Craftora v0.4.0

The biggest Craftora update yet: captions for every video, editing by deleting words, live
stream recording, your own AI, and a sidebar with a page for everything you've made.

Highlights

• Captions for every video. From the website, or made from the sound on your PC (no internet
  needed). They go into the export; drag them anywhere and resize them, or pick Top / Middle / Bottom.
• Edit by text. The Transcript tab shows what's said: select words and press Delete to cut them
  out of the video, or remove every "um" in one click.
• Record live streams while you edit them. Stop recording and it becomes a normal video file.
• Use your own AI. The assistant works with Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude, with your own API key,
  kept in Windows Credential Manager and only ever sent to that company.
• A page for everything. Projects, Media library, Downloads, History, Exports and Settings, with
  Hide (and a Privacy switch to keep hidden things out of sight). Videos play when you rest the mouse
  on them.
• More sites work. Sites behind bot checks, players embedded from other sites, and YouTube after
  visiting it in Craftora's window. Downloads can be paused, resumed and renamed.
• Privacy: an HTTP proxy for every connection, and a list of websites that saved cookies, each
  with Forget (which now really forgets).
• Smoother and sharper: pages and panels ease in, link previews can play in their best quality,
  sound waves match the sound, and big files no longer crash Craftora.
• Updates in Settings, and Craftora's cat on the installer.

Heads-up: the installer is about 45 MB bigger, because it now includes Deno (so YouTube keeps
working) and whisper.cpp (captions from the sound). The first time Craftora makes captions it
downloads a 148 MB speech model; you can turn that off in Settings → Captions.

The installer isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may say the publisher is unknown:
choose More info, then Run anyway. Installed copies of 0.3 update by themselves.

Everything in this version

New

• Smoother. Pages fade in, the right panel slides open and shut, and dialogs and menus ease in
  instead of popping up. (Turned off if Windows is set to show fewer animations.)
• Preview quality. Settings → Preview quality of links: Smooth (up to 720p, the default,
  good on slow Wi-Fi) or Sharp (the best quality the site offers, for example 1080p on YouTube
  instead of 360p).
• Hide things you don't want to see. Projects, Media library, Downloads and
  History get a Hide button on each row, like Exports: hidden items move to a folded
  Hidden list at the bottom (Unhide brings them back; nothing is deleted). Select can
  hide several projects or links at once, and hidden projects leave Home too.
• Keep hidden things private. Settings → Privacy → Don't show them takes the Hidden lists
  away from every page, so nobody using the PC can open them; Show hidden items brings them back.
• Craftora's cat on the installer. The setup file shows Craftora's icon instead of the
  installer tool's.
• Updates in Settings. Settings → Updates shows your version, Check for updates, Install
  and restart and Check automatically (also still under Home → About).
• Use your own AI. The assistant now works with Gemini, ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Claude
  (Anthropic): pick one in the Assistant tab and paste its API key. Craftora tries the key before
  keeping it, stores it in Windows Credential Manager, and only ever sends it to that company.
  Switch AI from the list at the top of the chat.
• Videos play when you rest the mouse on them. In the sidebar's media, the Media library,
  Projects, Exports, Downloads and the Queue, a video's picture plays it (muted) while the mouse
  is over its row, and stops when it leaves. Projects play their first video from where its clip
  starts. Off when Windows is set to show fewer animations.
• Captions go into the export. With captions on (CC in the preview), the exported video has
  them too, exactly as the preview shows them, also for captions made on this PC without internet.
  Drag captions anywhere on the preview and resize them from a corner: every caption moves
  and resizes together (Undo works), or pick Top / Middle / Bottom next to the CC button. Long
  captions and long text now wrap onto lines that fit the picture, the same in the preview and the
  export, instead of running off its edges.
• Hide saved websites. In Settings → Links, Hide takes a website off the list of websites
  that saved cookies (its login stays); Show hidden brings them back. Forget now really
  deletes a website's cookies: before, YouTube and Google stayed signed in.
• A fuller sidebar. New pages: Projects (every project, to pick up where you left off),
  Media library (every file you've imported, in any project: search by name, show only videos,
  sound or pictures, and star the ones you use often under Saved), Downloads (what's
  downloading, paused or failed, and every finished download, ready to add to a project), and
  Settings (where files are saved, whether new projects export video or sound only, how many
  downloads and exports run at once, and the link settings that used to be on Home). Downloads now
  go into a Downloads folder inside your chosen save folder.
• Edit a live stream while it's still live. Paste the link to a stream that's on right now
  (your own shop's site, YouTube, Twitch…). Craftora records it and puts it in Media, and its
  length keeps growing as it records. Drag in the moments you want and export them while the stream
  goes on. Click Stop recording in the Queue (or just end the stream) and the whole recording
  becomes a normal video file in Videos\Craftora\Downloads.
• "Fetch this video" finds more videos. It now sees players embedded from another site (such as
  a streaming service's player on your shop page) and pages with lots of pictures, and it finds a
  finished stream's replay too. If a page plays its video over a direct live connection (WebRTC),
  Craftora says so instead of asking you to play it again.
• Works with sites that block bots. When a site's bot check (such as Cloudflare's) turns the
  download away, Craftora tries again as a browser, downloads the video and edits it from your PC.
  A live stream from such a site records through Craftora's page window, so keep that window open
  while it records. These videos preview right away while they download, and Export unlocks once
  the download is done (their links often expire, so Craftora exports the downloaded copy).
• Sharper link previews. Streams start at good quality instead of the lowest one.
• The sound wave matches the sound. Links no longer show a made-up wave: the real one appears
  once the video is downloaded (Cut silences no longer cuts at made-up quiet spots either).
• Pause a download and finish it later. Click pause on a "Download for editing" in the Queue.
  It keeps what it has, waits there even after you close Craftora, and continues where it stopped
  when you click resume.
• Delete exported files. Each file in Exports has a Delete button: it moves the file to
  the Recycle Bin (so a wrong click can be undone there) and takes it off the list and Home.
• See what each website saved, and forget it. Under Links (Home and Settings), Craftora lists
  the websites that saved cookies in its window (from a visit or a login), each with Forget.
  Forgetting YouTube or Google forgets both, since they share one login. Sign out of all is still there.
• YouTube works again after visiting it in Craftora's window. Craftora now includes Deno, which
  yt-dlp uses for the JavaScript YouTube asks for; without it, YouTube's cookies made fetches fail with
  "Requested format is not available".
• Captions from the website. When a fetched video comes with captions (the uploader's own, or
  automatic ones like YouTube's), Craftora reads them right away: they show on the preview (turn them
  off with CC), and Add captions on the clip puts them on a Captions track as text you can
  edit and export. They stay after the video is downloaded for editing.
• Captions for every video. A video that comes without captions (from any website, or from your
  PC) gets some made from its sound: Craftora listens to what's said and writes it down, on your PC.
  Media shows how it's going. The first time, Craftora downloads a 148 MB speech model. Turn it off
  in Settings → Captions for videos without any.
• Edit by text. A Transcript tab next to Edit & export shows what's said on the timeline,
  from the video's captions. Click a sentence or word to jump there; select words and press
  Delete (or Cut these words) to cut them out of the video, as one Ctrl+Z step. Cut every
  "um" removes the ums, uhs and hmms at once. Search what's said with the box at the top.
• A calmer sidebar. Pages are grouped under Make and Library, Settings sits at the bottom,
  and a Working on box shows what's downloading, exporting, recording or getting captions.
  History lives on its own page now, and yt-dlp and FFmpeg only show up when one is missing.
• Privacy: use a proxy. Settings → Privacy takes an HTTP proxy. Fetching, downloads,
  previews, pictures, captions and the AI assistant then go through it, so websites see its address
  instead of yours; Craftora's window follows after Restart now. If the proxy stops working,
  Craftora doesn't quietly connect directly. Check shows the address websites see. (A VPN app
  needs no setting: it already covers the whole PC.)
• A History page. History in the sidebar lists every link you've fetched: the video's
  picture, title and whole link, and when you fetched it. Search them, fetch one again, copy its link,
  or remove links one by one, several at once (Select) or all (Clear all). The small History
  list in the sidebar shows whole links and has Select too.
• Fetching shows the video sooner. A fetched video appears in Media without waiting for its
  picture, which fills in a moment later (about a second sooner on every fetch). Captions made from
  the sound now wait until nothing is fetching, downloading or exporting, so on a slow connection
  they don't slow those down, and they use only half the processor. Copy report now shows how
  long each fetch took.
• Name your export. The file name under Add to queue is now a box you can type in, so you can
  tell exports of the same video apart. Names keep spaces and accents; only characters Windows doesn't
  allow in file names are left out.
• Name a download while it downloads. Click the pencil on a download in the Queue (or on the
  Downloads page), type a name, and the file is saved with it when it finishes; Media shows the
  new name too. Handy for downloads that start by themselves when you fetch.
• Delete several projects at once. Projects → Select: tick projects (or Select all), then
  Delete them with one question.
• A warning before anything that can't be undone. Deleting an exported file, signing out of a
  website, stopping a live recording, removing a file from the Media library and removing a link
  from History now ask first. Cancelling a download now says "download" instead of "export".

Fixed

• Captions no longer cover the picture. Some videos' captions hold a whole paragraph per line;
  they now show as two-line pieces, one after another while it's said, cut at whole words (Khmer and
  Thai too), in smaller text. Add captions puts the same pieces on the timeline.
• Links have a sound wave before they're downloaded. Craftora reads just a light stream of the
  sound after a fetch and draws the real wave. Waves now hold 10 bars a second, so zooming into the
  timeline shows words and pauses, and each bar shows the loudest moment it stands for. Long clips
  get up to 1,500 bars without slowing playback.
• Big files no longer crash Craftora. Importing a video of several GB could close the app: the
  preview's file server sometimes read the whole file into memory at once. Files on your PC now
  play through Craftora's own server, a piece at a time (a 3.7 GB video used about 35 MB).
• The sound wave matches the sound. It only listened to the first 10 minutes and kept only deep
  rumble, so voices drew a flat line. It now follows how loud every moment is, for the whole video;
  waves saved in your projects are redone by themselves.
• Captions from the sound show up while they're made, line by line, instead of only when a long
  video is done. The CC button shows clearly whether captions are on (filled) or off (crossed
  out), with the progress next to it. Captions no longer wait behind a live recording.
• Sharp taskbar icon in the Microsoft Store version. It was shrunk from a single 44-pixel logo and
  lost pixels; the Store package now carries the icon at every taskbar size.
• Play on a moved or deleted file says so. Play in Exports, Home, the Queue and Downloads used
  to do nothing when the file was gone; it now shows "Moved or deleted".
• Pictures everywhere. Downloads, the Media library and the Queue show each video's picture, and
  project pictures in Projects and on Home keep working after Craftora restarts.
• Pictures for links that come without one. When a website (or sometimes YouTube) gives no
  picture, or one that won't load, Craftora takes a frame from the video itself.
• Sharper picture while a video loads. The picture the preview shows while a link loads, or when
  it can't play, was a tiny copy blown up; it's now kept at a size close to the video's.
• Find a moved or renamed file. A clip whose file can't be found now has a Find file button
  (select the clip): point to the file and its clips play again.

Download

Get Craftora_0.4.0_x64-setup.exe below and run it. Installed copies update themselves.

The installer isn't code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may say the publisher is unknown. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

Bundled software

• FFmpeg (GPL v3): ffmpeg version n9.0.2-37-gae19868753-20261028 Copyright (c) 2000-2026 the FFmpeg developers. Its source code and build scripts are attached to this release. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
• yt-dlp (Unlicense).