Videola 0.8.0 — templates that work before you have footage, and a cut Premiere opens

Videola 0.8.0

Templates that work before you have footage, a cut that opens in Premiere, and four defects in the
interface that were worth naming.

Templates

• Every placeholder is optional, media included. A media placeholder used to be required, so no
  template could be used until something had been imported — backwards on the first run, and wrong
  anyway for half of what templates are for. A lower third, an end card, a quote card: those are
  wanted over an edit that already exists, and their own stand-in shot is in the way. A template used
  with nothing chosen comes back as its graphics.
• Insert as tracks. The last step of the wizard has a second answer beside Create project: add
  the same result to the project already open, as tracks of its own. One press of undo takes the whole
  thing, however many tracks it brought, and it bakes at the open project's own size so nothing
  arrives cropped.
• Two new templates, both made of generators end to end — Three cards, three lines arriving one
  after another over a field that stays, for a chapter break or the front of a talk; and Upright hook,
  a 9:16 card with a disc behind the middle word, the first shipped template built on the shape
  generator. Fifteen ship now, and these two are the first that are the whole card with nothing
  imported.
• An unanswered placeholder no longer leaves a bare track behind.

Handing the cut on

• Final Cut Pro 7 XML (xmeml 5), which is the file Premiere Pro imports as a real sequence. A
  different format from FCPXML despite the similar name, and the one that actually opens: Resolve →
  FCPXML, Premiere → this. Counted in whole frames, files declared once and referenced after that, and
  project_handOff offers it to an agent as well.

The interface

• The two menu entries that could not be used at all — Insert and Change shape — are real
  groups now. They were selects inside a menu that closes on any click, so the click that opened the
  dropdown closed the menu underneath it.
• The about dialogue was a bulleted list of links. It has a header band, a version chip, links as
  rows a finger can hit, and a footer.
• The timeline context menu stays inside the window: flipped above the pointer where there is no
  room below, pulled back where it overhangs, capped in height with its own scroll where it is taller
  than the window.
• The version in the about dialogue is the real one. It was two releases behind, because it was a
  constant somebody had to remember; it is compiled in from the release manifest now.
• Gain reduction on every compressor and limiter — a bar and a number, read from the live node,
  which is the one thing about a compressor that cannot be derived from its settings.

Self-hosting

Three new ways in, all checked against the code rather than written from memory: a Proxmox helper
script that builds an unprivileged LXC and waits for the container to answer, an Unraid Community
Applications template, and an Umbrel app. All three carry a mandatory token, because the server
refuses to listen on a reachable address without one. They install a new server package —
videola-server-0.8.0.tar.gz, the editor, the API, MCP and the CLI in one tarball that needs nothing
but Node 22.

Also

• Find the cuts inside a clip and split it there.
• Give a clip a name; make a track taller or shorter.