Version History

While you are recording

• A live health light on the recording banner. Green means the recording is behaving as expected; amber and red mean it is having difficulty — and it says which kind. You find out while you can still do something about it, not at the end of the match.
• The frame-rate reading now tells you how many frames genuinely came from your camera, rather than counting frames the system held to keep time. If a source starts struggling, the number now falls.
• One message at a time. Two warnings could previously appear together giving opposite instructions, at the moment it is hardest to judge which to follow. *(This was announced in an earlier version and did not actually work. It does now.)*
• Advice you are given now checks what you have already set. It used to be able to tell you to switch on a setting that had been on for the whole recording.
• The health light now tells you when the computer is the problem, rather than blaming your camera. A busy machine and a failing camera used to look identical to it. It also warns you *before* the recording starts suffering, while there is still something you can do.
• The whole banner changes colour with the light, so a glance across the room tells you the same thing the words do.
• The health light no longer reports difficulty on a recording made from a clip. It could turn red about half a minute in and stay red for the rest of a recording that was, by every other measure, perfect. Sound from an uploaded clip is added in one piece at the end rather than arriving as you record, and the light now knows the difference.
• No more picture-size warning when you are working from a clip. It appeared whenever a clip was smaller than the size you had chosen to record at, worded as though a camera were involved, about a file sitting on your own disk. You pick the clip and you pick the size it comes out at — there was never anything there to warn you about.
• The audio level meter now works whatever you are recording from — phone, camcorder or capture card. It used to be drawn only on the camcorder path, so a phone's levels were measured and never shown.
• It now tells you which microphone you are actually recording from, by name. If a connection lapses and your phone quietly falls back to its own built-in mic, the name changes and you can see it happen.
• The meter starts when you touch the picture, as it always said it would.
• One offer, in one place. An interrupted recording used to be announced twice, in two different wordings, for the same file.
• Recovering it clears it. Once the recording has been safely written to a file you choose, it stops being offered — it no longer comes back on the next session.
• Starting a new recording is refused while an unfinished one is waiting. You are asked to recover it or delete it first, so a fresh start can never quietly overwrite it. Deleting asks twice, and says plainly that it cannot be undone.
• The connection panel now tells you the picture size it is receiving, all the time, instead of only speaking up when something is wrong.
• Your phone now shows the picture size it is really sending, next to the size that was asked for.
• The advice on picture quality now takes rotation into account instead of assuming an upright camera.
• A thin green line down the edge of the preview is gone. It was never in the recording.
• A way back into the match window. If you need it in its own tab, there are now quiet links under the recording controls to open it or copy its address. Refused while recording, so a running file cannot be disturbed.
• Saving no longer fails once you have used the system for a while. Finished sessions used to leave data behind permanently, and once enough had built up the browser refused to save anything at all — which also showed up as the match window appearing to lose its connection, or never picking up the camera. Leftovers are now cleared automatically.
• If a save ever does fail, the message now tells you the actual reason instead of assuming it was a picture you added.
• Designs you have finished with no longer pile up forever. Your five most recently used are kept, along with whichever you have open, and older ones are retired along with the pictures stored for them.
• Recordings now hold up while you carry on working on the same machine. Using the computer for something else during a match could previously cost a recording a third of its real frames within a few minutes. A six-minute test under exactly that load kept 98.6% of the frames its camera sent, and the health light stayed green throughout.
• The app now uses a small fraction of the processor it used to when nothing is happening. With the control panel open and no camera connected, it was quietly consuming most of a processor core. It now sits at a fraction of one. Quieter fans, cooler laptops, longer battery — and far more of the machine left for the recording itself.
• The screen you wait on while connecting a phone now costs about a quarter of what it did. It was the most expensive screen in the app: a QR code, a room code and a line of status text, rewriting themselves sixty-five times a second to say exactly the same thing. Connecting a phone and recording from one both got cheaper with it.
• The live preview only redraws when something actually changes. It was being rebuilt around sixty times a second to draw an identical picture. Scores, names, flags and clocks update exactly as they did before.
• The scoreboard drawn into your recording is redrawn when it changes, rather than ten times a second — which is all a clock counting whole seconds ever needed. The camera picture behind it is untouched and still runs at the full frame rate.
• Long pauses in the app's own work are gone. The worst single interruption dropped from about a fortieth of a second to a few thousandths — that is the difference between a frame having to wait for the app and not.
• The message about hardware video encoding now reports what was actually measured on your machine, and says plainly when the answer is normal, instead of suggesting your settings were at fault.

Getting a match back

• The match window can now bring your control panel back. If you close it mid-recording, a button in the match window reopens it on the same match — the recording never stopped, and nothing is lost. *(The button existed in 1.2.1 and did not work; it does now.)*
• Stop works from a reopened control panel. It finds the recording that is still running and finishes the file properly, instead of leaving you with no way to end it.
• Disconnecting a phone now returns it to its room-code screen and lets go of its camera, so it is ready to be used again — or swapped for a different handset — without starting a new session.
• A phone can tell being disconnected from losing the connection. If the network drops, it keeps your camera on and invites you to rejoin with the same code, rather than throwing the session away.
• Your device is asked to stay awake for the length of a recording, so a screen that locks itself can no longer interrupt one. Where a device will not allow that, you are told rather than left to find out.
• Messages that are not failures no longer sound an alarm. Refusing to disconnect a camera mid-recording is the system protecting your file, and it now reads that way instead of looking like something went wrong.
• A new Setting Up guide — every choice you will be asked, in the order you will be asked it, and what each one changes for your sport.
• A new Questions & Troubleshooting page, organised by what you are actually looking at rather than by what caused it.
• Recording is now offered before going live, because it is what most people came for.

Connecting a phone, and staying connected

• Leave the QR code waiting as long as you like. The connection point behind it now re-establishes itself on its own if it drops, and the code on screen stays valid — there is nothing to rescan and nothing to do.
• The control panel now tells you what the phone connection is actually doing — ready and waiting, re-establishing, or genuinely stopped — instead of saying the same thing in every case.
• Your phone now says when it has connected, rather than sitting on "dialling" while the picture is already arriving at the computer.
• If a phone cannot reach the computer, it now says which end to check first, starting with whether the computer is still online.
• Disconnect a connected phone from the control panel and connect a different one, without starting a new session. Refused during a recording, so the feed being recorded cannot be cut by accident.
• Connecting a second phone, or a second tab on the same phone, no longer disturbs the one already connected.
• Choose the front or rear camera when you connect a phone, and switch between them.
• Closing the control panel mid-recording no longer loses you the session. The match window tells you what has happened, keeps recording, and your clocks keep real time while it is away.
• Recovery only ever offers recordings that have finished. One still being written is never listed.
• Switching to another window no longer triggers a "connection lost" warning on a control panel that is working perfectly well.
• The design controls are now open when you arrive, rather than tucked behind a heading.
• The design sections are far easier to open on a touchscreen — the whole heading row is now the button, at a size a finger can actually find.

Control, recovery and accuracy

• Recover an interrupted recording. If the browser or the machine stops mid-match, reopen the page and the recording is offered straight back to you, rather than being lost.
• Recordings now hold their target frame rate. Previously they ran slower than asked; they now land within a couple of percent of the rate you choose.
• New Match. One button clears the score, names, flags and clocks for the next match without touching a single design choice you have made.
• Remote control. Scan a QR code and a second phone or tablet becomes the scoreboard, so you can score standing at the table. Your camera is not affected.
• Referee voice for snooker. Hear each pot called as you score it, and it reaches the recording as well as the room.
• Audio monitoring is now off by default, so connecting a microphone can no longer produce a burst of feedback through your own speakers.
• The match window now tells you when something is wrong — audio that has gone silent, a recording that did not start, sound drifting out of step with the picture.
• A camera can no longer be released by accident during a recording.

Longer, steadier recordings

• Recordings are written straight to disk as they happen instead of being held in the browser until you stop, so length is limited by your disk rather than by memory.
• A camera that reconnects is picked up again on its own, including devices that come back with a different identity after being unplugged.
• Choose your microphone separately from your camera, rather than being given whichever one the camera came with.
• Two audio modes: a forgiving voice mode for commentary and clip-on microphones, and a raw venue mode that leaves atmosphere untouched.
• Long recordings keep sound and picture the same length, including when the machine is under load.

First release

• Six cue sports, each with its own rules, ball set and layout: Snooker, English 8-Ball, American 8, 9 and 10-Ball, and Chinese 8-Ball.
• Widescreen 16:9 and portrait 9:16.
• A control panel to score from, and a separate match window that is the only thing your audience sees.
• Bring the picture in from a phone by scanning a QR code, a webcam, a camcorder through a capture card, or a clip you already have.
• Record a finished MP4 with the scoreboard composited in, or go live to Facebook and YouTube with no extra software.