Plans for videos

[ben]

Hi Mario,

i take more and more videos and import them to iMatch.
Would you share your ideas and plans if and what you plan for iMatch regarding video functions in the future?

Thanks a lot,
Ben

[Mario]

IMatch supports all standard video formats, animated previews in the file window, full support for XMP and even support for many proprietary metadata formats thanks to ExifTool.
IMatch has a special virtual "Duration" metadata tag which unifies the different ways the "runtime" is encoded in video files.
IMatch allows you to manage video files like any other file. Timeline. Categories, Keyword. File system operations. Versioning. Stacking Everything works.
To play a video in the associated applications you have multiple commands.

What else do you want?

Video files are notorious for not having a common metadata format. It's worse than images and worse than even ID3 (MP3 files).
And, IMatch will never have an internal Viewer for video files. If this is what you are playing at.

Because for this, I would need to hire a specialized law firm which is able to figure out all the software patents such an embedded viewer would touch. And who are able to make deals and settle monthly royalty payments with the MPEG and the dozens of companies holding one or more patents for one or more video formats.

[ben]

Current features are great and very useful. !!

Yes. Embedded viewer would be really great.!!! But I understand the legal issue.
Maybe one day the situation changes.

We could even tag special timestamps with keywords and jump directly to them.

[Mario]

Yes. Embedded viewer would be really great.!!! But I understand the legal issue.
Maybe one day the situation changes.

I doubt this will ever happen.
The big companies file thousands of patents each year, and each new multimedia format is literally plastered with them (just look at the HEIF container format Apple is pushing so hard).
Microsoft just removed a standard Windows video codec from Windows. You can still download it separately, but this action may save Microsoft a couple of million US$ in royalty payments. From "every Windows 10 user" down to "Number of codecs downloaded".

The patent holders / MPEG makes some exceptions for free open source software (VLM, KODI) but since IMatch is not free, IMatch is not covered by these exceptions. I would not mind paying a reasonable free in order to embed video previews in IMatch, but it is a very complex and expensive (lawyers) process to even make a contract with the MPEG in the US. The cost for the law firm would be higher than what I make from IMatch in a year.