Stagehand VJ Beta r47 (Windows) — Tag Sets, Undo, Backups

Stagehand VJ — Beta r47 (4 Aug 2026)

Everything since r45 in one build. Just run the installer — no need to
uninstall first. It upgrades your existing beta in place; your library,
tags, settings and your license activation all carry across (they live
in your user profile, which the installer never touches). And this release
adds automatic safety nets around them (see Undo & Backups below).

Windows only for now — the Mac port is coming shortly.

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⚠ The one behaviour change to know about

Editing tags / ratings / clip info no longer writes into your media
files automatically. Edits are saved to the Stagehand database instantly,
and the status bar shows an amber counter — "N not written to files" —
for clips whose files haven't been updated yet.

• Click the counter to see exactly which clips are pending; click it again
  to go back.
• Click "write now" next to it to write them all (same progress bar
  and Cancel as before).
• Prefer the old behaviour? Preferences → Write File Metadata
  Automatically turns the instant cascade back on.

What to test: make edits, watch the counter climb, filter with it,
write with it. Quit and relaunch — the counter should still be right.
Nothing should ever touch your files until you say so.

Folders — organise beyond tags and collections (new)

A proper nested folder tree, sitting right alongside tags and collections.

• Drag clips into folders, nest subfolders as deep as you like, and
  rename folders freely.
• It's a separate hierarchy from collections — use it when you want real
  structure over your library, the way you'd arrange a drive.

What to test: build a few folders and subfolders, drag clips between
them, rename and rearrange. Confirm your tags and collections are unaffected.

Undo — everywhere, at last

• Edit → Undo (Ctrl+Z) now covers bulk operations and individual
  edits: removes, bulk tag/untag, bulk rating, folder/collection deletes,
  metadata imports, tag-set imports, single rating stars, and inline
  artist/year/tags/comments edits.
• Rapid edits to the same clip merge into one undo step, so undoing a
  burst of tag typing takes you back to before you started.
• Undo survives an app restart (it lives in the database) and keeps the
  last 20 operations.
• Undoing an edit re-flags the clip as "not written to files" — the
  database and the file have diverged again, and Stagehand tells you.

What to test: do something destructive on purpose (bulk retag, remove
selected), undo it, confirm everything comes back — tags, collections,
folder placements included.

Automatic backups + Restore

• A snapshot of your library is taken once a day on first launch, and
  before every metadata or tag-set import. File → Back Up Library Now
  for manual ones; the last 10 are kept.
• File → Restore from Backup… lists every snapshot with date, reason
  and clip count, and restores in place — no file copying, no restart. A
  pre-restore snapshot is taken first, so even a restore is reversible.

What to test: open the restore dialog, confirm your snapshots are
listed and labelled sensibly. Restore one on a test library if you can.

Tag Sets — share your tagging without sharing your media (new)

Two VJs own the same clip pack; one has done the tagging work.

• File → Export Tag Set… packs tags, ratings, artist/year/comments and
  collections for the selection (or whole library) into one small
  .stagehandtags file. No media inside — email it, Discord it.
• File → Import Tag Set… matches the file against your library
  (filename + duration + resolution, so same-named-but-different clips are
  caught) and shows a review first: matched / length differs / resolution
  differs / ambiguous / not in your library. Nothing is written until
  you confirm.
• Import is additive by default — your existing tags, ratings and notes
  are kept. "Replace my tags" is an explicit opt-in, only ever applies to
  confident matches, and a backup + undo entry are taken first.

What to test: export a set from part of your library, import it back,
sanity-check the review counts against clips you know. If you and a friend
share a pack, trade files and tell us how the matching held up.

Safer deletes, folder hygiene, stuck exports (since r45)

• Remove Selected got a real confirm dialog, and the optional "also
  delete files from drive" now sends files to the Windows Recycle Bin
  instead of hard-deleting.
• Preferences → Watched Folders… shows every folder Stagehand has
  scanned and lets you exclude folders from future scans.
• Tag cloud: Alt+click a tag to exclude it from results (alongside
  the existing click-to-filter and Ctrl+click add/remove).
• Bulk metadata exports no longer freeze on a poison file — a stuck
  ExifTool write is killed after a timeout, logged, and the run continues.
  Help → Open Export Log shows what timed out; re-running an export
  offers to skip files already written so an interrupted run finishes
  instead of restarting.

Faster

• Clip Format / Resolution info is now remembered in the database —
  the second launch shows it instantly instead of re-probing every clip
  with ffprobe. (First launch after updating probes once, as before.)
• Thumbnails generate two-at-a-time on a cold cache.
• Several operations that could stall the window while a sleeping external
  drive woke up (pasting from Resolume, tag-set scans) now happen in the
  background.

What to test: open your biggest library twice — the second launch
should feel noticeably snappier, with Format/Resolution filled in
immediately.

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Found something weird? Undo it, then tell us what you did —
fyodor.krasniy@gmail.com, or reply wherever you got this build.