ShotNotes adds a dedicated notes-and-tasks panel to Adobe Premiere. It targets the everyday problem that never makes it into a spec sheet: remembering what to fix, what to check, and what to deliver while the timeline keeps changing.

The core idea is sequence-based notes: You add an entry, and it belongs to the sequence you are working on. Notes can be colour-coded, and the panel can filter what you see by colour, so you can separate client feedback from internal reminders or mark items by priority.

A note can include an optional timecode pulled from the current playhead position. When an entry includes timecode, ShotNotes automatically places a marker on the timeline so the entry stays linked to that frame. The panel treats timecode as more than a label: it turns timecode into a navigation control.

Clickable timecode that behaves like a jump button

ShotNotes can insert clickable timecode into a note so you can jump straight to the referenced point in the timeline. The note becomes a shortcut, not just a comment.

The panel supports copying timecode from one sequence and pasting it into a note for another sequence. That makes it possible to reference a moment in a different sequence and still navigate there quickly from the note.

Notes can also reference other sequences directly. The result is a lightweight way to connect the dots across a project: a note in one sequence can point to a specific moment in another sequence and take you there with a click.

If your usual approach is to build a marker forest, ShotNotes can still feed that workflow by creating markers for each note so the timeline can carry the breadcrumbs the panel shows, without forcing you to rely on markers alone as the only place your thinking lives.

Links and reference material that stay one click away

Notes support hyperlinks. If you type a URL into a note, ShotNotes turns it into a clickable link and opens it in a web browser. That is handy for reference docs, client frames, internal shot tracking pages, relevant memes, or just the one weird spec sheet everyone forgets until export day. The point is not that links are rare, but that links usually end up in a separate app, which becomes another place to lose context.

Search and filters for the whole project brain

ShotNotes can search notes across the entire project. When you need to find that one line about audio cleanup, the one producer note that actually made sense, a missing lower third, or the exact frame that needs stabilization, the panel can locate it without you hunting sequence by sequence.

The interface also includes filtering, including options to filter based on whether entries have timecode. Combined with sequence-based organisation, this lets you narrow the panel down to the entry you need right now. Notes and tasks can expand and collapse in the panel, so you can keep long entries around without turning the panel into a wall of text.

Marker sync, because timelines move

ShotNotes links entries to timeline markers when you include timecode. When edits move markers later in the project, ShotNotes provides Sync and Sync All buttons to sync entries to the marker’s new position, because a note is only useful if it still points at the right moment after the cut changes. (*looks emberassed at the heap of PostIts building a ramp below the screen*)

There is an important limitation: depending on how you edit, Premiere Pro may not move the markers. If that happens, you may need to manually update the timecode in the affected notes when frame accuracy matters.

A built in time tracker for tasks and receipts

ShotNotes includes tasks with timers. You can start and stop a timer for a task, log multiple timer entries, and then review those entries in the task log. If you forget to stop a timer, the panel includes an edit option that lets you adjust the end time so the entry reflects when you actually finished. If a timer entry is junk, you can delete it so it does not appear in exports.

The time tracker also logs certain events to provide more detail about what happened while a timer ran, including switching sequences or selecting a clip in the timeline. That makes the report more descriptive than a single number on an invoice.

This is also where reality bites a little. Premiere Pro limits what events can be captured, so the activity log does not represent every editing action. Some actions can appear as delete and add events because Premiere Pro treats certain edits that way internally.

Export and backup that fits the handoff phase

ShotNotes can export notes and other data in a variety of formats for printing out or viewing.

For backup and transfer, ShotNotes includes exporting to JSON as its native format. That JSON export can be imported on another computer, copied to another sequence, or used as a backup. For time tracking, ShotNotes can generate a report that saves timer entries for a sequence to a CSV file that can be viewed in a spreadsheet.

Exportable notes and exportable time data matter for finishing and delivery, because that is where you often need to share information outside the NLE. Like, what to bill the client for his latest “Just one more change”. ShotNotes gives you a structured way to pull that information out without rewriting it.

Licensing, trial, and getting it into the workspace

ShotNotes includes a free seven-day trial, which is fully functional. Licensing can be done with a serial number or by logging in to a Digital Anarchy Cloud account. The cloud account method is described as the easiest way to license if you want to install on a different machine without juggling serials. If you cannot license online, support provides an offline activation file option.

Compatibility notes, including one awkward bug

ShotNotes only supports Premiere Pro 2023 and newer versions. A known issue exists in Premiere Pro 2025 and 2026 that can occasionally cause the recorded timecode of newly created entries to be slightly inaccurate. The amount of offset can depend on how zoomed out the timeline is when the entry is created; zooming in typically reduces the offset. If needed, you can manually adjust the timecode for the entry.

Price, promo window, and the practical take

ShotNotes is available immediately at $129 USD, with a $99 price offered until May 15. As with any new workflow tool, test it before you rely on it for a deadline-sensitive job.

https://digitalanarchy.com/shot-notes/

The post Digital Anarchy releases ShotNotes panel for Premiere. first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Dither Boy is a standalone dithering app that sits alongside Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and even MS Paint, and exports PNG, SVG, JPEG, and MP4. It also lives alongside sibling tool Flareware.

A rewrite, not a patch

Dither Boy version 6 is a complete rewrite of the app. Every part of the software got redone, changed, or optimized, including areas that behave similarly to earlier versions. The update targets faster iteration in the viewport. Algorithm browsing can now be stepped through with arrow controls, and common tweaks like brightness, contrast, saturation, midtones, and highlights are designed to update faster while you work. Blur and the D noiseise control can take longer to refresh because they are heavier effects combined with the rest of the stack.

There is also a new playback and update behavior control at the bottom of the viewport with three modes labeled full, live, and still. In a debounce style mode, the viewport waits until you stop moving a slider before it updates, which aims to help on older machines or when other heavy apps are open. That setting also appears in the settings area.

Updating and support without spelunking

Version 6 introduces a new update path tied to a web account. Signing into the website account and opening orders reveals a refresh software button that checks whether download links have been updated, then provides the new link when a newer version exists. The older update flow still exists inside the app. The help menu includes check for updates, which asks for your info to retrieve the update.

Color workflows move into the app

Version 6 expands the palette system with a source palette category intended to keep the colours of the original image closer to the output. Multiple options exist inside that category, and a complete option is presented as a strong starting point for retaining source colours.

Once you start from those source colours, the palette remains editable. Individual swatches can be adjusted,d and the image remaps live while you work. The broader palette system still includes importing and exporting palettes and allows editing colour depth and other related controls.

Controls previously handled in a companion palette app named Color Cat have been migrated into the main app interface in version 6. The companion tool may return in the future. // Not independently verified at press time.

There is also a quality-of-life feature for palette shuffling. Each swatch has a lock toggle. When you lock a color, then shuffle, that locked swatch stays while the rest randomize. The same lock and randomize idea applies to adjustments. You can lock an adjustment and randomize others.

Effects become a stack you can reorder

The effects workflow in version 6 shifts from a set of toggles to an add system. A plus control adds an effect by choosing it, rather than enabling everything at once. The stack is reorderable. Effects can be moved up or down in the pipeline and the viewport updates to reflect the new order. This ordering also interacts with animation.

Named effects called out for stacking include Epsilon Glow, JPEG Glitch, and Chromatic Aberration. Blur and sharpen are also described as post processing effects within the stack. The official product description states the app includes 63 dithering algorithms and supports stacking and reordering effects. Marketing claims appear in official copy around exclusivity and uniqueness of algorithms. Treat those as marketing claims, not measurable guarantees.

Animation arrives without needing a video file

Version 6 adds animation inside the app. You can animate from a still image without importing a video file, while video import remains supported. There are two ways to switch a still workflow into animation mode. One is a file menu option called convert to animation. The other is a still toggle near the bottom controls that switches you into animation mode. In animation mode, a timeline appears at the bottom of the interface.

Playback offers a quick mode and a rendered mode. Rendered mode loads frames for accurate playback and can display a settings changed warning because frames need to be prepared. Playback can also be set to looped. Animation is created by adding an animation layer, then selecting a category and property to animate. Adjustments are one such category, including brightness. An animation layer defines a from value and a to value, and offers ease methods including ease in, ease out, and linear. Multiple animation layers can be sequenced on the timeline to build a loop.

When a property is animated, the matching control becomes locked in the panel to prevent manual edits from fighting the animation. Exporting an animation is handled through an export video action, which processes frames and renders a video from the animated still image plus the active settings and effects stack.

Temporal Variation and better video handling

Version 6 introduces a new animated effect called temporal variation. It applies animated noise patterns to the input image, and nine controllable patterns are described. This effect is positioned as inspired by retro screens. Live video playback and preview are also added to the app in the 6.0 update as a free update.

Pricing and licensing

Pricing for Dither Boy is listed at £45.00 on the official product page, with an original price shown as £60.00. Delivery is an instant download access after checkout, also it is just one purchase that includes all future updates and no subscription is required.

If you ship animations or shortform clips, run a quick test suite before you commit. Try your typical content, your typical resolution, and your typical export formats, then review the results in the exact viewers and encoders your pipeline uses. That kind of boring discipline saves you from exciting surprises in prodcution.

https://studioaaa.com/product/dither-boy/

The post Dither Boy 6.0 brings animation and video polish first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

A new Blender to Unreal Engine exporter, shared via Gumroad, claims to ease the transition between Blender and Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). While the plugin is free, it’s worth noting that innovations like this should always be tested thoroughly before use in production pipelines.

The exporter is tailored to artists juggling assets between Blender and Unreal Engine. The tool simplifies file exports, allowing direct importation into Unreal Engine with minimal setup. This is especially relevant for workflows involving real-time graphics, post-production, game design, and VFX. The exporter boasts seamless compatibility between Blender and UE5. It supports the export of materials, meshes, and animations directly into Unreal, reducing the need for manual adjustments or additional tweaking. Artists familiar with Blender’s sometimes finicky export settings may find this tool helpful in avoiding common errors.

Another highlight is its integration with Blender’s UI, enabling straightforward access without requiring extensive setup or additional third-party scripts. By automating tasks that are typically tedious—like setting up material paths or reconfiguring skeletal animations—the exporter saves time for artists working on tight schedules.

Limitations

While promising, tools like this should be handled with caution when introduced to production pipelines. Stability, compatibility with complex scenes, and support for non-standard assets (e.g., custom shaders or unconventional rigging) can vary. Users are encouraged to test the plugin thoroughly before relying on it for major projects.

Pricing

The Blender-to-UE5 exporter has a suggested 2$ price on Gumroad. For more details, visit the Gumroad Page.

While it might not solve every issue between Blender and Unreal workflows, the plugin looks to offer a practical step forward for professionals seeking efficiency in 3D asset workflows. As always, test before deploying to avoid unexpected surprises in your pipeline.

The post Blender to Unreal Exporter: Free Tool Promises Simpler Workflows first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

With Womp 3d, primitive solids can easily be assembled into simple models using metaballs and Boolean operations. The principle is not new. The metaball algorithm has been around for a while. Anyone who remembers the “Organica” programme from more than 10 years ago, or currently knows MagicaCSG (bit.ly/magica_csg), which is also still in a very early development phase, can get an idea of the new, more modern variant Womp, which is completely browser-based. According to the Womp website, only the Chrome browser is currently fully supported. Metaballs are also supported by most major 3D programmes – including Blender, which is used in a commercial for Womp as an example of 3D that Womp users probably don’t want. However, the Womp website also states that the developers of Womp are not on a mission to replace Blender. Womp wants to make it easy for beginners in particular to get started with 3D. Incidentally, it is emphasised that the American company Womp is run by women.

A look at Womp

Womp fulfils its promise of being easy to use even in the alpha phase. If you want to try out Womp, you have to register or log in via Google. Womp starts with a fairly straightforward interface, which essentially consists of the 3D workspace with navigation instructions and a sample project by default, a simple model made up of two spheres and a cube. On the far left, there is a list of the objects in the project with stylised icons and a colour preview as well as some options for selecting, renaming or showing or hiding.

The objects can be organised in groups and their order can be changed (crucial for Boolean subtractions). At the top, next to the Womp logo, there is a hamburger menu with the usual file commands (New File, Delete, Undo …Contact Us), 5 icons with menus for objects, material, background and light settings as well as “Functions” (Duplicate, Union, Subtract). At the top right, a cloud symbol with a green tick indicates that the current project has been saved in the cloud and is available for later access. Next to it is a button that makes it possible to record a video – up to one minute long. This is followed by a blue “Share” button. As the name suggests, you can download 3D objects and images here or share your creation with the community.

An “Info” button leads to a small Womp manual and a series of links to video tutorials. This is followed by an icon for the personal area, where you can view your profile and find an assessment of your “Womp level”. Womp users should exchange ideas, for example in the forum and by publishing their creations and making them available to the community and taking part in competitions. In return, you receive “Womples” and can rise in level. On the right-hand side of the screen is a kind of “Inspector”, the Objects Property Panel, with information and setting options for the respective selection. At the bottom is a live chat, which actually worked and answered questions about the programme – even in German!

That’s easy

The actual “womping” is quite simple and should be easy even for inexperienced 3D artists. Navigation in the 3D space is super simple and is supported by displayed shortcuts. A “navigation cube”, as in conventional 3D applications, makes it easier to change views. Objects can be aligned more easily if the snapping option is active. Whether you work on the supplied sample project or start from scratch remains the same. Womp provides four types of primitives. However, objects created in Womp that have been published by the community can also be inserted into the scene.

If you start with a sphere, it is positioned in the centre of the work window (X, Z plane) and “lies on the floor”. Spheres can be positioned, rotated? and their overall size can be changed. This can be done with the mouse in the work window or in the Objects property panel using numerical inputs. In this property panel, the object type can also be switched between sphere, cylinder and cube – and objects can be switched “negative” for subtractions. Cylinders can be changed in length and cross-section, cubes in all three dimensions.

Curves (2 points) are something special. When you call a curve, you get a capsule-like object that is created because the object consists of two points and has already been given corresponding values for “Goop Strength” and “Density”. These values can of course be varied, points can be added or deleted, repositioned, scaled and provided with different materials. Cylinders or cubes can also be assigned to the curve object instead of the predefined spheres. In this way, very different shapes can be created that also interact with “negative” bodies. The decisive values for objects are “Roundness” (except for a sphere) – the name says it all and “Goop Strength”. Goop is a sticky or semi-liquid substance, and here refers to the area of influence with which the acting bodies are covered with a tough skin (comparable to “Influence Threshold” in Blender). Density and roundness can also be varied for curve objects, allowing interpolations between curve points to be achieved and an angular shape to be created from a soft curve shape.

The actual modelling therefore consists of putting these basic objects together and varying the parameters mentioned or using the Boolean functions “Union” and “Subtract”. This is simple, but users of proper 3D software have significantly more options and can certainly create more complex models more quickly. Boolean subtraction is achieved using negative objects if they are located below other objects in the object list. This makes it very easy to determine which body is subtracted from which. By forming groups (“Union” function), objects can be summarised but also excluded from Boolean operations. There is an option to load a reference image.

Filmed

A nice function is “Record a video”. Actions in the work window (navigation, scaling and moving objects or colour changes) can be recorded as a video of up to one minute. However, only objects that were already present in the scene before the recording began are displayed. The addition of new objects to the scene could not be recorded. There was also a small pitfall when downloading: If the download is started in the preview of the video, you only get a video in preview size (i.e. 1280 x 720 in our case). The blue button for the download did not seem to work. This was because the video had to be rendered first. Depending on the resolution, this requires a little patience. You can see how far along the rendering process is by clicking on the download arrow at the top.

Conclusion

Womp is still in the alpha phase, but can already be used. The tool is primarily aimed at people who rarely use 3D software but still want to create simple 3D models “on the fly”.

Womp is an online tool (currently for the Chrome browser) that promises to be easy to use – and in our opinion, it is. Starting with four different basic shapes (Sphere, Cylinder, Qube, Curve), you can also create more complicated shapes using metaballs and Boolean assignments. However, it is not intended for larger projects or scenes. Womp allows the definition of simple materials without textures, but thanks to effects such as gloss and transparency as well as various predefined lighting situations (global lighting), quite impressive (simple) results are possible. Finished works can be exported as OBJ or STL files with different compression rates and images and videos can be rendered with up to UHD resolution. Womp encourages its users to share the
Results (after initial attempts to upload simple objects, “nice” comments from other users were actually received quite quickly). This means that objects and materials provided by the community can be used. For the future, Womp promises to remain usable as a free alpha version. A Pro version is to be added later. We are curious.
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The post Womp: Simple 3D for everyone? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ralf Gliffe.