# Release Notes #


## Flowblade 1.6 ##

**Date: March 2, 2016**

**Flowblade 1.6** is the eleventh release of Flowblade. The main feature of this release is the new G'MIC Effects tool.

### G'MIC effects tool ###

G'MIC is a full-featured open-source framework for image processing developed by French research scientist David Tschumperlé and others. Its main strength is that it enables creating complex new image filters without writing any compiled code.

For applications such as Flowblade this makes it possible to offer a wide range of image filtering capabilities using a relatively small amount of managed code.

A [demo video](https://vimeo.com/157364651) of some features available in the first release is available at Vimeo. This is just the first step, many more filters will come in the future.

### Other main features in this release ###

* **Changing project profile is now possible.** This is a feature that was requested by users who felt uneasy about having to commit to a profile at the beginning of the project.

* **Drag'n'drop of media files from other applications** is a standard feature that has so far been missing from Flowblade.
 
* **Middlebar was updated** on wider screens as G'MIC, Batch Render Queue and Split Audio buttons were added.

* **'Sync All Compositors' functionality was added** This can be very useful in situations where a track as a whole is moved in relation to other media.

For the next release cycle the focus will be on integrating existing technologies to improve Flowblade's capabilites in doing motion graphics. The Natron compositor project offers a lot of promise here, and the exisiting node compositor by myself will be made available in some form.

Also a project website will be developed during this cycle. The first version is to be made available in a week or two.

The next cycle will be the longest since 0.16 because of the amount of coding and research needed. The target release date for 1.8 is September 2016.

####Bugfixes and enhancements####
* Fix set parent clip functionality
* Fix translation scripts (apienk)
* Re-create all media icons always when requested
* Fix dark theme monitor indicator icon
* Fix change to first bin after media load bug
* Remove alpha mode functionality from compositors
* Fix batch render to respect profile selection
* Fix single render to respect changed profile
* Open missing asset project directly from info dialog into Media Relinker on request
* Add Mark In and Mark Out data to clip info dialog
* Remove write env data functionality
* Fix dark theme mute video icon
* Add transition button to TC Middle layout and combine it with edit buttons group
* Fix filter cloning for filters witn non-mlt properties
* Make Titler work better with non-square pixel formats
* Add HD 1080p 60fps profile
* Range Log sorting upgrade and gmic encode view update
* New undo-redo icons (bergamote)
* Render slowmo files from original when using proxy files
* Make possible to render slowmo file from a Range Log item
* RHEL7/CentOS compatibility patch (Martin A. Wielebinski)
* Fix file info fps display
* Make relinker and batchrender use dark theme
* Make single render use dark theme and add percentage display
* New in/out markers (bergamote)


## Flowblade 1.4 ##

**Date: November 24, 2015**

**Flowblade 1.4** is the tenth release of Flowblade and the first release after the GTK3 port.

Most main features in this release are changes to editing model that were designed to make editing more approachable and quicker. It is also notable that a large part of the main features were based on user requests, a first for the project.

In the next release cycle features that will be attempted include a G'MIC effects scripting tool, a node compositor tool using an existing code base, a first launch tips window for new users, and a clip snapping feature.

In 2016 there will probably be 3-4 releases, and the next release 1.6 is targeted for March. There will be some reports on progress in the Flowblade Google+ group.

### Main Features in this release ###

* **Fade/Transition cover delete feature was added.** Selecting a single rendered fade/transition clip and pressing delete will cause the deleted area to be covered using material from adjacent clips if such material is available. This makes working with single track transitions/fades faster. Previous behaviour can be restored using a preference option.

* **Clip ends drag with Control + Right mouse.** When a move tool - <i>Insert, Overwrite or Spacer</i> - is selected clip's ends can now be dragged to change clip's length. This is useful when for example a clip in a multitrack composition needs to be made longer to cover a clip on a track below. Clips end drags perform overwrite on empty/blank regions and insert on media regions of timeline.

* **Drag'n'drop overwrite action on non-V1 tracks** has been added. Dropping clip on track V1 works like before, but on non-V1 tracks:
  * clip will be inserted if dropped on a clip 
  * clip will overwrite available blank and empty space and will perform insert for the length of media frames that would be overwritten.
 
 This makes creating multitrack compositions faster. Previous drag'n'drop behaviour can be restored using a preference option.

* **Always on audio levels display** functionality was added. Before the audio levels could only be displayd on request, but now it possible to have audio levels rendered on background and displayed as soon as they are available 

* **Filters can now be copy/pasted from one clip to another**. It has been possible to copy paste clips on timeline for quite a while, but now this feature was made more discovarable by adding menu items for the functionality.  


####Other features and enhancements####
* Fix media relinking for projects with SAVEFILE_VERSION < 4
* Add 1080p 50fps profile
* Fix keys 1-6 stopping working after tool selection
* Fix snapshot save same basename bug
* Add fullscreen view
* Begin work on add xdg-app support 
* Fix color clips backwards compatibility for some old projects
* Add info text active keyframe and number of keyframes to keyframe editors
* Make 'Control + Left/Right arrow' move 10 frames at a time
* Add 'Clear Filters' item to clip pop-up menu
* Make effects editor keyframe editors listen for space key play/stop
* Fix crashing keyframe editor for multitrack moves
* Make compositor editors zoom with mouse scroll
* Make Space for play/stop work then focus on keyframe editor
* Make Affine Blend editable with arrows keys
* Make keyframeeditor.RotatingGeometryEditor receive keyframe updates


## Flowblade 1.2 ##
**Date: September 9, 2015**

**Flowblade 1.2** is the ninth release of Flowblade.

Flowblade has now been ported to GTK3.
  * **The process was not as straight forward as one might think** but eventually everything worked out. There always seemed to be just one more little change in API that required all instances to be fixed by hand. Luckily there was a conversion script available that did most of the grunt work to get things going.
  * **We did get something in return**. A small but percipteble responsiveness improvement was gained probably because GTK3 provides a Cairo widget for creating custom widgets that is now used instead of the project specific Cairo widget that was used before. GTK3 also seems to render widgets a bit crispier.
  * **I really hope that major API breaking version jumps for widget toolkits are avoided as much as possible**. Projects with large interface and small man power can really suffer here. 

There were some other major developments during the cycle too:
   * **All rendering was moved out of process** as the in-process rendering was found to not work correctly in some cases.
   * **Dark theme support was improved**. It is now possible to use a dark theme just by setting a preference if the GTK3 theme used has a dark variant available.
   * **Small screen support has been upgraded**. The application now works better on 768px height screens.

There has also been more contributors then ever, so the move to Github seems to have a positive effect on the project visibility and participation.

After bug fix release 1.0 and GTK3 port release 1.2, the next cycle will be about getting back on track with steady improvement in features and stabilization.

The 1.4 will also be the first "real" release of the 1.x series. In the 1.x series all changes to project format, editing paradigm and fundamental technical structure are avoided in favor of creating a solid application that reaches its full potential within the chosen tech/design path. The 1.x series will probably last for about two years, after which further fundamental change will be considered.

#### Other bug fixes and enhancements ####

  * Add preference to always use English on a localized OS
  * Make audio sample rate user selectable for rendering
  * Drop support for creating new 'Affine' compositors. 'Affine' didn't work properly.
  * Make color clips use hidden pngs instead of mlt producer to fix compositing crashes.
  * Fix MPEG - 4 / .mp4 rendering to always respect source image shape 
  * Fix transform filters by removing non-persitant scaling properties
  * Fix clip audio sample frequency and channels info display
  * Use translations at /usr/share/locale if available
  * Fix preset encodings batch rendering 
  * Make image sequence open dialog use the last opened media directory
  * Make out-of-process tools write log files
    
## Flowblade 1.0 ##
**Date: June 15, 2015**

**Flowblade 1.0** is the eighth release of Flowblade. It turns out that you *can* write a video editor with those Python bindings to MLT.

This release focused almost entirely on bugfixes to ensure maximum quality of existing features for 1.0 release. This was probably a good decision as quite a few bugs were found and fixed.

Quite a bit of time was spend moving the project from Google Code project hosting to Github. After a short time here it's quite clear that Github is a superior platform, so it was all for the better.

Next release cycle will be devoted to the GTK3 port. Hopefully everything goes according to plan, and we can get back to adding new exiting features to the application.

#### Bug fixes and enhancements ####
  * Make range item delete work logically
  * Fix Range log group functionality
  * Media files pop-ups only display usable items for media type
  * Fix Media Relinker to work with image sequences correctly
  * Make backup snapshot have .flb ext no matter what user enters
  * Fix snapshot saving for image sequences
  * Add missing image sequence proxy render functionality
  * Fix snapshot relative paths lookup for image sequences
  * Update project event time display text
  *  New fallback thumbnail icon
  * Fix MLT version comparison 
  * Brightness Keyframed bug fixed
  * Moved help files from Google Code to HTML resource files
  * Remove panel frame shadows for cleaner look


## Flowblade 0.18 ##
**Date: March 19, 2015**

**Flowblade 0.18** is the seventh release of Flowblade and the last one before 1.0.

Features in this release concentrated on media management, as that was thought to be the last under developed area that needed to be addressed before 1.0.

This cycle was a bit difficult as considerable work was done on features that were then abandoned because satisfactory functionality could not be achieved at this time. Also, the features that were released went through a redesign forcing a full  code rewrite and the quick and easy release cycle turned into major undertaking.

Through all this it became clear that the time for Gtk3 port is now. Next release will be 1.0 and only bug fixes and some minor editing work flow features will be added. 1.0 will also be the last Gtk2 release of Flowblade.

### Main Features in this release ###
  * **Relative paths for media assets** are now supported. If media file is not found using the saved absolute path, a file with same name is searched from subfolders relative to project file directory.
  * **Save backup Snapshot** functionality saves project file and all media used by project in selected folder for convenient backup.
  * **Media Relinker** tool makes replacing missing media files easy.
  * **Image Sequence Rendering** for exporting project as a file sequence is now available.

#### Other features and enhancements ####
  * Current Frame export
  * Fix Batch render track mute bug
  * Color Pulse and Ising pattern producers added
  * Fix Titler closing and saving bugs
  * Color Lift Gain Gamma filter added

---

## Flowblade 0.16 ##
**Date: December 2, 2014**

**Flowblade 0.16** is the sixth release of Flowblade.

This release has only one major new feature, and marks a change in the approach until the 1.0 release is done.

The next 2-3 releases will contain at most 1 new major feature along with smaller enhancements and bug fixes. The releases will also come quicker, once every 3-4 months.

The previous release completed the editing concept and feature list needed for 1.0. The 1.0 release will be made before the end of 2015, after which the focus will shift immediately to the porting of the application to gtk3.

The code base refactoring has come to a conclusion with this release, and the focus when improving code readability will now shift to adding and improving comments.

### Main Features in this release ###
  * **Audio Master Meter** has been added to top level GUI to help working with audio.
  * New **Chroma Key** filter works better on blue and green screen keying than the existing Color Select filter
  * **Luma Key** enables keying based on image luma values
  * **Batch Rendering** was changed to use dbus instead of PID files and should now  actually work

#### Other features and enhancements ####
  * Add German translation
  * Add Italian translation
  * Fix Quick Enter and Quick Exit trim white blank display bug
  * Final round of refactoring before 1.0
  * Fix start-up problem from missing threads\_enter() - Louis C. Villa
  * Require pygtk 2.0 to fix start-up on some systems - Louis C. Villa
  * Update timeline tools overlay GUI
  * Make Clip Monitor remember displayed frame
  * Fix flashing black around monitor bug
  * Add keyboard shortcuts ALT + I and ALT + O to move to in and out points
  * View selector for media panel to display all or anly certain types of files
  * Add info on duplicate media items on load
  * Refactor and fix audio monitoring display update and exit

---

## Flowblade 0.14 ##
**Date: June 18, 2014**

**Flowblade 0.14** is the fifth release of Flowblade.

This release has some good new features and improvements, see below for more info. It also seems clear that the "release every 6 months" schedule suits the project well at this stage, and it will be kept for the future.

In the next release cycle attention  will be paid to rendering output files and media and project management.

New features for the next release have not been decided on yet, but MLT webFX module will be looked at, and there are some other services available that are not yet utilized by Flowblade.

### Main Features in this release ###
  * **Color Correction improvements** in this release take a major step forward.
    * New 3 band color correcting filter **Color Grading** makes professional level color manipulation possible on Flowblade
    * Industry standard Catmull-Rom based **Curves** filter (other FLOSS video editors use Bezier based implementations, which in my opinion are inferior)
    * RGB Adjustment filter is equipped with a new and much more intuitive editor and renamed as **Color Adjustment**.

Unfortunately the first two require repository version of **MLT (=>0.9.1)** which is not available on any distributions yet (Arch may have it).
  * **Spacer tool** makes it possible to move all timeline items on all the tracks as a single unit. If Control button is pressed all items on a single track can be moved. This makes it much quicker to restore relative positions of clips after edits that change positions between clips on different tracks.
  * **Audio levels** displayed on clips are now rendered much quicker and some earlier bugs were fixed.
  * **Range Log** functionality has been upgraded.
    * Range Log items can now be dragged onto Timeline
    * Timeline Clips can dragged to create Range Log items
    * Range Log items can be arranged into groups
    * ...and some other minor improvements and bug fixes
  * **Quick Enter and Quick Exit for trim tools** make editing more fluid. When using Trim, Roll and Slip -tools the edit now begins immediately on click. The old behaviour can be restored by setting a preference.

#### Other features and enhancements ####
  * Give info on a too long Fade for Clip
  * Improve Transition handles and error info.
  * Automatically create hidden folder for rendered clips
  * Automatically create hidden folder for thumbnails
  * Spanish translation
  * Make possible use wipe luma files from file system
  * Display media items as they are loaded
  * Add all filters on/off button
  * Add preference that sets last render directory as default on project open
  * Add warning if Render Profile fps different from Project Profile fps
  * Make track mute icons clickable for video/audio muting
  * Enable dragging clip from monitor to Timeline
  * CTRL + A support for media panel
  * Make mouse middle click zoom to sequence length on Timeline
  * Make Monitor playback interpolation user selectable
  * Fix hidden blank after sequence end bug
  * Fix render bug when minimizing windows
  * Fix Audio Mixer crash on exit
  * Fix 0.8 Project files forwards compatibility
  * Fix Titler crash on exit
  * Fix Filters editor delete out of index bug
  * Fix Quick Transition alignment bug
  * Fix Quick Transition undo bug
  * Fix window panels resize bug
  * Fix clip effects editor drag'n'drop bug
  * **GUI updates:** Render time value display before estimated time - speaker icon change sensitivity state - clip rects back into trim overlays - trim overlays GUI update - Image Sequence indicator - Graphics indicator - Render Proxy File menu item - selected compositor color to blue - Timeline overlay update - rendered clip length display in slo-mo dialog - vcodec and acodec info in clip info - audio icon update - artistic filter icon update

---

## Flowblade 0.12 ##
**Date: January 14, 2014**

**Flowblade 0.12** is the fourth release of Flowblade.

This release was about gradual improvements on features, correctness and stability. The new features in this release may not be useful to all users, but are very much needed by small subsets of users, and make the application useful for wider variety of editing needs.

The continued refactoring and improving of the code base has made it more clear that no major rewrites are needed, and Flowblade can be developed in a gradual and predictable way in the future.

### In this release ###
  * **Slip tool** allows changing the media displayed in a clip in a single edit action without changing the position and length of the clip
  * **Proxy editing workflow** can be used to edit material that makes the editing experience unacceptably unresponsive because the material places too high demands on the system
  * **Batch rendering application** makes it possible to render multiple programs in the background
  * **Dark Theme support** optimizes icons and GUI colours for dark themes
  * **Copy Pasting clips** on the timeline is now possible

#### Other features and enhancements ####
  * Watermarks
  * Rendering stopping bugs fixed, incl Motion Clip render bug
  * French and Czech translations
  * Playback frame positioning bug fixed
  * Icons and Tool cursors update
  * Simplify Tool names
  * Fix .mp4 files rendering bug
  * Fix wrong FPS value in File properties window
  * Change Theora rende file extension to .ogv
  * Fix Image Sequence import bug on some numbering styles
  * Remove gnomevfs dependency
  * Add indicator to timeline clip being edited in effects editor
  * Make all thread GUI updates acquire gtk lock
  * Fix SpinButtons value display bug
  * Make Titler layer visibility togglable
  * Make possible to turn off safe and overlay displays in Titler
  * Make Titler window resizable
  * Add entry box to give file extension when rendering with args
  * Improve SVG handling
  * Fix saving bug caused by MLT types SWIG names
  * Fix Redo keyboard shortcut bug
  * Fix Range Log comment editing bug

---

## Flowblade 0.10 ##
**Date: September 13, 2013**

**Flowblade 0.10** is the third release of Flowblade.

This release has a lot of new features and enhancements. The development cycle was longer than the planned 6 months, mainly because of the summer break and a cascade of interconnected changes that all needed to be completed before doing a release.

In future we will hold strictly to a maximum 6 months between releases, and will opt to postpone features in favour of a more reliable release schedule.

### In this release ###
  * **Tools** metaphor is used for editing instead of **Edit Modes** like before
  * **Audio Mixer** window with VU meter + gain and pan controls for all tracks and master out (**Requires MLT 0.8.8**)
  * **Affine Blend** compositor provides single point of control to create keyframed composites with both opacity and affine transform and all the standard blend modes (**Requires Frei0r 1.4**, which isn't widely in repos)
  * **Image sequences** of numbered frames can be imported now as media
  * **Preset rendering options** for commonly used file types are made available to the user
  * **Range Log** panel enables user to save and name Mark In/Out ranges on media files. This is very useful when working with long files that have many areas of interest.
  * **Marks** can now be placed to identify positions on the timeline.
  * **Single track rendered transitions** for quick dissolves and wipes
  * **Auto consolidate blanks**, no more multiple blanks between clips after some edits
  * **GUI Look'n'Feel** was updated with over 20 new icons and new custom buttons

#### Other features and enhancements ####
  * Updated application menu
  * Configurable Tabs position
  * Configurable Timecode display position
  * Keyboard shortcuts list window
  * "Centring" action for Compositor editors
  * TAB key switches between Timeline/Clip display on monitor
  * Keyboard shortcut CTRL+L for logging clip ranges
  * Arrow keys move source image in Compositor editors
  * Project events panel and persistent project events data
  * 8 video/1 audio and 1 video/8 audio track layoutsn for sequences
  * Media objects are now displayed using large thumbnails with information overlays
  * Noise and EBUBars image producers
  * Bin panel is now resizable
  * Colgate white balance plugin
  * Tracks menu
  * Support for Copy/Paste in Title Editor
  * Runtime environment data can be saved into a file
  * Rename and Clip Color features added to Clip context menus
  * Make cut action available when working with trim edit tools
  * Image Grid filter
  * Audio information for clip is displayed with level data instead of waveform
  * Panel sizes are now persistent
  * UP/DOWN arrows move position to In/Out Marks and clip ends on Clip Monitor display
  * HOME/END keys move position to timeline start/end
  * Sync Parent feature GUI update
  * Timeline focus fixes to make keyboard shortcuts available better
  * M keyboard shortcut for adding markers
  * Sync frame offsets visible
  * Display selected range on timeline frame widget
  * Display selected range length for Clips under monitor
  
---

## Flowblade 0.8 ##
**Date: December 4, 2012**

**Flowblade 0.8** is the second release of Flowblade, and the first one to take advantage of bug reports and feature requests from users.

Although a few important new features were added, much of the effort after **0.6** was spend creating new Frei0r plugins, total of 14 were contributed by the author, 10 of which are available in Flowblade **0.8**. Good new Fre0r plugins were contributed by other people too, so it may be worth while to install Frei0r from source code. See wiki: InstallingFrei0rPluginsFromSource.

### New Features ###

  * Titler
  * Slow/Fast motion clips
  * Flowblade now runs on screens with height of 768 pixels
  * Creating Sequences with different number of tracks is now possible
  * Ability to change Track count of Sequence
  * T, Y and U keyboard shortcuts for insert events
  * J, K, L keyboard playback control
  * Default length of Drag'N'Drop for graphics is configurable
  * 18 new filters added (latest Frei0r needed)
  * Environment information is made available to users

#### Major Bugfixes ####
  * Localisation bug causing non-working compositors fixed
  * Environment detection method changed to direct MLT for better results

---

## Flowblade 0.6 ##
**Date: May 7, 2012**

Initial release.

### Features ###
  * Film style insert/trim editing paradigm
  * 2 move modes and 2 trim modes
  * Image compositing with transformations, blend modes and pattern wipes
  * Close to 100 image and audio filters
  * Supports most common video and audio formats
  * JPEG, PNG, BMP, TGA, TIFF, GIF images and SVG vector graphics
  * Output encoding to multiple formats
