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Working through a batch

← Documentation← SmartCut日本語

SmartCut is not built around opening one recording at a time. It is built for dropping in a whole evening's recordings and working through them.

①  drop the recordings in together
②  Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+D, to run commercial detection on all of them
③  double-click them one at a time and cut
④  export the whole list at the end

Cuts belong to the row in the list, not to the editor window. So you can cut your way down the list and leave the exporting until last.

1. Preparation starts the moment you drop them

The list while recordings are loading

The rows fill in immediately. Behind them, SmartCut is doing three jobs at once.

Background job What it does How long it takes
Loading builds the seek index, used for seeking and cutting about 1 second per GB
Thumbnails makes the filmstrip pictures and finds scene changes one or two seconds per GB, longer on 4K
Commercial detection looks for the commercial breaks (started by Ctrl+D) 10–60 seconds for a 30-minute recording

Two jobs of the same kind run one after another; jobs of different kinds run at the same time. Progress appears at the bottom right of each row. Rows whose turn has not come say Queued.

The index is built once and kept. Open the same recording again and the row says Index from an earlier run, skipping the loading pass entirely.

You do not have to wait. A recording that has not finished loading still opens on a double-click. What is available immediately and what arrives later is in Using the GUI.

2. Detect commercials across the whole list

The list during commercial detection

Ctrl+A (select all), then Ctrl+D (detect commercials). That queues detection for every selected recording. Eighteen recordings, one keystroke — that is what the feature is for. Press it in the evening, look at the results in the morning.

Progress appears on the row: Detecting commercials 84% — Looking for the logo. Rows still queued say Commercial detection queued.

Detection only places marks; it does not cut. You decide what to remove, later, in the editor. See Commercial detection.

To stop, press "Stop analysis". Press it again to resume. Loading and thumbnails can stop in the middle of a file, but commercial detection cannot, so it stops between recordings.

Only what is running stops. You can stop a batch and immediately start detection on something else.

3. Edit without waiting for the background

Loading, thumbnails, commercial detection and cutting all run at the same time. A long job on the twelfth recording does not affect the one you have open.

While the editor window is open, the three background jobs share half the machine. The picture you are looking at comes first.

Opening the editor does not stop the background. Work already started on that clip runs to the end. Its progress, its pictures and its scene marks never go backwards because you opened a window.

4. Splitting one recording across two rows

⧉ Duplicate clip adds the same recording to the list a second time. It is there for the two-hour recording that contains two programmes: put the same file on two rows and keep a different part in each.

A duplicate keeps the cuts and the marks. The second programme's cuts are usually the first one's, moved. The index and the detection results come along too, so nothing is read from disk again.

Rows that would write the same filename get _1, _2 in list order. That happens with duplicates, but also with same-named programmes from different folders, and with recordings read off a disc (they are all called 00001). Without the numbers the second one would overwrite the first, and the program would report two exports while leaving one file. Delete one of them and the other goes back to its unnumbered name.

5. Export the list

The output tab writes the list from the top down. Each row shows its progress and result, with the overall state, elapsed time and time remaining above.

To export something first, drag its row upwards. The export order is the list order.

Stop export finishes the recording it is on and then stops. It never leaves a half-written file behind. (If you stop it while it is writing a BDAV disc, what it has written is taken back off the disc as well — the reason is in Using the GUI.)

An overnight queue of projects

One list is one evening's work. The batch tool is the other axis: a queue of saved projects, written out one after another with nobody in the room.

A job is a project file and nothing else. A .scproj already holds the recordings, the cuts, the track choices and the output settings, so the queue only has to say which files and in what order.

That file is the queue's own copy. バッチに登録 and ジョブ追加 both write one into a folder of the queue's, and it is the copy that runs: editing the project you queued from does not change what the queue will write, and taking the row out does not touch it. To change a job, open it from its own row with プロジェクトを開く.

①  cut an evening's recordings
②  出力 tab → バッチに登録 (one press: it saves the project and opens the tool)
③  do the same for the next evening's work
④  press バッチ開始 in the tool's window, and go to bed

The tool is a window of its own

The batch tool working through its queue

バッチ出力ツール… on the SmartCut menu opens a second window, in a process of its own. That is the point of it: closing the main window — or quitting SmartCut entirely — does not stop a queue that is being written.

The queue lives there and nowhere else. The tool shows it, orders it, runs it and stops it; the main window's only part in it is バッチに登録, which puts the list on screen at the end of the queue — and starts the tool if one is not already up. It works while the queue is running, too: an added job lands behind the one being written, and the tool notices it within a second or two and picks it up when it gets there.

The bar is what you say to the queue as a whole. バッチ開始 starts it and すべて中止 calls off the job being written and every job behind it. Beside them are the two things a queue is made of: ジョブ追加, which takes projects saved earlier, several at a time — what it takes is a copy, and the queue runs the copy, leaving the file you picked exactly as it was; and ジョブ削除, which takes out the rows you have picked, with the on the end of it holding the two ways of doing that in bulk — 出力済のジョブを削除 and すべて削除.

Rows are picked the way they are picked on the input screen: a click for that row, Ctrl for one more or one fewer, Shift for everything between here and the last plain click, and a click on the empty part of the list to let them all go. What is picked moves together and is taken out together.

The keys are the same too. and move the picking, Shift with them stretches it, Ctrl+A takes the lot and Delete takes the picked rows out. Enter opens the project of a single picked row in a window of its own, and so does a double click on the row.

A single job is called off from its own row. While the queue is running each row that still has something to do carries a 中止. On the job being written it stops the way 出力中止 does — the recording in hand is finished first, so nothing half-written is left behind, which for a job of one recording means that one is written anyway — and the queue goes on to the next job. On a job whose turn has not come, the queue passes over it. Either way it is waiting again the next time you press バッチ開始: calling a job off is about this run, and ジョブ削除 is what takes it out for good.

The tool stays on the queue while it works, so each job is a card rather than a line. It leads with where the job writes — the folder the project names, the folder of its own under it where there is one, and /BDAV where it is a disc. A project with no folder of its own writes beside its recordings, so that is the folder shown; where the recordings come from more than one folder there is no single answer, and the line names the first with a word for how many others there are. Under that line is a name and how many recordings the job holds, and under that, the bar.

The picture is the frame being made. Until the job's turn comes it is the first recording's own picture; once the job is being written it is the frame the output screen's preview is showing, which is a frame that is actually being re-encoded — the joins, and nothing else, since every other frame is copied out of the recording bit for bit. What somebody watching one list sees on that screen is on the card here, without the screen. The last frame of a job stays on its card afterwards.

The line under it names the recordings. While the job is being written it is the one the pass has open; waiting its turn and once it is written, the first of them with a word for how many more there are. Either way it is the name that recording had in the list.

The project's own file is not named anywhere on the card. The queue runs a copy it made for itself, in a folder of its own, so that name is a fact about this program's scratch space rather than about the evening's work. A project that cannot be read falls back to the name the job was queued under.

The bar is a box that fills in, and the numbers stand in it: the elapsed time on the left, the percentage in the middle, an estimate of what is left on the right, with the job's own 中止 beside it. They stay once the job has finished — the clock stops where the job stopped, what is left reads zero, and the bar keeps what it reached — so a queue that has run can be read afterwards. 中止 stays on every row too, and is live only while there is something on that row to stop.

A job that writes a disc fills the bar three times: the cuts, the index, and the image. The percentage and the estimate are about the pass in hand, so the bar starts again as each one begins; only the clock counts from the head of the job. Which of the three is running is said on the line above the bar, with the image's own percentage in it.

Everything a row says in words is at the right of the line above the bar — what is being written, or that the job is waiting, written, failed or called off — and it stops where the bar stops. So a bar with nothing in it is a job that has not started, and one filled end to end is a job that is written.

Nothing on a card says what the output format is, because a smart render mostly has none to state: what comes out is what went in, copied.

The order is the running order, and a row is moved by dragging it: press it, carry it to where it belongs, and a line shows the gap it will drop into. Several picked rows are carried together. Escape puts them back.

A right click on a row is where the rest of what can be done to the picked jobs is: 先頭へ移動 / 上に移動 / 下に移動 / 末尾へ移動 for the order, and then the four below — of which the middle two are about one file, and are live only while a single row is picked.

もう一度出力する Puts a job that has been written — or failed, or been called off — back in the queue as one that is waiting, in the place it already holds; every picked row it applies to goes back at once. Without it the only way to write a job twice is to take it out and add it again
プロジェクトを開く Opens that job in a list window of its own, to be worked on. On that window's 出力 screen バッチに登録 reads バッチを上書き, and pressing it puts what you have done back into the job in the queue; Ctrl+S does the same
出力先フォルダーを開く Shows where it writes, in whatever your desktop uses to show folders
ジョブ削除 Takes the picked jobs out of the queue for good, and the queue's copy of each goes with the row. The project it was copied from is left alone

The queue survives the program. It is written to a file as it is changed, so a queue lined up at midnight is still there in the morning — and a job that has been written stays in the list with what it wrote, and is not written again. 出力済のジョブを削除 clears out that half of it in one go, leaving exactly the jobs still to do.

Each job runs exactly as it would by hand: the project is opened, the list is read, and the 出力 screen writes it — the disc pass, the image and the sidecars included.

A job that fails does not stop the queue. It is marked in red with what went wrong and the next job starts: a night left to run is left because nobody is there to answer a question.

Sleeping or shutting down at the end

完了後, on the SmartCut menu in the corner, folds out to 何もしない, スリープ or シャットダウン, and shows which of them is the answer without being opened. It is remembered with the queue. It fires once the queue has run to the end — including a queue that ended with failures, which are still on the screen when the machine comes back — and never over a queue somebody stopped.

Before anything happens there is a minute's countdown with a 中止 button next to it. A machine that turns itself off is a machine that should say so first.

Recordings on a network share (NAS)

Recordings on a NAS can be dropped in like any other, and a share can be used as the output folder.

But SmartCut does not mount shares. Mounting needs a password, and that belongs to the file manager or the keyring, not to a video editor. Given a share that is not connected, it stops and says where to connect it.

Not connected to \\nas\rec. Open smb://nas/rec in the file manager and add it
again. (shares connected now: \\nas\video)

Saving part-way through

The whole list — recordings, cuts, track choices, output settings — saves with Ctrl+S and comes back next time. See Projects.


Why the three jobs run in parallel, and how that was tuned, is in the design notes.