Release notes

New video player & preview encoding

With this release we are introducing a new video player with new features like:

• frame-accurate play-controls

• Full-HD low-res-previews (1920x1080)

• timecode-display (if timecode track is present in the original media, otherwise timecode starts at 00:00:00:00)

• more extensive asset information (audio and video codecs, container, audio-channels, etc)

• preview support for multichannel-assets (removing the old limitation of max. 8 channels)

• audio and volume controls (solo-button for monitoring single tracks in multi-channel assets)

• audio-channel selection and audio-waveforms per track

• possibility to download every audio track as a mono audiofile

• thumbnail-previews of the video track

• zoom in/out of the video & audio tracks

• logging / comments: admins and users who have been given the right to comment can add timecode-based comments to a video. These are shown in a dedicated comment track and are visible for all users.

The new player automatically replaces the current player once the extended assets are rendered in the background. The current player remains available in the meantime for old assets.

Please note that the new player is only available on desktop browsers.

Video previews in the grid-view

The new and redesigned grid view now has support for a mini-player for previewing videos right from inside a folder view. Simply hover over an item to start the video. You can also hover over the progress bar to show thumbnail-previews throughout the duration of the video or jump to the desired section of the video.

Copy files

You can copy files from now on by pressing the "Copy" button from within a file.

Read more about it here.

New and improved rights management

Folder and user rights management has been further improved to remove some inconsistencies and oddities that were present. In detail:

• the UI does now respect the search filter in applying rights, only the filtered users are affected when editing folder rights

• when setting rights to a folder, the changes are also applied to the subfolders

• the color-scheme of the buttons has been extended for a better visual representation of the current state.

• a legend explaining the different button-states has been added

DCI

It is now possible to ingest all file types with dci. Thus, lifiting the existing limitation to only video files. This can be changed under "automations" -> "dci". The new default behaviour to only process video files reflects the past behaviour. If you want to Ingest all file-types you need to opt-in for that feature.

A new limitation for DCI-Ingests was also introduced. Files containing one of these characters will not be ingested:

ß, ö, Ö, ä, Ä, ü, Ü, é, É, è, È, “, +, %, \, /, ?

Direct-Upload-Links

If someone - without user account - is to be given upload rights to a specific folder, a direct-upload-link can be created for this purpose.

Read more about it here.

Watchfolders

A watchfolder is a kind of abstract folder which contains all files, which match a specific search query.

In contrast to Advanced Search, however, watchfolders can also send notifications as soon as new files are available that match the query.

Admins can also provide so-called shared watchfolders for individual user groups or all platform users.

Read more about it here.

Direct-Folder-Links

If the content of an entire folder needs to be shared to content receivers that only once or once-in-a-while receive content from you, there are so-called direct-folder-links.

Read more about it here.

Notification Center

From now on, important announcements and release notes will be displayed under the bell next to the profile.

Meta-Data-Import wizard

You can enrich your existing files with meta-data by using our new import-wizard. Read more about it here.

New options in settings

It is possible to prevent downloads in settings -> cost control. Read more about it here.

In cases where you need your downloaded filenames to be the exact same as the original filenames you can disable the option to deliver only "save" filenames. Read more about it here.

Improvements in Video-Player

Issues when playing vertical video have been fixed.

New controls have been introduced. You can now skip 5 seconds +/- in the player with your arrow keys on your keyboard as well as with buttons in the player itself.

Improvement in usermanagement

To make it easier for you to perform actions on a larger userbase it is now possible to select multiple users and change their user-role, resend passwords or delete them.

Additional Branding-Options

You can now select your desired default theme. Either our standard dark theme or our alternative light-theme. You can also upload your own logo to brand your default platform.

Both settings can be found under "Settings" -> "Platform"

Featured Files

You can now choose to feature not only folders but also files on the user dashboards. Simply check the new checkbox when editing a file.

Indicator for Downloads

To keep track of your downloads, we added a new indicator to quickly see if you have already downloaded a file and thus indentify new files for you.

Various Improvements

• a new setting in settings -> platform to set the default folder view. You can either choose grid or list-view. Please note that this can be overriden by the user.

• in the admin dashboard the order of the charts and file sections have been switched. Admins now see the newest files and downloads as well as featured files and folder first followd by the charts.

• a new link on all login pages directing the user to you provided contact information in case he has login-problems.

New: Featured Folders

It is possible to pin featured folders on the dashboard in the new section "Featured Folders".
Featured Folders are always displayed in the grid-view-layout and thus make use of the optional folder-icon. If no folder-icon is provided the default icon is used.
Of course only folders for which the user has rights are display in this section. If there are no featured folders available for the user - this section will be hidden completely.

If a folder should be pinned to the dashboard can easily be toggled in the "edit-folder-view".

To quickly see which folders are featured you can look out for the little yellow star-icon. (Only visible for admins or managers). Or you can always visit the dashboard to see all featured folders.

New: Manual Notifications

As there are many usecases where it is beneficial not to send out notifications immediately after upload - we added a new feature to send out notifications manually. You can send notifications for everyone in this folder, for a certain user or for a certain usergroup. This will override user-based notifications settings and enforce the email beeing sent.
This feature is available in the file-view as well as in the folder-view and works for multiselections. (but not for folders). When using this on a file-selection only one mail will be sent out referencing that there are x-number of files available in this folder.

Possible scenarios:

• Mass upload of images (Slomo-Wipe tiff sequence for example): Disable Notifications in upload-dialog and, when finished, trigger the manual notification. This way possible takers will only get one mail.

• Re-Send Notifications to certain users or usergroups

• Re-Send Notifications after a file-move

Improvement: Tracking of Direct-Links

You can now track your direct-links by providing a username (or any suitable text) to each direct-link you create. This username will be reflected in the download-logs and the analyics.

New Rights-Management:

The folder-rights management has been revamped to allow for a more granular solution. In the new version you are able to asign the following rights to users and usergroups:

• read (user can view the folder and its content and also play the preview)

• download high-res (user can download the high-res version of all assets in the folder)

• download low-res (user can download the low-res version of all assets in the folder)

• upload (user can upload to this folder)

• manage (user can manage the folder and the files within)

The upload and folder-access views have also been combined into one single matrix to quickly asign all needed rights. You may also mass assign rights with the buttons on the top-right of the matrix.

To quickly get an overview of the different rights we introduced a new color-scheme:

Green = Read-Rights
Yellow = Download High-Res
Blue = Download Low-Res
Red = Manage
White = Upload

Buttons outlined with the corresponding-color indicate that somewhere further down the folder tree one or more folders do have this right set.
Buttons that are greyed out symbolize that this right has been inherited by a user-group and cannot be edited.

Notes:

• user-rights have been migrated to the new combination "read + download high-res + download low-res"

• if a user had upload-rights, these have been migrated 1:1 to the new system.

• users with the guest role have been migrated to users with the right "read".

• same goes for user-groups.

• for proper usage of upload, download or manage-rights it is in most scenarios neccessary to also grant read-rights. This is reflected in the user-interface by auto-selecting the read-right when selecting another right. Although this can be overwritten - pay close attention to this possibility.
  

Collapsible Folder-Trees in the Rights-View

As you may have noticed in the previous screenshots, the folder tree can now be collapsed to increase the overal visibility and to improve the management of large platforms with many folders.

It is also possible to toggle the whole tree with the new button "toggle collapse".

This feature is available in the "edit-user" and the "edit-usergroup" view.

Rich-Text-Editor for Folder & Files

t is now possible to enrich your folder & file descriptions and copyright-notes with more formating options such as Bold, Inverse, Links, Lists, Headlines. Especially for large texts and information this should help to present your texts in a nicer way.

New "Status" Search-Option

You can extend your search query with the file-status to search for live or archived files (or even use that as the only query parameter).

Improved Search-Result View

The search-result view has been extended to include the full path of the result as well as the status of the file.

Better Overview of Folder-Contents

By clicking the calculator-icon behind a folder or on top of the folder-table you can see how big this folder is and how its contents are composed. You can see at a glance if all the folders contents are archived, empty, live or in a mixed state.

Miscellaneous Updates:

• File-Edit in the mailbox has been harmonized with the full feature set (full edit including assigment of taxonomies is possible when editing a file in the mailbox)

• IPTC-Data embedded in images is automatically parsed and presented in the file-view

• The Auto-Archive function can be enforced so that this setting cannot be overridden by the uploader anymore. This effectively makes sure that all uploads get auto-archived. This also applies to DCI Uploads.

FTP-Workflows:

With scoopa 4.0 we introduced a new section which is called „automations“ where you can create FTP workflows to automatically push new files to FTP-Servers. Please be aware that this feature, although thoroughly tested is considered a "public beta“. Please make sure your FTP-Server can handle the load and provide the necessary speed and connection-limits. Our solution is pretty resilient but can of course only perform as well as the other side allows. The new automation-section provides a convenient place to manage all your workflows and also gives you access to the transfer-logs.

Auto-Login: 

Auto-Login can be used to allow “single users” or “all users” to „click-through“ when receiving a new email from scoopa about a new file without logging in. Meaning that the user does not have to login but get automatically logged in when he clicks the link in the email (valid 3 times). This is useful if user-accounts are not used by a single user but shared across many, which do not always have access to the login-credentials. For example Master Control Rooms, Dispatchers or press mailing list recipients. This feature can be enabled under the “user settings” or under “settings” -> security for the whole platform and is disabled by default.

Grid-View:

You can now choose to view a folder in the “list-view” or “grid-view”. In grid-view you will see thumbnails for videos and also for images. You can switch this setting in any folder with the grid and list-icons above the listing. The setting is persistent across user-sessions. We also updated the user and admin-dashboards to show not only the last video-uploads but all the latest uploads including all file-types.

• Fix: Redesigned User Profile Area

• Fix: Decrease Upload-Circle-Size to accommodate smaller screens

• Fix: Removed wide Sidebar. Icon-Sidebar with Tooltips as Standard

• Fix: Added Search for Mobile Devices

• New Feature: Archive: move Files to Archive & restore Files from Archive. For more Information about pricing please click here

• New Feature: Included Traffic can now be used during the whole Contract Term (1 Year)

• New Feature: Each new Asset will be charged only once per 30 days

• New Feature: Account Area for Owner: Dashboard with Current Total, Statistic, Balance, PDF Invoices & Payment Status...

• New Feature: Account Area for Owner: add, delete, deactivate & reactivate Platforms (Enterprise only)

• New Feature: Calculate Folder Size by Click on the Calculator Icon

• New Feature: Show Trash Size in Trash & Admin Dashboard

• New Feature: New Price Models: Basic | Professional | Enterprise. For more Information please click here