Settings reference
Every setting the Video CutterV2 has, what it does, and why it exists.
Settings live in two places:
- The Automatic cutting tab holds the things you change for every competition — addresses, output folder, camera angles. They are saved automatically.
- The Settings tab holds the things you set once per machine — ports, engines, performance. They are saved only when you click Update Settings.
Two settings are the exception and are not saved at all: the Cutting Start Mode and the Maximum mode time go back to their defaults every time the program starts. See settings that are not saved.
Automatic cutting tab
These fields are saved whenever you press Start cutting, when you press Test cutting, and when you close the program. There is no Save button.
All of them are locked while automatic cutting is running. Stop cutting to change them.
JudoNet IP
The address of the PC running JudoNet — a name like JUDONET-PC or an address like 192.168.1.50.
Use the magnifying glass rather than typing it. Doing so also fills in the External ID for you, which is the part people get wrong.
The address must resolve on the network. If it does not, Start cutting refuses with "The field 'JudoNet IP' should contain a valid IP address!".
When the CutterV2 starts, it spends up to 8 seconds listening for the JudoNet server it used last time. If it hears from it, the External ID is refreshed. If it does not, you get a warning that the saved server is not available right now — the setting is kept, so you can carry on if you know it is fine.
FR Recorder IPs
The addresses of the recording machines, separated by commas:
192.168.1.60, 192.168.1.61
Every one of them is contacted for its list of recordings, and every one of them has its shared folder mounted when cutting starts. Use the magnifying glass to pick them from the network.
A recording machine with two network cards announces itself twice, once per address. Pick the address on the network the CutterV2 is actually using. Choosing both addresses of the same machine is refused with "Please select only one IP per server!".
Output directory
Where clips are written. The folder is created if it does not exist.
Use one folder per competition. The CutterV2 works out what it has already cut by reading this folder, so mixing events together corrupts the statistics and slows every start.
Automatic cutting stops immediately if the drive holding this folder falls below 5 % free space, or if the drive becomes unavailable. See Low disk space.
Double-click the box to open the folder in Windows Explorer.
Cutting Start Mode
How much of the build-up to include before each fight. Five choices:
| Choice | The clip starts at |
|---|---|
| Automatic (strongly recommended) | Whichever scoreboard mark came first on that contest — mode 3, 4, 5 or 6. |
| Mode3 (White) | The screen showing the white competitor, whether that was the first or the second introduction. |
| Mode4 (Blue) | The screen showing the blue competitor, whether that was the first or the second introduction. |
| Mode5 (Both Competitors) | The screen showing both competitors together with the round of the contest. |
| Mode6 (Contest) | Maximum mode time before the contest screen appeared — not at the contest screen itself. With the default that is a 30-second run-up. |
Whatever you choose, the clip never starts more than Maximum mode time before mode 6.
Use Automatic.
It is the default and it is the correct answer for every normal competition. The other four choices are documented so that the program is fully described, not as a menu to pick from.
Automatic adapts to each contest: it takes the earliest mark that contest actually has, so it is right whichever competitor the scoreboard introduces first and whichever screens the operator used. Every other choice commits the whole event to one specific screen, and gets it wrong silently — no error, no warning, no log line. The three reasons are set out in why Automatic and not one of the others.
The mode names describe a colour, not an order. Which judoka is introduced first is a setting on the scoreboard, and many events introduce the blue competitor first.
Mode3 (White) selects the screen showing the white judoka, whenever that appeared. It does not mean "white goes first". If blue is introduced first at your event and you select Mode3, every clip starts at the second introduction and the blue judoka's introduction is missing from all of them. Nothing warns you.
Before selecting a specific mode, confirm with whoever runs the scoreboard which competitor is introduced first. If you cannot confirm it, use Automatic.
A full explanation, with worked examples, is in display modes.
This setting is not remembered between sessions. Every time the CutterV2 starts it goes back to Automatic, whatever you chose last time.
If your event needs a different start mode, set it again after every restart — and check it before pressing Start cutting. See settings that are not saved.
External ID
The identifier of the competition — for example cont_cup_jun_mac2026. The CutterV2 sends it to JudoNet to ask "give me the contests of this event".
You normally never type this. Selecting a JudoNet server with the magnifying glass fills it in from the competition JudoNet is currently running, and ticks Locked.
You do type it when cutting an event JudoNet is no longer running — see cutting after the event.
Cutting will not start while this field is empty.
A wrong External ID does not produce an error. JudoNet simply answers "no contests", the program polls happily every 20 seconds, and nothing is ever cut. If the log keeps saying Finished contests: 0 when fights are clearly finishing, check this field first.
Locked
When ticked, the External ID box is read-only, so it cannot be changed by a stray click or keystroke. Untick it to edit, then tick it again.
The tick is set for you when the External ID is filled in from JudoNet.
Camera Angles
Which camera angles to cut, separated by commas. Leave empty to cut every angle — this is the usual setting.
Front, Rear
The values are the camera keys as configured in FR Recorder, in its Angles and scenes editor. They are not fixed by the CutterV2, and they are matched exactly (though upper- and lower-case do not matter). If you are unsure what they are, look at the Angle column in FR Recorder.
Use this only when you deliberately want fewer clips — for example when the venue uplink cannot carry every angle.
Regardless of this setting, any camera whose key contains Front is cut before everything else in the queue. The front angle is the one people watch, so it should exist first. This is automatic and cannot be configured.
Contest Filters
Not a field but a summary line plus an Edit Contest Filters… button that jumps to the Contests tab. It reads either:
No contest filters configured. All contests will be processed.
or:
3 included, 1 excluded
Glance at it before every competition. A filter left over from a previous event is a common reason for "nothing is being cut".
Settings tab
Changes on this tab take effect only when you click Update Settings. Switching away from the tab without clicking it discards them.
Some changes also need the program to restart. When they do, the CutterV2 offers to restart itself for you.
Cutting Parameters
CPU / GPU Decoding
Which piece of hardware decodes the video while cutting.
| Choice | Meaning |
|---|---|
| CPU (default) | The processor does the work. Slowest, but works on every machine. |
| GPU_NVDEC | An NVIDIA graphics card does the decoding. |
| GPU_Quicksync | Intel Quick Sync — built into most Intel processors with integrated graphics — does the decoding. |
Only the internal MediaLooks engine uses this. Clips cut with FFmpeg copy the video without decoding it at all, so the setting makes no difference to them.
Leave it on CPU unless the machine is struggling and you know what graphics hardware it has. Choosing hardware that is not present, or whose drivers are not installed, produces failed cuts rather than a clear error.
Offset for packets [ms]
Shifts every timestamp received from JudoNet by this many milliseconds. Positive values move them later, negative values earlier. The default is 0 and it should normally stay there.
This exists for one situation: the JudoNet PC's clock is wrong. The CutterV2 matches timestamps produced on the JudoNet PC against video recorded on a different PC. If the two clocks disagree by ten seconds, every clip is ten seconds off, consistently, in the same direction.
The proper fix is to correct the clock — which is why the installer opens the time synchronisation port. This setting is the emergency workaround for when a competition is already under way and you cannot restart anything.
This is an advanced setting. Do not experiment with it during an event on the basis of a hunch. Cut one contest, watch it, measure how far out it is, and only then apply the correction. Getting the sign backwards doubles the error.
Cutting start offset [seconds]
Shifts the start of every clip by this many seconds. Negative values start the clip earlier, positive values later. Fractions are allowed. The default is -1.
Where Offset for packets compensates for a wrong clock on the JudoNet side, this compensates for a wrong clock on the FR Recorder side.
The default of -1 is a deliberate safety margin: it costs one extra second of footage per clip and guarantees that a small timing discrepancy never clips the start of the action. Leave it at -1 unless the Control Room tells you otherwise.
Note that this shifts the start only; the end of the clip is unchanged, so a negative value makes clips slightly longer.
Maximum mode time [seconds]
The furthest back before the contest screen (mode 6) that a clip may start. The default is 30.
Scoreboard operators sometimes leave an introduction screen on the display for minutes while waiting for a judoka. Without a ceiling, a clip started at "white competitor introduced" would carry all that dead air. This setting caps it.
- Automatic start mode ignores this setting completely. It starts at the earliest mark the contest has, however early that was.
- Mode3 / Mode4 / Mode5 use it as a ceiling: the clip starts at the chosen mode, or 30 seconds before mode 6, whichever is later.
- Mode3 / Mode4 / Mode5 when the chosen mode did not happen on that contest: it becomes the rule — the clip starts exactly 30 seconds before mode 6. The contest is still cut.
- Mode6 uses it as the rule: the clip starts exactly 30 seconds before mode 6.
The full set of rules, with a table, is in exactly what the program calculates.
Raise it if introductions at your event are genuinely long and you want them in full. Lower it for shorter clips and less disk usage. Set it to 0, together with Mode6, to start every clip at the moment the contest screen appeared — which is still a few seconds before hajime.
The default of 30 seconds is about the same length as a normal introduction. White, then blue, then both typically takes 30–40 seconds in total.
That means selecting Mode3 usually gets you mode 6 − 30 rather than mode 3, and two contests whose introductions differed by a few seconds can be cut differently. See the worked example.
If you want whole introductions, use Automatic — which ignores this setting — or raise it well above the length of your introductions.
Because Automatic ignores this setting, changing it has no effect at all unless you have also selected a specific Cutting Start Mode. This surprises people who lower it hoping to shorten their clips while leaving the start mode on Automatic.
This field cannot be empty; cutting will not start if it is.
This setting is not remembered between sessions. Every time the CutterV2 starts it goes back to 30, whatever you typed last time. See settings that are not saved.
Miscellaneous
Number of Cutting Processors (1-4)
How many clips are cut at the same time. Valid values are 1 to 4; the default is 3.
Each processor is an independent worker with its own progress bar. More processors means more clips finished per minute — until the machine runs out of processor power, disk throughput or network bandwidth, at which point they simply get in each other's way.
| Machine | Suggested value |
|---|---|
| Modern desktop, SSD, wired network | 3 or 4 |
| Ordinary laptop | 2 or 3 |
| Older or slower machine, or a machine also running other software | 1 or 2 |
Changing this requires a restart, because the processors are created when the program starts. Values outside 1–4 are rejected.
The CutterV2 always creates one processor more than this number. The extra one is reserved for manual cutting and test cutting:
| This setting | Automatic cutting | Manual and test cutting | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 (default) | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| 4 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
The extra processor never appears in the progress list on the Automatic cutting tab, and it sits idle unless you are cutting something by hand or running a test.
Use CPU Usage Throttling
When ticked (default), a cutting processor checks the machine's overall processor load before starting a clip. If the load is above the threshold below, it waits about a second and a half and tries again.
The point is to stop the CutterV2 monopolising a PC that is doing other things — most obviously running the Video Ingester, which is uploading at the same time. Cutting a clip two seconds later costs nothing; making the whole PC unresponsive costs a lot.
Untick it only on a machine dedicated to cutting and nothing else.
CPU Usage Throttling Threshold
The load percentage above which processors wait. The default is 65, and values from 50 to 80 are accepted.
The figure is an average of the last ten measurements, taken a quarter of a second apart, so a brief spike does not trigger it.
- Lower (50–60) — kinder to everything else on the PC, slower cutting.
- Higher (70–80) — faster cutting, less responsive PC.
Values outside 50–80 are rejected. An empty box is treated as 65.
Use FFmpeg for non-live recordings
When ticked (default), the CutterV2 uses FFmpeg for recordings that are finished, and its internal engine for recordings still being written.
FFmpeg copies the requested section without decoding it, which is dramatically faster — seconds instead of minutes. It cannot be used on a growing file, which is why the setting says non-live.
Leave this ticked. It is the single biggest speed difference available, and it matters most when cutting a whole competition after the event. Untick it only if you are investigating a suspected FFmpeg problem.
If ffmpeg.exe is not present in the installation folder, this setting has no effect and everything is cut with the internal engine. That happens when the download step of the installation failed — see Installation.
FairReplay
Network settings for talking to the FR Recorder machines. Do not change these unless someone who administers the network tells you to. They must match the FR Recorder configuration exactly.
UDP Port (FairReplay)
The port on which FR Recorder announces itself. Default 18918.
Changing it requires a restart. The installer opens this port in the firewall; a different port will not be open until someone opens it.
UDP Multicast IP Address (FairReplay)
The multicast group the announcements are sent to. Default 239.225.89.212.
Must be a valid multicast address (between 224.0.0.0 and 239.255.255.255). Changing it requires a restart.
API Port (FairReplay)
The port used to ask FR Recorder for its list of recordings. Default 9696.
You can check this yourself: open http://<recorder>:9696/api/ping in a browser on the CutterV2 PC. See Troubleshooting.
Changing it requires a restart.
JudoNet
The same three settings for the JudoNet side.
UDP Port (JudoNet)
The port on which JudoNet announces itself. Default 8888. Changing it requires a restart.
UDP Multicast IP Address (JudoNet)
Default 239.225.89.212 — the same group as FairReplay uses; the port keeps the two apart. Changing it requires a restart.
API Port (JudoNet)
The port used to ask JudoNet for contest timings. Default 5220. Changing it requires a restart.
Settings that are not on either tab
Language
The EN / FR button in the top right corner of the window. English and French are available. Changing it needs a restart, which the program offers to do for you.
The language is stored separately from everything else, in your Windows user profile, and is not part of the settings file.
REGISTER
A red button next to the language button, visible only while the copy is unregistered. See Registration and licensing.
Where settings are stored
Everything on both tabs lives in one file:
%APPDATA%\VideoCutter\videocutter.conf.json
On a normal Windows installation that expands to C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\VideoCutter\videocutter.conf.json.
Consequences worth knowing:
- Settings survive upgrades, because the file is outside the program folder.
- Settings are per Windows user. Two people signing in to the same PC each have their own.
- Uninstalling does not remove them. Reinstalling therefore brings your old settings back.
- If the file is corrupted or unreadable, the CutterV2 warns you and starts with defaults rather than refusing to run.
Settings that are not saved
Two settings are deliberately not part of that file and go back to their default every time the program starts:
| Setting | Resets to |
|---|---|
| Cutting Start Mode | Automatic |
| Maximum mode time [seconds] | 30 |
If your event uses anything other than those two values, make checking them part of your routine before pressing Start cutting — after a restart, after a crash, and on the second day of a two-day event. Nothing warns you; the clips simply come out cut differently from the day before.
The language is also stored elsewhere — in your Windows user profile rather than in the settings file — but it is remembered.