Changelog

What's New

Summary of the latest updates

• Added: Suggested frame picks can scan a video and recommend stronger moments to use in a contact sheet.
• Added: Layout snapshots now save the current composition at export sizing, with PNG/JPEG output and an Open Folder action.
• Improved: Canvas rendering, timestamps, text, and watermarks are sharper and more consistent between preview, snapshot, and export.
• Fixed: Centered text stays centered when you change font size or typography in the preview or settings.
• Improved: Online downloads, licensing, and release packaging have all been hardened for day-to-day use.

Why this matters: Faster frame selection, more faithful saved images, and a more dependable app around the edges.

April 2026 — Workflow, Rendering, and Reliability Update

2026-04-13 to 2026-04-28

Faster Frame Selection

• Improved: Suggested frame picks gained manual scan controls, refresh prompts, and scan-resolution settings.
• Improved: Layout snapshots now follow export placement and scaling more closely, with sharper text and timestamp rendering.
• Improved: Canvas controls, source library access, selected-video context, and queue indicators make it clearer what is loaded in the editor.

Cleaner Saved Images

• Improved: Timestamp rendering now uses an oversampled pass for sharper saved snapshots and exports.
• Improved: Text rendering uses pixel snapping and targeted oversampling so labels stay cleaner at export size.
• Improved: High-resolution text watermarks scale more naturally in large exports.
• Improved: Snapshot rendering now follows the same placement and scaling rules as the export canvas for more predictable results.
• Fixed: Frame borders, timestamp badges, zoomed-out canvas bleed, and background blur fallback behavior have been tightened.

Better Layout Control

• Fixed: Resizing or restyling text (font size, line height, letter spacing, alignment, color, content) now preserves the text block’s visual center on the preview canvas, so centered labels stay centered.
• Added: Snap grid controls with customizable styles and background patterns for more deliberate composition work.
• Added: Export dimension controls now include nudge actions, aspect lock, and custom size presets.
• Improved: Watermark editing now has clearer text/image tabs, font styling, weight controls, blend modes, and better hit-testing for tiled watermarks.
• Improved: Text layers and toolbar controls have been reorganized for clearer selection, locking, resizing, and alignment work.
• Fixed: Preview overlays, footer controls, and node icons stay better synchronized while editing.

Reliability & Trust

• Improved: Online URL handling now includes stronger validation, yt-dlp integrity verification, safer thumbnail fetching, and more reliable reuse of cached online videos.
• Improved: License validation now persists state, supports a 30-day offline grace period, and handles definitive revocation events more clearly.
• Improved: Temporary file management, diagnostics, and storage visibility have been expanded to make troubleshooting easier.
• Improved: Bundled FFmpeg/FFprobe media tools have been updated to FFmpeg n8.1 with refreshed third-party notices and source-code availability checks.

Why this matters: The app is becoming faster to tune, more predictable to export from, and clearer to trust in production-style workflows.

v1.0 — Initial Launch Feature Set

2026-04-12

Platform & Distribution

• Added: macOS-first Universal binary that runs natively on Apple Silicon (M1–M4) and Intel Macs.
• Added: Signed and notarized release builds with bundled FFmpeg/FFprobe and third-party notices.
• Added: Crash recovery boundary keeps the app responsive after unexpected UI errors.

Smart Frame Extraction

• Added: Extract frames from any video — works with MP4, WebM, MOV, and most FFmpeg-supported formats.
• Added: Two extraction modes: evenly spaced by frame count, or sampling by rate (frames per second).
• Added: Optional GPU acceleration on macOS (VideoToolbox) with automatic CPU fallback.
• Improved: Portrait videos extract more efficiently and the preview pipeline reports timing metrics to diagnostics.

Frame Tuning

• Added: Low-latency scrubbing to fine-tune individual frame positions.
• Added: Arrow key nudging (0.1s) and Cmd+Arrow jumps (1s) for precise adjustments.
• Added: Undo/redo support (Cmd+Z) for frame changes.
• Added: Suggested picks use automatic scoring to help find stronger frames faster.

Layout & Design

• Added: 8 ready-to-use themes — retro classics and modern minimal styles.
• Added: Configurable columns, rows, padding, and background color.
• Added: Token-powered text elements with placeholders like {stem}, {resolution}, {duration_hms}, {codec}, and more.
• Added: Multiple text layers with independent content, positioning, and alignment controls.
• Added: Background images, two-color gradients, frame borders, rounded corners, and fit controls for more flexible compositions.

Watermarks

• Added: Text and image watermarks with single or tiled placement.
• Added: Blend modes, rotation, position offsets, text stroke, badge mode, and image tint.

Timestamps

• Added: Show or hide timestamps per frame — seconds or milliseconds precision.
• Added: Optional background color behind timestamp text.

Presets & Export

• Added: Save and apply presets for frames, layout, metadata, watermark, and export settings.
• Added: PNG (lossless) and JPEG exports with quality slider and resolution control.
• Added: Scale, exact-size, and fit-within export sizing modes with common social, print, and video presets.
• Added: Cancel active export work and recover from failed output jobs more cleanly.

Queue Workflows

• Added: Queue multiple videos and select the source you want to preview or export.
• Added: Keep a consistent global composition while moving through multiple sources.
• Added: Display names, custom metadata fields, and import history make repeat work easier to organize.

Online Downloads

• Added: Install yt-dlp from within the app to download reference clips from YouTube, X, Instagram, Twitch, and more.
• Added: Configurable quality, container format, retries, and cookies support for tougher URLs.
• Fixed: Downloads avoid returning audio-only results.

Quality of Life

• Added: Preview quality presets from Micro (72p) to Original — iterate fast, export high-res.
• Added: Instant feedback while dragging sliders, with a paint-only fast path that avoids full re-renders.
• Added: Compositions persist across sessions, so reopening returns you to where you left off.
• Added: Google Font discovery, preview, and local caching for richer typography.
• Added: Default output folder selection.
• Added: View storage usage, open temp directory, and clear downloaded videos from disk.
• Added: Copy a redacted diagnostics report for support; view FFmpeg/FFprobe/yt-dlp versions.

Why this matters: The initial release shipped a full extraction-to-export workflow with practical controls for speed, quality, and supportability.

Pre-launch Buildout

2026-01-13 to 2026-04-11

• Added: Core video intake, yt-dlp online downloads, frame extraction, frame tuning, and timestamp controls.
• Added: Export sizing, preview quality controls, presets, diagnostics, storage tools, and macOS release packaging.
• Added: The canvas editor foundation, including scene-style text layers, drag/resize interactions, snap guides, and layout snapshots.
• Added: Typography, watermark, background, theme, metadata token, and Google Font workflows that became the v1.0 feature set.
• Improved: Preview/export performance, cancellation, download reliability, accessibility, and support tooling through repeated hardening passes.
• Fixed: Early reliability issues around audio-only downloads, duplicate preview generation, text clipping, drag/resize math, and active-job cancellation.

Why this matters: This is the development foundation behind the launch feature set, summarized for buyers instead of listing every internal commit.