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Short notes on building Shotso.

The black screen is fixed

For some people, Shotso went black a few seconds after opening and then refused to open at all. Repairing it from the Store helped until the next launch. The cause turned out to be one diagnostic line that asked Windows for a full report on the graphics card. On certain drivers that made the app load a library Windows would not accept inside a Store package, and Windows then marked the whole app as broken. Version 0.1.11 removes the line and the library. It is live now, and updates install on their own.

Coming soon

Perspective you can drag, a stronger glow, and a tidier panel

The next update is with Microsoft for certification. What's in it: 3D rotation for text moved from the effects list into the Transform tab, where it belongs, and you can now set it in the preview itself: click Change perspective, drag the blue box to tilt the text, scroll to change the distance. Glow intensity goes to 10 instead of 1, and actually gets brighter as you turn it up. The before/after toggle in colour correction is a single hold-to-compare icon next to Reset. Blur in and blur out left the text and clip panels; they live in Transitions. Play video inside shape is only offered on shapes, and Invert shape mask now works on a plain shape too, turning it into a cut-out. Corner radius updates immediately again. Hovering a font in the picker previews it on your text. A track with only photos gets a photo icon. The Sounds panel selects your only category by default. And there's a bug button next to Export that writes the report for you.

Shotso is now on the Microsoft Store

Downloading Shotso used to mean clicking past a SmartScreen warning about an unrecognised app. Nothing was wrong with it, but you had to override a security prompt to find that out, and plenty of people never did. The app is now published through the Store, so Microsoft signs the package and the warning is gone. Updates install themselves in the background.

Folders, reversed clips, and video inside text

Three things landed together. Timeline tracks can now be grouped into folders, so a busy project stops being a wall of rows. Collapse a folder and everything in it gets out of the way. Clips can be reversed from the right-click menu. And a PNG or a piece of text can act as a window onto the clip below it, which is how you play footage inside a word or a logo.

Sign in, if you want to

Shotso now has optional accounts through Google. It exists so we can tell how many people actually use the editor and let you know when something new lands. It gates nothing. You can skip it entirely and keep editing, and your projects never leave your machine either way.

Colour correction with real scopes

The colour panel was rebuilt around proper meters instead of sliders you had to guess at. Speed ramps arrived in the same pass, so a clip can change pace over its own length rather than being one fixed rate.

The window is ours now

Windows draws its own title bar buttons as flat rectangles that no application can restyle. In an app that draws everything else itself, they stood out. Shotso now draws its own, in the same shape and weight as the rest of the interface.

Track heights, fades, and an AZERTY fix

Every track can be resized by dragging the dotted line beneath it, with a double-click to reset. Fade in and fade out arrived as the first transitions. And keyboard shortcuts turned out not to work at all on AZERTY layouts, which took a while to notice.

A sound library that stays on your machine

Sounds now live in a local library you fill yourself: import your own files, sort them into categories, mark favourites. Nothing is streamed from a server and nothing needs an account. Effects and stickers landed in the same week, each tile showing what it actually does instead of just naming it.