Using the Video CutterV2

This page walks through a normal competition day, from opening the program to closing it in the evening. If you have not read How the Video CutterV2 works yet, read that first — this page assumes you know what a display mode and a companion file are.

The main window

The CutterV2 has four tabs across the top:

The Automatic cutting tab

The tab is arranged top to bottom in the order you use it.

Connection Settings

Contest Filtering

The buttons

The Start and Stop buttons are colour-coded so that you can tell the state of the program across the room: green Start means idle and ready; red Stop means cutting is running.

The Activity Log

A running commentary of what the program is doing, newest at the bottom, with a timestamp on every line. It is the first place to look when something seems wrong. Typical lines:

The log keeps the last 1000 lines on screen, and it is cleared every time you press Start cutting — so do not rely on it for anything from earlier in the day.

Everything it shows, and a great deal more, is written to disk. The log files are in the installation folder, in a folder named for the date:

C:\FairReplay\CutterV2\logs\2026-08-07\

There is no button that opens them; paste that path into Windows Explorer. When reporting a problem, send the whole day's folder. See Log files for what each file contains.

The statistics panel

Five cards, refreshed twice a second:

Test clips produced by Test cutting are deliberately left out of these counts.

Processor progress

One labelled progress bar per cutting processor. The label shows what that processor is working on — the contest code and the camera — or idle when it has nothing to do.

Seeing idle on all of them is not a problem in itself. It simply means every finished fight has already been cut and the program is waiting for the next one.

The status bar

Along the bottom:

• Status — Cutting contests... while work is in progress, All contests cut, waiting. when the queue is empty.
• Output directory — the current output folder. Double-click it to open the folder in Windows Explorer.
• Disk status — free space on the PC's fixed drives.

Setting up for a competition

1. Register the program

If the title bar says UNREGISTERED, or a red REGISTER button is visible, do this first. Pressing Start cutting on an unregistered copy gets you a flat refusal: "You have an UNREGISTERED version, please register!" See Registration and licensing.

2. Select the JudoNet server

Click the magnifying glass next to JudoNet IP. A window called JudoNet Server Discoverer opens, listing every JudoNet instance that has announced itself on the network in the last few seconds.

Each line reads:

JUDONET-PC (192.168.1.50) - cont_cup_jun_mac2026

— the computer name, its address, and the competition currently loaded in JudoNet. If JudoNet has no competition selected, the line ends with no competition selected instead.

Select the right one and click Confirm Server, or just double-click the line.

Two things happen:

1. The address is copied into the JudoNet IP box.
2. The External ID is filled in automatically from the competition JudoNet is running, and the Locked box is ticked.

That second point is the reason to use the magnifying glass instead of typing the address: you get the competition identifier for free, and you cannot mistype it.

3. Select the FR Recorders

Click the magnifying glass next to FR Recorder IPs. A window called FairReplay Servers Discoverer opens.

Here you may select several recorders — hold Ctrl to pick more than one, or Shift to pick a range. Click Confirm Servers. The chosen addresses appear in the box, separated by commas.

You can also type addresses or computer names by hand, separated by commas. The magnifying glass is safer because it shows you what is really out there.

4. Choose the output directory

Click the small folder icon next to the Output directory box and pick a folder, or type a path. The folder is created if it does not exist.

Give each competition its own folder — for example D:\exports\mac2026\. The CutterV2 works out what it has already cut by reading this folder, so mixing two events together makes the statistics meaningless and slows down every start.

5. Choose the Cutting Start Mode

Leave it on Automatic unless you genuinely know what you are doing. Automatic picks the earliest scoreboard mark each contest actually has, so it adapts to how the scoreboard is configured and to what the operator did on that fight. Every other choice commits the whole event to one specific screen.

In particular, Mode3 (White) selects the screen showing the white judoka, whenever that appeared. It does not mean white is introduced first. Many scoreboards are set to introduce the blue competitor first, and picking the wrong one silently loses the first introduction from every clip of the day.

See choosing where the clip starts.

6. Fill in the Camera Angles, if you need to

Leave this box empty to cut every camera angle that FR Recorder offers. That is the usual choice.

Fill it in only when you deliberately want fewer angles — for example to halve the number of clips on a slow uplink. Write the camera keys exactly as FR Recorder shows them, separated by commas:

Front, Rear

The names are whatever the FR Recorder operator configured, in FR Recorder's Angles and scenes editor. They are not fixed by the CutterV2. If you are not sure what they are, look at the Angle column in FR Recorder, or run Test cutting and look at the camera names in the log.

7. Run Test cutting

Do this before the first fight, not after. See Test cutting.

8. Press Start cutting

The button goes grey, the Stop cutting button turns red, and the connection settings are locked so nothing can be changed by accident. From here the program runs on its own.

What happens the moment you press it:

1. All the fields are validated. Anything missing or malformed produces a Validation failed list.
2. The settings are saved.
3. The output disk is checked for free space.
4. The CutterV2 signs in to each FR Recorder's shared folder.
5. JudoNet is contacted once as a test. If it does not answer, cutting does not start.
6. The output folder is read to rebuild the list of clips that already exist.
7. The queue starts, and the first check of JudoNet runs immediately. After that it repeats every 20 seconds.

Test cutting

Test cutting proves — before it matters — that the CutterV2 can reach every recorder, open its files and actually produce a video. Run it during setup, after any network change, and any time something looks wrong.

Click Test cutting. A progress dialog appears and works through each recorder in turn.

For every selected recorder it:

1. Connects to the shared folder. All of them must succeed — a partial result is reported as a failure, because a recorder you cannot reach is a mat you will silently lose.
2. Calls the recordings API and checks that at least one recording exists.
3. Cuts a real clip — roughly 11 seconds, taken from the beginning of the most recent usable recording — and waits up to 45 seconds for it to finish.

The status line next to the buttons then shows a green Test Successful or a red Test Failed.

The test clips

Each test writes a file into your output directory named like this:

192_168_1_60-20260807-141233-test_clip.mp4

— the recorder's address with dots replaced by underscores, the date and time, and test_clip.

During the event

Once cutting is running there is normally nothing to do. The program polls JudoNet every 20 seconds, and clips appear in the output folder within a minute or so of each fight ending.

Things worth watching:

• The ERRORS card. A handful of errors over a long day is normal — a network hiccup, a file locked at the wrong moment. Press Retry error cuts and most of them go through on the second attempt.
• Disk space in the status bar.
• The Activity Log, if the numbers stop moving.

Retrying failed cuts

Click Retry error cuts. Every failed job goes back into the queue and the error count resets. The button is greyed out when there is nothing to retry.

The most common causes of a failure are temporary — the network share dropped for a moment, or the recorder was busy — so retrying is usually all it takes. If the same contest fails repeatedly, see Troubleshooting.

Forcing an immediate check

Normally you wait for the next 20-second poll. If you need JudoNet checked now — typically because you have just fixed something and want to see whether it worked — double-click the small "Video CutterV2 © … by Datastat d.o.o." text in the bottom right corner of the window.

This does two things: it rebuilds the CutterV2's memory of what has already been cut by re-reading the output folder, and then it runs a check immediately. It is safe to use at any time while cutting is running, and it is the right tool if you have deleted some clips and want them cut again.

Adding a recorder mid-event

You cannot change the connection settings while cutting is running. To add a recorder:

1. Stop cutting.
2. Add the recorder with the magnifying glass.
3. Test cutting, to be sure the new one is reachable.
4. Delete the test clips.
5. Start cutting again.

Nothing is lost. On restart the CutterV2 re-reads the output folder, works out what is missing, and catches up by itself.

Cutting after the event

You can cut a competition that finished hours or days ago, as long as JudoNet still holds its timings and the recordings are still on the FR Recorders. This is often called post-festum cutting.

The procedure is the same as during the event, with two differences:

• The External ID is probably not filled in for you. Selecting the JudoNet server fills in whatever competition JudoNet has loaded now, which may not be the one you want. Untick Locked, type the correct External ID, and tick Locked again.
• It is much faster. The recordings are no longer live, so the CutterV2 uses the FFmpeg engine, which copies rather than re-reads the video. Whole competitions cut in minutes rather than hours. See the two cutting engines.

Everything else — recorders, output folder, start mode — works exactly as before. Press Start cutting and the program works through the whole competition in one pass.

Finishing up

1. Press Stop cutting. The program will not close while cutting is running.
2. Check the ERRORS card is at zero, or retry what is left.
3. Confirm the Video Ingester has uploaded everything.
4. Close the program.

Your settings are saved automatically when you close, so the next event starts from where you left off — with two exceptions. The Cutting Start Mode and the Maximum mode time always go back to Automatic and 30 seconds. See settings that are not saved.

Changing the language

The CutterV2 is available in English and French. The EN / FR button in the top right corner switches between them.

Changing the language needs a restart. The program offers to restart itself; say Yes, or decline and the new language appears the next time you start it.