Contest filtering (the Contests tab)
By default the Video CutterV2 cuts every finished contest of the competition you pointed it at. Most of the time that is exactly what you want.
The Contests tab exists for the times when it is not.
When you would use it
Almost always for the same reason: you need to cut something again.
A category came out wrong — the timings were off, the wrong camera angle was configured, somebody deleted the clips by mistake. Rather than re-cutting the entire competition, you restrict the CutterV2 to just the part that needs redoing.
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| One category has to be cut again. | Put the category's part of the contest code in the Included list, for example _m_p100_. |
| A few individual fights have to be cut again. | Select them in the ALL CONTESTS grid and click Add to Included >>. |
| You want a whole category except one or two fights. | Put the category in Included, and those fights' contest codes in Excluded. |
| One particular fight must not be published. | Put its contest code in Excluded and leave Included empty. |
If both lists are empty — the normal case, and how the program should be left during a live event — nothing is filtered and every finished contest is cut.
A filter on its own does not cut anything again.
The CutterV2 remembers what it has already cut by looking at the .json companion files in the output folder. A contest that already has one is skipped, filter or no filter.
So re-cutting is always two steps:
- Delete the old clips from the output folder — both the
.mp4and its matching.mp4.json, or the contest still counts as done. - Then set the filter and press Start cutting.
Miss step 1 and the CutterV2 will run through, report everything as already cut, and produce nothing — with no error to tell you why.
The tab
The tab is split in two.
ALL CONTESTS (left)
Every contest JudoNet knows about for the current competition, newest first.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Contest Code | The full identifier of the fight. |
| Mat | Which mat it is on. |
| Status | Finished, In Progress or Pending. Only Finished contests are ever cut. |
| Start Time | When the fight started. |
| Judoka 1 / Judoka 2 | The two competitors, short names. |
| Category | The weight category. |
Above the grid:
- Search — type anything and the list narrows. It searches the contest code, the category and both judoka names at once. Several words all have to match, in any order, so
-73 SLOfinds the −73 kg fights involving a Slovenian judoka. The list refreshes a fraction of a second after you stop typing. - Refresh — fetches the contest list from JudoNet immediately.
The list also fills in by itself while automatic cutting is running, because the CutterV2 is fetching contests from JudoNet every 20 seconds anyway. Refresh is for when cutting is not running and you want to see the list now.
Refresh needs the JudoNet address and the External ID to be filled in on the Automatic cutting tab. If they are not, it says so.
INCLUDED and EXCLUDED (right)
Two lists that decide what gets cut.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Contest Code/Filter | The code or text fragment being matched. |
| Type | Contest if you added it from the grid, Filter if you typed it in. |
How the filters are applied
For every finished contest, the CutterV2 asks two questions in order:
- Is the INCLUDED list empty? If yes, the contest passes. If no, the contest passes only if its contest code contains one of the entries.
- Is the EXCLUDED list empty? If yes, the contest passes. If no, the contest is dropped if its code contains one of the entries.
A contest is cut only if it passes both.
Matching is "contains", not "starts with", and it ignores upper- and lower-case.
0073 matches cont_cup_jun_mac2026_0007_m_0073_0002 — but it would also match a contest number that happened to contain 0073 anywhere else. Short fragments are powerful and blunt at the same time. When in doubt, use a longer fragment.
Excluding beats including. If the same text is in both lists the contest is not cut, because the exclude check runs last. The program tries to stop you creating that situation: adding something to one list removes it from the other automatically.
Worked examples
Using the contest code cont_cup_jun_mac2026_0007_m_p100_0009, where _m_p100_ is the men's +100 kg category and the final 0009 is the individual fight:
| Included | Excluded | Result |
|---|---|---|
| (empty) | (empty) | Every finished contest is cut. The normal setup during an event. |
_m_p100_ | (empty) | Only the men's +100 kg category. |
_m_p100_, _m_0073_ | (empty) | Only the men's +100 kg and −73 kg categories. |
_m_p100_ | cont_cup_jun_mac2026_0007_m_p100_0009 | The whole men's +100 kg category except that one fight. |
| (empty) | cont_cup_jun_mac2026_0007_m_p100_0009 | Everything except that one fight. |
The pattern in the first three rows is the useful one: the middle part of the contest code identifies the category, so typing it restricts the CutterV2 to that category. You do not have to select the fights one by one, and it works for fights that have not been fought yet.
Adding and removing filters
From the grid
- Select one or more rows in ALL CONTESTS (hold
CtrlorShiftfor several). - Click Add to Included >> or Add to Excluded >>.
The full contest code is added, and its Type shows Contest. If it was in the other list, it is removed from there.
By typing
Use the small text box above each list:
- Type the text you want to match — typically the category part of a contest code, such as
_m_p100_. - Click Add, or just press
Enter.
Its Type shows Filter. Duplicates are ignored.
This is the quickest way to select a whole category. You do not have to find and select every fight in the grid, and — unlike selecting rows — it also covers fights that have not been fought yet, because it matches on the code rather than on a contest that already exists.
Removing
Select one or more rows and either click Remove Selected or press the Delete key.
Copying
Right-click any row in the Included or Excluded list and choose Copy Filter to put it on the clipboard.
When changes take effect
Changes are saved immediately — you do not need a Save button, and they survive a restart.
But you cannot open the Contests tab while automatic cutting is running, so in practice changing a filter means:
- Stop cutting.
- Change the lists.
- Start cutting again.
A filter only decides what happens from now on. It never deletes anything.
This cuts both ways, and both directions catch people out:
- Excluding does not remove clips that already exist. If you have already cut 200 contests and then exclude half of them, those 100 clips are still in the output folder, and the Video Ingester will still upload them. Delete them — both the
.mp4and its.mp4.json— or cancel the jobs in the Ingester. - Including does not re-cut clips that already exist. See the two steps for re-cutting — you have to delete the old files first, or nothing happens at all.
Where the filters are stored
In your settings file, %APPDATA%\VideoCutter\videocutter.conf.json, as IncludedContestPrefixes and ExcludedContestPrefixes.
They are not cleared when you change competitions. This catches people out: a filter left over from last weekend will happily block every contest of this weekend's event, and the symptom is simply that nothing is cut. The Contest Filters summary line on the Automatic cutting tab exists to prevent exactly that — glance at it before every event. It reads either:
No contest filters configured. All contests will be processed.
or:
3 included, 1 excluded
Older versions of the CutterV2 had two comma-separated text boxes on the main tab, Contests to include and Contests to exclude. They were replaced by this tab. If you upgrade from such a version your old entries are converted into list entries automatically, once, the first time the new version starts.