On Completion - Opens the movie in Quicktime Player.

The Composer Export menu has been re-organized and legacy exports hidden. To use the legacy export options, hold down Option when clicking on the Composer Export button.

📐 Better Alternate Synching

Many moons ago, we developed an alternate method for synching angle movies. Unfortunately, we found that users struggled with the feature. So, we hid it for the time being. The alternate method is very useful because it allows you to append multiple movies to an angle movie and synchronise them. The main reason for hiding the feature was that the performance on slow machines could be frustrating.

While doing some work during the CONCACAF Gold Cup 2023, we found we needed to use this feature to hasten our workflows. So, we did a bit of work to enhance it.

To use the alternate synchronisation method, hold down the Option key and click on the Synchronize Angles option under the Arrange menu in the Movie Collection tool bar.

To pad the blank sections with the empty angle image, click on the downward pointing chevron menu item in the synchronizer controller at the top of the angle movie. Choose Replace Angle Offsets With Blank Movies, this will close the control and pad the blank sections of the movies. The process of padding out the angle movies can be undone by choosing Remove All Angle Offsets From All Angles found under the same menu.

🍦 Composer Archive Padding

Whilst in same feature area of the angle synchronisation, we added an option to Fill Empty Angles With Image to the Composer Archiving feature. This is a tick box in the Create New Composer Archive Folder. This is selected by default and we strongly recommend keeping it ticked. It pads out any and all empty angle with the image found in the empty angle image folder in the preferences folder. The reason this option is important is that when you used the movies in other software / workflows, the blank movies that Angles creates can cause issues. It will be a must have feature when uploading to our new online platform called Amplify!

The Empty Angle Image folder can be found on this path:
Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/Angles/Preferences.

We recommend dimensions of 1920x1080 for the png image. If another size is used, Angles will try to place the image in the middle with black borders.

🍦 Composer Archive Transcoding

Options to transcode the archive while creating it have been added to the export file dialog. This is a must do operation when sharing composers to our new online sharing platform Amplify. Tick 1080 to include transcoding, this will increase the time that it takes to create the archive.

By default, the archiving process concatenates the clip angle movies together without altering them. While this is fast and works great in Angles, this process can cause third party transcoders and players serious issues. So, transcoding the angle movies creates one continuous track that fixes this issue.

🫥 Wyscout Playlist Import

A playlist can be created on the Wyscout platform and downloaded. The playlist download contains separate MP4 files and a simple file that describes the playlist order and MP4 file names.

Once downloaded the playlist folder can be dropped onto the Content Sidebar and it will import the playlist; creating a timeline and movie collection. A clip will be created for each MP4 in the playlist and each MP4 will be transcoded during the import.

Copy Composer Export / Import

We created a simple composer export and import to help users who are extracting clips from movies using computer vision algorithms.

To start to learn how to use this as an import, we recommend creating a composer with two clips and exporting it. After creating the composer, choose 'Copy Composer To Desktop'. This will create a folder on the desktop named after the composer which will include a folder for each clip exported and an important file named import_settings.json.

The import_settings.json file is required for the import. It sets up various aspects on how Angles will import the clips. Read the Notes.txt file for all the possible settings.

Each clip is exported into a separate folder that is named 'CLIP 00001', 'CLIP 00002', etc. The naming convention is important as the clips will be sorted alphabetically and imported in that order. We recommend using the default naming convention we have created.

Inside each clip folder is a file called clip.json and folders that contain each angle that was exported named 'VIDEO ANGLE 1', 'VIDEO ANGLE 2', etc. The clip.json contains any metadata about the clip such as clip color, topic name, qualifiers, attributes and notes. The structure of this json is very similar to Angle's JSON timeline export. The angle movie name contained in the VIDEO ANGLE folder can be any name, but the folder can only contain one movie.

Try changing some of the values in the export like composer name and its arrangement in the import_settings.plist and some of the metadata in the clip.json files, then import the folder.

To import the composer, simply drop in on the content sidebar. This will create a new window, composer and movie collection in the focus vault and open the imported composer.

✂️ Cut Clips Updates

Include Qualifiers In File Name checkbox added to Cut Clip settings options.

Reveal In Finder checkbox added to Cut Clip settings options.

Defaults button added to Cut Clips settings options.

Reduced the number of digits in the clip index for Individual Movies For Clips for Cut Clips.

Changed 'Single Angle Export To VLC' to 'Single Angle Cut To VLC'.

🛠️ Maintenance

Timeline row editing is now included in the undo manager. Thanks to Manchester United for pointing this issue out.

Timeline row name column maximum width has been increased, allowing the display of very long row names.

Archiving from timeline would not work with fragmented MP4 files.

Overlays are dimmed when synchronizing angles.

Angle arrangements presets ignore overlays.

Notes inspector updated to better show the display options.

Overlays are no longer duplicated during Composer Archive creation.

Improved frame stepping after movies are paused.

Fixed issues with Hudl remote.

Made Shift Tab shortcut to jump backwards in clips more smooth.

Work on timeline archiving routines.

Fixed issue where overlapping sub-menu items could not be selected.

Keystrokes are blocked from passing through open and save dialog boxes.

Content Sidebar and Overlays menu has been rearranged.

Standalone composer movie exports do not alter text colors according to light or dark mode.

Added a bunch of new clip styles for our friends at FIFA.

WIP - Timer clip archiving from archive updates for timelines and composers.

Drag and drop Composer merging updates.

Added Start button to the JSON Timeline drag and drop import.

Fixed issue when where qualifiers would not import correctly when importing a JSON Timeline.

Fixed an issue with timeline row name column widths shrinking.

Synergy import clean ups.