Changelog

Every Blick release and what changed in it.

Beta 0.2.0 Latest

Meta

  • Blick now has an official public forum for licensed users for bug tracking, feature requests, news and QnA, you can visit it at: forum.blickeditor.com, upon purchase you should get an invite link to join the forum.

New Features

  • Proxies: generate lower resolution stand-in media for your clips, then switch the whole project between proxy and full quality with the Use proxies toggle. Generate proxies from the Media panel, or mark your own file as a proxy, link a proxy pair, link proxies by name, link an existing proxy file from disk, and swap the source and proxy. Proxy settings and a generation progress bar are in the general settings.
  • AV1 encoder in 8 bit and 10 bit.
  • Hardware ProRes encoding on macOS.
  • Color clips: a clip filled with a solid color or a horizontal, vertical, or radial gradient. The start color, end color, and size are keyframeable. Hold C to place one, or use the action "Add color clip".
  • Multiline text clips with text shaping and platform IME input for non Latin scripts. Edit text on the canvas, rotate the text box, and drag the resize handles on fixed size text boxes.
  • Timer text clips: a text clip that shows a running timecode. Set count up or count down.
  • Text outline: keyframeable outline width and color on text clips.
  • Curve keyframes: Curve, Curve start, and Curve end interpolation, in addition to linear and hold.
  • Screenshot the current monitor frame to an image file with Ctrl+Shift+E.
  • Zoom in and out on the playhead new keymappable actions, with the = and - keys.

Improvements

  • Visualize amplitude keyframe changes on the multiwave texture live as you edit.
  • Separate Link clips and Unlink clips commands, next to the existing Toggle link command.
  • The Media panel shows the clip count for each media and highlights a media when you hover it.
  • Double click a media item in the Media panel to open it in a monitor player.
  • Add a transition to several selected clips in one action.
  • Enabling keyframes on a property adds a keyframe at the playhead.
  • Non-main windows on macOS have extra margins to fit the system window corner radius.
  • New code signing on Windows builds using Microsoft Azure.
  • Lower GPU memory allocations during compositing on macOS (Metal).

Bugfixes

  • Fix Cmd+Q not working on macOS.
  • Fix Add text clip not being available as a command when the timeline has focus.
  • Fix the title bar not responding while a menu is open.
  • Fix audio getting stuck and not playing after a seek.
  • Fix a crash on render on macOS.
  • Fix text clip raster alignment on macOS (Metal).
  • Fix a text layout cache memory leak.
  • Fix trailing whitespace in a text box not advancing the caret.
  • Fix recovery of a system font from its stored path hash.
  • Fix excessive RAM use when in clip interactions.
  • Fix media not refreshing its texture after it loads.
  • Fix dragging a keyframe changing its interpolation instead of its value.
  • Fix monitor zoom jitter on low DPI screens.
  • Fix monitor view sensitivity and vertical scrolling on MacBooks.
  • Fix the monitor view shifting when you resize the Monitor panel while zoomed in.
  • Fix a one frame delay when resizing the Monitor panel.
  • Fix app not waking up on macOS on menu interactions.

Beta 0.1.5

Improvements

  • The JKL shuttle speed step factor is adjustable again from Settings (1 to 8), instead of being fixed at 2x per tap.
  • Clearer media selection modifiers in the Media panel: Ctrl adds to the selection, Shift range-selects from the last item, and Ctrl+Shift adds that range to the selection.

Bugfixes

  • Waveforms and Überblick strips now appear as they finish loading, instead of waiting for you to move the mouse or type.
  • The Media panel clears its selection only when you click empty space inside the panel, not when clicking elsewhere in the app.

Beta 0.1.4

New Features

  • Ripple editing: Ripple delete selection (Shift+X), Ripple cut (Ctrl+Shift+X), Ripple delete clip at playhead (W), and Ripple trim start/end to playhead (Q/E). Hold A and drag a clip edge to ripple trim.
  • Layout presets: save the current panel arrangement as a named layout and switch between layouts from the Layout dropdown. Layouts now belong to the app rather than stored on the project.
  • Multiwindow: drag a panel tab out of the window and it becomes its own window, or use the "Detach selected panel to its own window" command. Panel windows are saved with layouts.
  • Zoomable Monitor panel: zoom into the monitor and pan around, with scroll and zoom step settings.
  • Selective effect copy: every effect in the Effects panel has a copy button to copy just that effect, or use "Copy effects from clip" and "Paste effects to selection" for all of them. Pasting carries keyframes along.
  • Chroma key effect: key out a color to make it transparent on video and image clips, with keyframeable key color, tolerance, softness, and spill controls.
  • Gap deletion: right click the empty space between two clips to select the gap and close it.
  • Monitor snapping: dragging a clip in the monitor snaps it to the canvas center axes, hold Shift to snap to a single axis. The transform anchor point snaps as well.
  • Timeline clips draw a subtle procedural noise texture to give a visual reference when moving clips especially at high zoom levels.
  • Encoder selector with capabilities polled at startup, an encoding profile selector, and advanced encoder options including variable GOP sizes (up to 10 seconds on high quality).
  • Media files with more than two streams now create clips for all of their streams when dropped in.
  • Place several items on the timeline in one drag: select multiple files in the Media panel, or drag multiple files from your file explorer, and they are laid down one after another.

Improvements

  • Massive Encoder speed improvements, fixed decoder reuse slowdowns and moved NV12 conversion to the GPU on Metal
  • Aspect ratio lock for the render resolution: change one dimension and the other follows.
  • Clips with effects show an fx or diamond on the timeline to signify at a glance whether the clip has effects and/or keyframes.
  • Image clips are now colored with the prominent color of their image.
  • Jump one second forward or back with Shift+Period and Shift+Comma.
  • File > Quit, and quitting with unsaved changes now asks to Save, Don't Save, or Cancel.
  • Select clip at playhead: press V to select the clip under the playhead on the current track.
  • Monitor players can now open images too.
  • Fonts in the Media panel now have Relocate and Remove media actions, with the option to remove their text clips too, matching other media.
  • The Media panel clears its selection when you click outside the list or press Esc.
  • Added Color picker on all color widgets.
  • Keyframe pasting: right click to paste keyframes, including across different clips when the channel type matches. Right click a keyframe to change its interpolation type.
  • Clips show a ghost of their original media size while slipping and trimming to give visual context.
  • Transitions are now created at a fixed 1.5 seconds rather than relative to clip size.
  • Remaining render time is estimated for all three stages, not just video.
  • The Render panel has a summary section and clearer encoder status.
  • Blick checks free disk space at render start and warns if it is insufficent for rendering.
  • Faster encoding: fixed decoder reuse slowdowns and moved NV12 conversion to the GPU on Metal.
  • Sharper text rendering on both Direct3D 11 and Metal.
  • Better image texture management with a memory budget, fewer stalls on image heavy projects.
  • Fallback fonts are memory mapped, lowering memory use.
  • Project files are written atomically: a failed save can no longer corrupt the project.
  • Linked clips are included in snapping points.
  • Increased scrollbars's hit area so they are easier to grab.
  • Logs now record the OS version, CPU name, and video memory size, and are generally tidier and more informative.

Bugfixes

  • Fix trimming and splitting misbehaving on sped-up or reversed clips.
  • Fix clip copy not carrying the speed and reverse settings.
  • Fix Shift+drag duplication not duplicating transitions.
  • Fix clip edges not being clickable when a transition sits on them.
  • Fix box selection sticking while holding the add modifier, and breaking on zoom.
  • Keyframe box selection now tests against the whole hitbox of the keyframe instead of a single point.
  • Fix audio clips shifting vertically while being dragged.
  • Fix dragging clips in the monitor changing the transform's base zoom.
  • Fix the custom render subfolder getting "blick" appended to it.
  • Fix the autosave subfolder pattern matching.
  • Fix timestamps not using local regional time.
  • Fix a crash when encoder texture creation fails.
  • Fix a crash when preparing gradient buffer data.
  • Fix a startup crash on macOS.
  • Fix the Monitor panel high CPU usage in player mode.
  • Toggling a track's lock, mute, or solo is now undoable.
  • Fix the mouse cursor showing hover states while dragging.

Beta 0.1.3

New Features

  • Monitor players: Monitor panels can now work as video players for media items, drop a media file from the Media panel or your file explorer onto a Monitor panel and it becomes a standalone player for that file, independent of the timeline.

    Drop a specific stream to play just that stream. Close a player from the X on its tab to get the timeline view back, and "Pause all monitor players" is available as a command.

  • Fonts as project media: import .ttf, .otf, and .ttc font files through the Media panel, the Import Font button, or by dropping them in from your file explorer.

    Imported fonts show up in the Media panel with their faces, can be inspected in the Inspector (file, faces, face index), selected in the font picker, and are saved with the project.

  • JKL shuttle controls: L plays forward and J plays backward. Tap the same key again to step the speed up by the configurable factor (default 2x, up to 32x), tap the opposite key to step it back down, and K stops. Hold J or L for half a second and the speed ramps up continuously for as long as you hold it, then drops back when you release. Hold K and tap J or L to step single frames, with auto-repeat.
  • Backwards playback: the timeline now supports playback in reverse at any shuttle speed.
  • Reverse clips: right click a clip and tick Reverse to play it backwards in place. Also available as the "Reverse clip(s)" command.
  • Audio stretch playback settings: a new Settings option picks how audio is stretched during sped-up or slowed-down playback. Spectral keeps pitch and suits music, Speech is a dedicated stretcher tuned for voice, and Varispeed pitches audio up and down like tape.
  • The audio Amplitude effect is now renamed to Intrinsics and gains per-clip VariSpeed toggles, so individual clips can opt into tape-style pitch shifting or a pitch preserving playback.
  • Transform effect gains a base zoom: a Base Zoom percentage with a Base Zoom Target point, applied on top of the base scale, both keyframeable.
  • New Media panel: Now a sortable table with Name, Duration, Status, Type, Date Modified, and Path columns, a search box, box selection, Ctrl and Shift multi-selection, and Select all (Ctrl+A while the panel is focused).
  • Selective gather: right click a selection in the Media panel and choose Gather media to copy just those files into the project folder.

Improvements

  • Frame stepping moved to period and comma (next and previous frame), now that speed control lives on J/K/L.
  • The Inspector shows which decoder, hardware or software, was last used to play a media file.
  • Media analysis (waveforms, Überblick strips, frame indexes) is deferred until a file is actually placed on the timeline, so importing a large batch no longer kicks off work for files you have not used yet.
  • Audio scrubbing plays a shorter burst sized to a project frame when scrubbing while playing.
  • Speech audio stretcher quality improved.
  • The first keyframe in a channel now sets the exact initial value behind it unaffected by the smoothing window.
  • Direct3D 11: Blick now logs the available DXGI adapters and which one Blick and FFmpeg each pick, to help diagnose GPU selection issues.
  • The multiwave waveform shader draws clipping more clearly.

Bugfixes

  • Project frame rate is rounded up when derived from media rather than down.
  • Text fields show proper placeholder text that no longer interferes with the cursor.
  • Fix keyframes not scaling with clip time when a clip is rate stretched.
  • Fix pressing play while dragging the playhead fighting the scrub.
  • Fix the Monitor flickering when the project resolution changes.
  • Fix the UI showing a stale composition texture on Metal.
  • Fix the minimap frame lag during animation.
  • Fix a layout miscalculation when the layouter runs on a UI subtree.
  • Fix a race where a system font scan could drop a font being imported at the same time.
  • Fix not being able to select a system font after importing and removing that same font.
  • Fix imported fonts not restoring into the font picker when reopening a project.
  • Fix "Inspect source media" being unavailable for text clips.
  • Multiple minor visual and stability fixes.

Beta 0.1.2

New Features

  • Instant playback on initial load: Blick no longer needs to build a frame index cache before a video can play the first time, so even very large files play and scrub the moment you drop them in, with no loading wait. Behind it is a new decoding pipeline with a dedicated decode thread pool, decoder preroll, and cancelable requests, which also makes seeking much better, especially during playback.
  • Playback speed: press period to play faster and comma to play slower, with a speed indicator on the timeline. Audio preserves pitch.
  • Rate stretch tool: hold R and drag a clip edge to speed the clip up or slow it down.
  • Hold keyframes: keyframes can hold their value until the next one instead of interpolating. Click a keyframe in the Effects panel to cycle linear / hold / off. New keyframes take the interpolation mode of the previous keyframe in the channel.
  • Keyframe smoothing: a per-channel knob in the Effects panel smooths the animation curve, especially powerfull in combination with hold keyframes.
  • Drag and drop singular media files from your file explorer straight onto the timeline now supported.
  • Multi-clip keyframe editing: the keyframe section shows every selected clip, and selected keyframes across multiple tracks can be moved together.
  • Select all clips before or after the cursor with Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right (remappable) on the current track, with variants for all tracks.
  • Keyboard track controls: Tab jumps the track cursor between the video and audio sections, and Alt+L, Alt+M, Alt+S toggle lock, mute/hide, and solo on the track under the cursor (all remappable).
  • Hold Shift while dragging clips to duplicate them.

Improvements

  • Help > Open logs folder to quickly reach Blick's log files.
  • Estimated remaining encoding time shown while rendering.
  • Set video bitrate directly in Mbps in the Render panel, next to bits per pixel. Bits per pixel remains the canonical setting since it's the isolated quality knob.
  • Theme preview on hover in Settings.
  • Text clips inherit the settings of the last selected text clip, and text mode shows a ghost preview of the clip in the right settings before you place it.
  • Effect values can be typed/dragged beyond their slider range by default.
  • Keyframes can be dragged beyond the clip's extents within the space the clip could occupy.
  • Locked tracks keep their height when zooming.
  • Render range markers can now be set in either order: begin after end and end before begin.
  • Better kerning and cleaner glyph rasterization on both Direct3D 11 and Metal.
  • Sharper text on Windows: improved subpixel detail and reduced samples per glyph.
  • Reworded "Cut" to "Split" for clip actions.
  • Menu bar items shift less aggressively on hover.

Bugfixes

  • Fix composited textures jagged and jittered animations when positioning and scaling.
  • Fix playback getting stuck when seeking and playing at the same time, and on low frame rate projects.
  • Fix staging texture reuse bug in the encoder that caused wrong frames to show on the render.
  • Fix the mouse staying held after a press and release within the same frame.
  • Fix being able to click through context menus and popups onto the minimap.
  • Fix context key collisions and memory leaks in the frontend.
  • Fix clips not relinking after range select drag or delete: adjacent clips on the same track link back together into islands.
  • Fix a crash when loading unsupported media files.
  • Fix mp3 files misdetected as SWF containers, and show the correct container name for such files.
  • Fix missing history checkpoints in the Render panel.
  • Fix a glyph rasterization range check on Direct3D 11.
  • Fix Überblick strips and waveforms not redrawing as they finish updating.
  • Fix a crash on macOS when the window is started very large, such as on high resolution displays.
  • Fix Right click and middle mouse not working outside the window.
  • Add the missing window icon on Windows.
  • Multiple minor visual and stability fixes.

Beta 0.1.1

New Features

  • Track selection:
    • move the track cursor with Up/Down to select a track, or upon click
    • paste clips now take onto the selected track, insert a new track, and move the selected track up or down.
  • Right click drag now box selects clips and keyframes; a plain right click still opens the context menu.
  • Right click empty timeline space to paste at that position.
  • Set render parameters from a media file directly via its right click menu in the media panel.
  • Renders no longer overwrite an existing output file by default: Blick writes a numbered duplicate instead, with a checkbox to allow overwriting.
  • New settings: invert horizontal scroll, invert vertical scroll, and stop playback after seeking.
  • Refreshed the color themes, and added two theme: Void and Catpuccin.
  • Support for AV1 hardware decoding.
  • Ukrainian localization, bringing Blick to 13 languages besides English.

Improvements

  • Autosave runs on a background thread, so it no longer interrupts editing.
  • Hold Ctrl while dragging an effect value for finer control, hold Shift to snap to steps.
  • Lifted the cap on the number of effects per clip.
  • The knife tool cuts qunatizes to frames on video clips and when splitting all tracks.
  • Audio automation curves thin out when zoomed far out, keeping the timeline fast.
  • The font list on macOS is deduplicated, sorted alphabetically, and includes user-installed fonts.
  • The transform anchor stays visible while editing it, and anchor values show as percentages with two decimals.
  • Fullscreen now hides the title bar.
  • Windows are capped to a minimum size on open.
  • Failing to read or decode a project file shows an alert instead of failing silently.
  • Project render parameters are auto-set only by the first video clip dropped in, not every time the timeline is empty.
  • Smoother window zoom and tiling animations on macOS, including multi-window tiling.

Bugfixes

  • Fix wrong or stale frames appearing due to video texture reuse and eviction issues.
  • Fix a crash when creating a Direct3D 11 texture fails.
  • Fix crashes in the macOS title menus.
  • Fix the wrong clip staying selected after splitting clips.
  • Fix the command palette not scrolling when it is open on top of the timeline.
  • Fix multiple selected text clips not moving together.
  • Fix a text clip not being able to become the main selected clip.
  • Fix text clips being draggable into locked tracks, and pasting onto locked tracks.
  • Fix copy and paste not preserving clip links.
  • Fix clips unlinking incorrectly when a clip is removed from a linked group.
  • Fix incorrect clip linking after importing an XMEML file.
  • Fix text clips measuring at the wrong size before their first rasterization.
  • Fix the render output directory not being picked up properly.
  • Fix the keyframe timeline section collapsing and pushing the video section beyond reach.
  • Fix wrong font sizes in the title bar menus, and menu text overflowing in dropdowns.
  • Fix a white window border appearing on Windows 10.
  • Fix keyboard events on macOS not accounting for the user's keyboard type.
  • Fix the AppKit zoom transition showing a pink border artefact on macOS.
  • Fix the startup default config being saved over the user's configuration.
  • Fix crash and wrong duration on partially written video files.
  • HEIF images now fail gracefully on import instead of misbehaving (support is planned).
  • Fix clip positioning issues while dragging.
  • Multiple minor visual and stability fixes.

Beta 0.1.0

New Features

  • Blick is now licensed. Enter your license key from Help > Enter license key, or buy one from Help > Purchase license. Without an active license you can still create, edit, save and export projects, but opening existing projects and importing XML timelines are locked, and the title bar shows an UNLICENSED badge.
  • Update notification: Blick checks whether a newer version is out and shows an "Update available" button in the title bar, Blick does not send any information to the server, it merely checks a link to see if there is a new update; click it to go to the download page.
  • Recent projects: the File menu now has a "Load recent project" submenu listing the projects you opened last.
  • Audio amplitude automation directly on the clip: every audio clip now carries an Amplitude effect by default, and you can add, drag and delete its keyframes right on the clip in the timeline (hold shift to add, alt to delete).
  • Editable track names: click a track's name in the track header and type to rename it.
  • Deletable tracks: delete a track from its right-click context menu, with a confirmation that tells you how many clips are going with it.
  • Render range start: a new "Begin frame" control in the Render panel, set the start of the render output range to the playhead or reset it back to automatic, matching the existing End frame control.
  • New Contrast Type on the Brightness & Contrast effect: pick between Linear and S-Curve, with an adjustable Contrast Midpoint.
  • Playback end behaviour toggle next to the transport controls: either stop at the end of the timeline, or stop and jump back to the start.
  • New Play/pause and rewind buttons next to the timecode.
  • Rotation metadata support: footage recorded rotated (phone video) now displays and composites in the correct orientation, with correctly rotated selection rectangles and handles in the monitor.
  • Third-party licenses are now viewable in the app from Help > Show third-party licenses.

Improvements

  • Media now loads across multiple threads, so dropping in a batch of assets or opening a project with a lot of media is considerably faster.
  • Loading indicator in the media panel while assets are being prepared.
  • Hovering a font in the Effects panel previews it, and dropdown lists in general now preview the entry you're hovering.
  • Middle-click a panel tab to close it, with a highlight showing which tab is about to close.
  • Popups now have a close button.
  • Keyboard navigation for the title bar menus on Windows.
  • Reset buttons next to the default paths in Settings.
  • The effect limit was raised and transitions from 1024 to 8192, and hitting either limit now tells you in the status bar instead of silently failing or creating a clip that can't hold its effects.
  • Settings are now saved periodically instead of only on exit, and written atomically so a crash can't corrupt or lose them.
  • Splitting a clip or a linked group now leaves only one side selected, so you can immediately move just the part you split off.
  • Centering a clip now takes its anchor into account.
  • Forward and back slashes count as word separators in text fields, for editing paths.
  • The anchor crosshair in the monitor only shows while you're hovering the monitor panel, to not obstruct your view while editing a selected clip.
  • Smooth, judder-free window resizing on macOS.
  • The Blur effect is disabled for now, its performance was not acceptable. It will come back once it's rewritten and improved.
  • The monitor panel now renders rotated highlight rects correctly, and rotated box edges can be dragged to resize.

Bugfixes

  • Fix a crash when dropping files onto the window, caused by a race condition in the drop handling.
  • Fix a crash when dragging files into Blick on macOS.
  • Fix a crash when opening media that has an unusually large number of streams.
  • Fix several crashes caused by zero-sized allocations inside the internal slot maps.
  • Fix a use-after-free crash in the internal work queue.
  • Fix possible memory corruption while sorting UI panels.
  • Fixed a number of Metal renderer instability crashes and issues.
  • Fix a memory leak when the composition target is resized (Direct3D 11).
  • Fix a memory leak during encoding.
  • Fix an OS handle leak on Windows that caused files to remain open after removing the media item.
  • Multiple media loading/unloading cleanup and leak fixes.
  • Fix .mov files stalling or hanging on playback.
  • Fix compositing against a background that isn't fully opaque, and fix alpha premultiplication in the compositor.
  • Fix waveforms shimmering while scrolling the timeline horizontally, on both the Direct3D 11 and Metal backends.
  • Fix text being typed into fields on macOS while Command or Control is held.
  • Fix the autosave menu on macOS showing greyed out or empty entries.
  • Fix autosave and config files targeting the wrong cache folder.
  • Fix a window size of 0,0 being written into the config.
  • Fix clicking in a text field landing on the wrong character when the text contains non-ASCII characters.
  • Fix crash when selecting unicode text in the text editor.
  • Fix locked clips still being movable.
  • Fix wrong delete behaviour on overlapping clips.
  • Fix hit-testing in the monitor, and make deselect-all work in the monitor panel too.
  • Fix new text clips defaulting to the wrong anchor.
  • Fix context menu popups not receiving mouse input on Windows.
  • Fix the Settings menu overflowing the window at large UI scales.
  • Fix the contrast type not being stored in the project file.
  • Fix tab close button spacing and click behaviour.
  • Fix going into idle mode during playback.
  • Performance improvement by removing redundant compositing work by detecting when the composite inputs actually changed.
  • Fix the bundled FFmpeg libraries not being properly signed on macOS.
  • Multiple minor visual and stability fixes.
  • Add Ukrainian localization.