Version History

Your camera's real frame rate, not the one we asked for

• The camera sets the pace. It used to be asked for a fixed rate, and anything it sent beyond that was dropped. Now every frame it hands over is kept.
• Sound and picture start together. Both now begin at the same instant, which takes a small offset out of every recording.
• A quieter health border. Five checks could turn it amber during a perfectly good take, because they measured what had been asked for rather than what actually happened. They no longer do.
• It says so if any of a recording could not be saved. Until now only one of the two ways of writing a file could tell you.
• The size of a recording in progress is right on a phone. It used to read zero.
• Notices clear themselves. Warnings and messages now go on their own once they have been up long enough to read, instead of waiting to be closed. Anything asking you a question still waits for your answer.

Full HD on the phone in your pocket

• The picture is assembled once instead of twice, so more of the phone goes into the recording and less into getting there.
• Better recordings from the same handset, including older ones.
• It stays cooler through a long session, because it is doing less work for the same result.

Know how it is going without reading anything

• Both devices show the same colour, because they describe one recording rather than each forming their own opinion of it.
• When it needs you, it says what to do — not what went wrong.
• The phone otherwise stays quiet, reporting what the camera is doing and leaving the rest alone.
• The camera screen on the phone has been rebuilt — the picture fills the screen, the controls float on it, and they stay where your thumb expects however you hold it.
• Long recordings on the phone hold their pace from start to finish.
• Clearing old recordings takes seconds rather than minutes.

Your microphone is watched, start to finish

• A dead microphone is caught before you start. If the microphone you picked hasn't made a sound since it was connected, pressing Start tells you first. Press Start again to record anyway.
• A microphone that dies mid-match is caught within seconds — a transmitter that goes flat or is switched off. The alarm stays until the sound is really back, then clears itself.
• Wherever it is plugged in — into the computer, or into the recording phone, with the other device sounding the alarm.
• Joining a phone starts quietly — messages from an earlier recording are not replayed.
• After signing in with Google on the phone, the camera comes back by itself.

Your looks and pictures, in your account

• A free login on the phone. Tap "Keep your looks" under the four boxes, or open Template — sign in with Google or your email without leaving the camera.
• My templates on the phone. Save a look under a name and bring it back later. A look saved on the computer is there on the phone, and the other way round.
• Your look keeps itself. While you are signed in, whatever you style is saved to your account a few seconds later and comes back next time, on any device.
• Your logos and pictures come with you. Signed in, they are kept in your account, so a saved look shows them on any device you sign in on, and in OBS.
• Signed in on one, signed in on both. While a phone and another device are connected, signing in or out on either does the same on the other.
• A one-time "Like this look?" after your first recording, on the phone and on the computer.
• The front page asks whether the score will change while you record. "No" opens the camera. "Yes" opens the camera with the code for your other device already showing — nothing to find.
• Retro shows every name in full, however long — the letters shrink to fit instead of being cut.
• 1 or 2 players can be changed from either device, at any time.
• A microphone alarm. If the microphone goes completely silent during a recording, the phone and the control panel sound an alarm so you can check it.
• Long sessions run until you stop them — the "Still recording?" question at the hour is gone.
• The camera picture fills the screen on tall tablets and unfolded phones.
• The phone stays on the game you chose.
• Inside the installed app, the "Get the app" button and panel no longer show — you already have it.
• Less work behind the scenes — the phone only makes preview pictures when another device is showing them, and each score change sends just that change.

Style your overlay on the phone

• The phone that records now does its own styling. Tap UCO Overlay and choose "Just style it on this phone" — pick the game and a template, then names, logos, a timestamp, a stopwatch and a text box, each set on its own.
• Move anything with your finger — the scoreboard, logos, the timestamp, the stopwatch or the text box — straight on the camera picture. The picture shrinks to fit above the settings so you always see the whole shot.
• Your design is kept on the phone for next time.
• A second phone or a tablet joins as the scorer — big score buttons and Quick Score, plus Start, Pause, Flag and Stop — while the recording phone keeps the look. Nobody has to stand in front of the camera to change the score.
• A tablet opens on the full control panel and can switch to the scorer at any time, and remembers which you used last. A computer always gets the full control panel.
• Names can be changed on either device — the last change wins.
• Only one device can join a phone at a time.
• Modern, Classic, Tour and Retro can be placed anywhere by dragging, like Default and Simple.
• The control panel reads better on an upright iPad — Quick Score has its own row and the recording buttons no longer crowd each other.
• The Temporary Background option is gone — a real camera now sits behind every preview, so it was only extra weight. — in the app and a browser tab together — no longer fights over the camera; the new one takes over, and a recording that is running is never interrupted.

Pause

• Pause a recording and pick it up again — rack the balls, take a break, carry on. Nothing is recorded while paused, and the saved file runs straight through with no gap. Pause and resume from the phone or from your other device, whichever is nearer.
• The clocks and the timestamp keep real time while you are paused, so the time on the video shows where a pause was.
• On the phone, the record button never moves. While recording, only Record and Pause are on screen; the frame turns amber while paused and the timer counts recorded time only.
• If the phone was interrupted mid-recording, the next time you open it the recording is rebuilt and saved to your Downloads by itself.
• Check it plays, right there on the screen, before the phone lets go of its safety copy. If it does not play, it tries again — and if it still cannot, you can keep the pieces and send them to our support team.
• Your other device shows the same thing, so nobody starts a new recording on top of one still waiting to be checked.
• Sound and picture stay in step in a rescued recording, and the last seconds before the phone locked or the app was switched are kept.
• Long phone recordings save more reliably — a whole match no longer has to fit in the phone's memory to be written out.
• The flip-card scoreboard people stand on the table, blue and orange cards on a black stand, names underneath — and the cards flip over when the score changes, in the preview and in the recording.
• The pool remote has Quick Score too: the same full-screen board, colours and gestures as the control panel — tap a side for a frame, swipe down to take one off.
• Turn the phone and your computer follows — it switches to the matching layout by itself, and the scores stay where they were.
• The Live Preview says where you are recording — on this computer, or on your phone.
• Pressing Start with the phone asleep now tells you straight away to wake it, instead of waiting.
• Club and Pro modes. Club keeps the panel to what most players need; Pro adds the clocks, the active-player marker, colour sets and the extra styling.
• Player names are at the top of the Match section in every template, and the styling sections start closed.
• Reset Match and New Match — Reset Match keeps the players and goes back to the starting score (a handicap included); New Match clears them too. Set the starting score once and Reset Match remembers it.
• Warnings speak plainly and only appear when something needs you.
• Frame scores stay between -99 and 99.
• Big player names make the scoreboard deeper instead of spilling out of it.
• Frame scores can slide towards a player's name as far as you like.
• The UCO watermark sits along the top of the video, clear of the play bar that social media apps lay over the bottom.

Film on an iPhone

• iPhones can now be the camera. Open ultimatecuesports.com on your iPhone and tap Try It Free — the recorder opens straight onto your camera, the same as on Android.
• Scan the code and the computer follows. Scan the QR code on the front page with your phone, and once the recorder opens your computer takes you to the scoreboard with the phone's code already filled in. Just tap your game.
• Picking your game is clearer, and the game you played last time is marked for you.
• Switching apps on the phone mid-match? Both screens now tell you straight away, and the camera picks up again when you come back.
• A clear way out when you are finished — a Done button on the phone once you have stopped recording.
• The snooker referee's voice now goes straight into your recording, clear and at an even level, instead of relying on your microphone hearing the speakers.
• A new audio mixer in the Camera section: set how loud the camera microphone and the referee are in the recording, and separately how loud they play in the room.
• The microphone list names your Windows default microphone, and that is the one that records.
• Match, Style and Camera buttons in the header jump you straight to each part of the panel, wherever you have scrolled to.
• Choosing Record on a computer now goes straight to the camera plugged into it. Filming with a phone starts on the phone itself.
• Snooker frame counts sit beside the scores in your recording, exactly where the preview shows them, with or without the offset sliders.
• New how-it-works pages, split by the camera you have: filming with your phone, and using a camera on your computer.

Timestamp

• Put the date and time on your video — proof of when it was filmed, ticking every second, from your own device's clock. Six date styles, 24 or 12-hour, seconds, time zone, and a second line for your name or club. Size, colour, background and position are yours, and it works with every template and every sport.
• Modern — near-black rows with a colour strip that follows the player at the table. Stack it in a corner, or run it as one long row across a landscape frame.
• Classic — each player in their own colour, the race in a light centre cell, and the frame and break underneath.
• Tour — for a club final or a league night: your event and stage across the top, big frame scores, and a line of context underneath.
• Every sport gets what it counts. Snooker shows points, frames and the break; pool shows frames, with the ball tray on American and Chinese 8-Ball, the colour each player is on in English 8-Ball, and the shot and match clocks.
• Make them yours: pick the accent colour, background opacity and corners, then place the scoreboard with a nine-point position pad, an edge margin and a size slider. Flags, fonts, logos, the text box and the stopwatch all work with every template.
• Each template remembers its own settings, so trying another one never costs you the look you had.
• Player names and scores follow you when you switch template.
• The Default template can be see-through too: one opacity slider for the whole scoreboard and one for the text box. Text, flags and logos stay solid.
• Flags and the active-player marker can go up to 400%, and the name moves along to make room, with more space between them.
• Frame and score boxes now fill the scoreboard's full depth, with the numbers centred.
• English 8-Ball colour balls have their own size slider.
• Each new template has its own name size.
• Logos and pictures are sharper in the recording.
• Your recording carries exactly the scoreboard your preview shows, on every template, in both orientations.
• Break Over hands the table to the other player in a two-player match, on the panel and on the remote — one press instead of two.

UCO installs as an app

• Install UCO on your computer and it opens in its own window, with the UCO logo on your taskbar, separate from your browser.
• Install the recorder on your phone and it opens full screen, straight from your home screen, with no browser bars.
• A Get the app button in every page header. It opens your browser's own install option where your browser offers one, and otherwise shows the steps for your device.
• Nothing to download and no app store. The app always runs the latest version.
• Long player names use the space they have. In 1-Player mode a name now stretches across the free space instead of being cut short, and in every mode the recording now cuts a long name where the preview does.
• Loading a saved template brings back every setting as it was saved, including font case, and every slider now shows the value it was saved at.
• Break Over on the snooker remote is now a solid button beside the break, where it can't be mistaken for a ball.
• You are asked before the camera sound plays out loud, with a warning that a microphone in the room will pick it back up.
• The "still recording?" reminder now makes a sound: one chime when it appears, then a repeat in the last two minutes before a recording would stop.

Record with your phone — no computer needed

• Open the site on your phone and it becomes the camera and the recorder. Prop it at the table and press the red button. Nothing to install, no account, no second device required.
• Your video is saved on the phone. Said plainly before you start, so there is never a hunt for it afterwards.
• Portrait or landscape follows the phone. Turn it over and it offers to match, so a portrait recording never ends up on a landscape canvas.
• 720 or 1080, and a zoom — a slider or a pinch, whichever you reach for first.
• Pause the camera without ending anything. The picture and the microphone both stop, and the phone says so.
• Mute records with no sound track at all — not a silent one.
• A thin green edge means you are joined to another device. Red means recording. No sentence to read across a room.
• A four-character code pairs your phone with a laptop, an iPad or another phone. Go to the site's Join page on the second device, type the code, pick your game.
• Scores, names, flags, clocks and your whole design are changed on the second device while the phone stays exactly where you put it.
• The phone's picture appears in the second device's preview, with the scoreboard drawn over it, so you can see what is being recorded without standing over the camera.
• Start and Stop work from either end, and the second device can pick up a recording the phone already started.
• A code is retired when a session is finished, and a new one issued.
• If a recording gets into trouble, the phone flashes and sounds an alarm. One tap silences the sound and the flashing stays.
• You are told how long you can record with the space you have, quietly at first, then plainly, and the recording is stopped and saved cleanly rather than being allowed to fail at the end.
• An interrupted recording is offered back to you the next time you open the page.
• The phone screen stays on for as long as it is being used, and only sleeps when it has genuinely been left alone and nothing is joined to it.
• Recordings are named by date and time — for example `UCO_2026-09-12_14-31-22.mp4`.
• A thank-you and a place to say how it went when you finish a session, on the way back in rather than on a page you have to leave.
• Pool's match clock now starts switched off, like the shot clock. It appears when you ask for it.
• Logos come back correctly after being removed and re-added.

Sound

• Sound and picture stay in step for the whole of a recording, however long it runs.
• Your own default microphone is chosen first. If you have set a microphone up as the default on your computer, that is the one used. If your camera also has its own sound input, you are told so, and it is one click to switch.
• A new "No audio" option. Record with no sound at all — useful at a venue where background music could get a live stream taken down.
• Once your microphone is working, it stays chosen. It will not be switched to a different input between recordings.
• A quick check before a recording starts. If the chosen microphone has not picked up any sound since you connected it, you are asked before the recording begins, not after it ends.
• The microphone setting now says whether you chose it or it was picked for you.
• The audio level meter always appears while a camera is connected, and says so plainly when a camera is sending no sound at all.
• A connected camcorder or capture card is chosen ahead of your computer's own webcam, with a note saying which one was picked and why. One click to change it.
• Picture-size warnings clear when the camera they describe is disconnected.
• The health light is steadier. A recording sitting right on the edge between two states no longer makes it flicker.
• The stopwatch shows tenths of a second, and the preview and the finished recording now agree.
• A recording can be recovered straight back into the file you originally chose, and when that can be done without asking you anything, it is.
• The recovery message shows only what has actually happened, and recording is available again the moment it is done.
• Uploaded clips are for recording, not live streaming. When you choose to stream, an existing clip is no longer offered as the source. Recording an overlay onto a clip works exactly as before.

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.