A film opens and starts playing, because opening a film is asking to watch it. Close it halfway and open it again next week, and it picks up five seconds before where you stopped; pause it, and it will step one exact frame at a time. A folder of films offers Last watched and Resume at columns, and a switch to hide the ones you've finished. A film can be edited, too, and here the video is the document. In Premiere or OpenShot you go into the program, open a "project," work on it, and at the end "export" a film: a second, separate thing you then have to go and find. Here you make a video from a folder's New menu, arrange its footage on layers, split it, join it and trim it, and the Watch tab shows the result, made in the background. The work is kept in a folder beside the film, which a listing never shows you, and when you accept the changes it becomes the film, right where the film already is. There is nothing to go and find.

Watching

Opening a Film

Double-click a film, in a folder or a launcher pane, and it plays, right there in the View, because opening a film is the request to watch it. The tab says Watch. MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, WMV, M4V, MPEG, WebM and the other common kinds open this way; anything else goes to whatever Windows would have used. The playing is done by the engine inside VLC, but inside Desktop Minder, so you don't wait for another program to draw itself before you see a frame. Starting a film quiets whatever else was playing, the Jukebox included.

Under the picture is a transport bar of pictures rather than words: a rail to move through the film, with the time and the length above it; then back five seconds, play and pause, forward five seconds; then CC for subtitles, the speaker, a volume rail and full screen.

• Left and Right skip five seconds; Space plays and pauses; Comma and Period step a frame back and forward (see below). The keys are heard when the player has the focus or the pointer is over it.
• The full-screen button fills the screen with the picture; Esc, F11 or a double-click ends it, and Space, Left and Right still work. The controls float over the picture and show when you move the pointer.
• CC is lit only if the film has subtitles. It lists the tracks, with None at the end. A .srt, .ass or .vtt file beside the film, named like it (or Name.en.srt), is loaded too.

One Exact Frame at a Time

If ffmpeg is installed, two more buttons appear, Back one frame and Forward one frame. Pause, press one, and you get the next or the previous frame—not roughly; exactly—and Play carries on from there. Pausing shows an exact frame, too. While one is on show the clock reads like 2:13,23: the twenty-third frame to begin during the second marked 2:13. The first jump to a new place can take a second or two; after that, steps are instant. Phone footage is shown the right way up.

Right-click the frame for Copy Image, then To Clipboard or To File.... Either way you get the film's full-size frame, the right way up, not the copy on the screen. A file is offered a name like Storm surf [1080p] 2m13s,23 and is saved as PNG or JPEG, by the extension you give it. Paste it into a folder and it's a picture there.

Picking Up Where You Left Off

Close a film halfway and open it next week, and it starts five seconds before where you stopped, to pick up the sentence that was being said. The place is noted every ten seconds while you watch, and again when you pause and when you close the View, so even a crash loses nothing. Less than a minute in counts as a look, not a watch, and isn't remembered. A film counts as finished once you're into its last five minutes, because nobody stays for the credits—but never more than its last tenth, or a twenty-minute episode would be finished at the quarter-hour.

The memory is yours, not the film's. It's kept in a list of your own, in your OneDrive where you use one, so it follows you to your other computers, and nothing is written into the film or its folder. So a film you watch on a shared drive doesn't change for the person who watches it next. One consequence: a film is known by its whole path, so renaming or moving one makes it a new film, whose watching starts clean.

• A folder's listing can show Last watched and Resume at columns (right-click a column heading).
• Mark as Watched and Mark as Unwatched, on a film's menu, set them by hand, for any number of films at once.
• Hide Watched Videos, on a folder's View menu, leaves only the films you haven't finished. A film part-way through is never hidden.

Names, Tags and Formats

A film's right-click menu offers:

• Play > Now / Next / Last, which puts it in the Jukebox's queue.
• Mark as Watched and Mark as Unwatched (see above).
• Normalize > Filename... reads a film's title, year and resolution out of the kind of name films tend to arrive with—Bros 2022 1080p 10bit WEBRip 6CH x265 HEVC-PSA—and shows you what it found. You correct it, add a genre or a director if you like, tick whether the year goes in front, whether to include the resolution, and whether a leading The, A or An moves to the end, and press Rename: the tags are written and the file renamed, to Green Mile, The (1999) [1080p].mkv. Several films are a run of these dialogs, one each. An episode of a series, with an S22E11 in its name (or in the title it was tagged with), ticks Series episode by itself; you can tick or untick it. Then Season and Episode are live, the title becomes what follows the marker, and the name is (S22E11) Alien A.I. [1080p].mkv, with no year (so Put year in front of title is grayed for it).
• Convert... makes a copy in another wrapper (Matroska, MP4, QuickTime, WebM or AVI), choosing for the picture and the sound whether to copy them as they are or re-encode them, and what to do with subtitles. It's a dialog rather than a plain command because there's no such thing as a plain conversion of a film: the reason is nearly always the subtitles. Needs ffmpeg.
• Tags, one item with Edit, Copy, Paste and Clear under it, as on a track. Clear takes every tag and the cover out of the chosen films, after asking (No is the default). A tag write that finds the film in use, in the Jukebox's queue for one, asks that part of Desktop Minder to let go and tries again. The Properties panel shows title, director, artist, series, episode, year and genre (all editable there), then the length, when you last watched it, and where you'd resume.

Making a New One

Choose Document > New > Video, on the bar of a folder open in the View or of a launcher pane, or right-click an empty place in a launcher pane and choose New > Video. It asks nothing. It makes a project for a film named Video- and the date and time, with .mp4 on the end, and needs nothing installed to do it. There is no film file until the first time you accept changes, but the listing already shows it as the film it will be. In a launcher pane the new video opens at once, on the Edit tab, and its name is ready to type over; in a folder's listing the name is ready and the video stays closed. The Watch tab of an empty one says "Nothing to watch yet." The Edit tab shows one black layer, 1920 by 1080 at 30 frames a second, with room for thirty seconds.

Behind the scenes, a video is a film and a folder beside it. Editing Film.mp4 keeps its work in a folder called Film.mp4.edit, the project. A listing shows the film and its project as one item and never shows the .edit; File Explorer shows both. In the project is a copy of the film you started from, the footage you've brought in, which the video keeps to itself (a link to each piece, so a big file isn't stored twice, and a file of its own when two pieces had to be joined), and a small file of instructions saying which stretch of which footage goes where, on which layer, to the exact frame. The footage is never listed for you and there is nothing to drag out: it is the video's business, not yours. A plain film becomes a video at the first real edit, such as the first footage dropped on a layer, and not before: looking at its Edit tab writes nothing. A split changes the instructions, never the footage, so nothing you shot is ever cut up, and Film.mp4 itself is not moved, renamed or changed while you edit. See The Project Beside the Film for what else goes along with it.

Editing

The Edit Tab

From the top: the picture; the transport bar; a line of notes and warnings; and then the layers. The transport bar has Play (which becomes Pause), a step back and a step forward, a clock showing hours, minutes, seconds and frame, and at the right Tags... and Accept Changes?.

The layers are drawn as a timeline: a zoom bar along the top, a ruler, a scroll bar along the bottom, and one layer for each layer of the video, with Top first and Bottom last. A layer has a lane of picture, a strip of the footage's own frames, over a lane of sound, its waveform. A piece of footage on a layer is a moment, and it shows its name. A red line, with a triangle at the top, is the playhead, and it's always on a whole frame. Four layers are shown at a time, and the rest are reached by scrolling.

Play on the Edit tab is a quick preview of the topmost layer's picture with its own sound. For the real thing—every layer's sound mixed, and the layers stacked—watch it on the Watch tab, once the film has been made.

Only one thing is chosen at a time: one moment (click it), or a whole layer (click its label). Click empty space, or press Esc, to let go.

Bringing Footage In

Drag films and sounds onto a layer, from a launcher pane, a folder or File Explorer, and they land where you drop them, snapped to the nearest neighbor or the start. Several files dropped together go end to end, in the order you dragged them. A film becomes one moment carrying its picture and its sound; a sound file lands in the sound lane only. The first picture you drop sets the video's size and frame rate if you never set them. The whole drop is one step in the history, "Dropped Beach 01" or "Dropped 3 clips," and a blue ghost shows where it will land, a red one where it won't.

A drop always links: the video keeps a tiny link to the original in its own folder, so a big piece of footage isn't stored twice, and the link works on your other computer too if the footage is in OneDrive. The original is never moved or changed. There is no list of the video's footage anywhere; you work with the moments on the layers.

It tells you, along the note line, when it can't: "name is another video, and one video inside another comes later," "is a still picture, and pictures on a layer come later," "is in the cloud and not on this PC yet" (it's brought down; drop it again in a moment), or "Needs ffmpeg."

The Playhead

Click in the ruler to put the playhead there, and drag in the ruler to scrub. Left and Right move it a frame, Shift with them a second. Space plays and stops. The wheel slides the layers along in time, and Ctrl and the wheel zooms the time scale about the pointer; the zoom bar above and the scroll bar below do the same by dragging. A right-click in a lane also puts the playhead where you clicked, unless it's within a few pixels of it already.

Split

A moment is cut at the playhead. Put the playhead where you want the cut (the ruler, or the arrow keys for an exact frame), then double-click the moment. Or right-click the moment where you want the cut and choose Split Here: the right-click moves the playhead to the spot first, so the cut falls where you clicked. If the playhead isn't on the moment, the note line says so. There's no scissors tool and no mode; I preferred this. A split keeps every frame of the film exactly as it was.

Delete and Close Up

Click a moment to select it and press Delete, or right-click it and choose Delete. That leaves a gap and nothing slides along. To take up the slack, right-click the empty stretch and choose Close Up: everything later on that layer slides left by the gap. If something would then overlap, it says so and does nothing.

Join

Join is Split's opposite. Right-click a moment and choose Join with Previous or Join with Next to make it and the moment touching it on that side into one. Any two moments that carry the same kinds of thing (picture and sound, or sound alone) can be joined, wherever their footage came from. If they are two halves of the same footage and the second carries on exactly where the first stops, as after a Split, the result is just one wider moment. Otherwise the video makes a new file with the two built together, which takes a moment (you get a wait cursor and a line on the status bar) and is kept in the video's own folder; your originals are never altered. If a join can't be done, the menu item is grayed, and its tip says why. Right-clicking exactly on the seam between two halves offers a plain Join. Either way it's one step that Undo takes back.

Moving and Trimming

Drag a moment to move it, along the layer or to another one. Hold Ctrl while you drop it and it's copied, leaving the original where it was. Drag the first or last few pixels of a moment—the pointer becomes a sizing arrow—to trim it: shorter, or longer again up to what the footage actually holds, but never into a neighbor and never to less than one frame. Edges and moments snap to the start of the video, to the edges of other moments, and to the playhead. A refused move or trim puts the moment back where it was, and the note line says why.

Layers

Each layer's label, at the left, holds its name (Top, Bottom, or its number), a Solo and a Mute button, Volume and Pan sliders for its sound, and a Plays check box that says whether the layer is in the picture and the film at all. Mute and Solo turn each other off. Each of these is a step, and one drag of a slider is one step. They are what you hear in the film that's made, too.

Click a layer's label to choose the whole layer, then right-click it for Move Up and Move Down, which change which layer covers which: where there's a picture on an upper layer, it hides the layers below. A layer with nothing in it lets the ones beneath show through. To have more layers or fewer, change Layers on the Properties panel (1 to 99): raising it adds empty ones at the bottom; lowering it removes empty ones, lowest first, and never one that has a moment on it.

Missing or Changed Footage

A moment whose footage can't be found is hatched in red and says Missing; one whose file has changed but still fits is dashed in orange and says Changed. Right-click a missing one and choose Find... to say where it is now (a copy kept inside the video's folder is looked for first), and any moment's menu has Open Source, which shows the original footage in the Jukebox at that moment's first frame. Footage kept in OneDrive is held on your device while the video is open, and let go when its film has been made.

The Video's Properties

With the video open, the Properties panel (Show Properties on a moment's menu opens it) has a Video group: Title, Director, Artist, Series, Episode, Year, Genre, and then Width, Height, Frame rate (23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 or 60), Other frame rates (whether footage at a different rate keeps its rate or its frames), Background, and Layers. Choose a moment and a Moments group describes it: source, in, out, place and length. Change a frame rate and, if moments would then overlap, it's refused.

Tags

The Tags... button opens the tag sheet for the video: title, director, artist, series, episode, year, genre, comment, description and copyright. The tags belong to the video and travel with the film that's made from it, and changing them is an undoable step.

Undo and What Has Been Done

Every change is a step. Right-click the video, and the submenu named for it offers Undo: split Beach 01 at 0:00:04 +02, Redo, What Has Been Done, with Go Back to Here and Take This Step Out on every step, Back to How It Was Opened, and Write the Changes Now. Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y work on the layers too. The history lasts for the sitting.

You Never Save, and the Film Makes Itself

The instructions are saved about three seconds after your last step, and again when you leave the tab or put the video down. The first time in a sitting, the old instructions go to the Recycle Bin; on a drive with no Recycle Bin, you're asked, when you leave Edit, whether to keep your changes ("They'll be permanent"), and No takes the video back to how it was last agreed.

The film is made behind your back. When a video is put down, or the Watch tab needs it, ffmpeg makes Build.mp4 in the video's project folder, one at a time at low priority so that you can keep working, and swaps it in when it's whole. The Watch tab plays the old film at once if it's still right; otherwise the strip says Updating..., and A newer film is ready when it is. If you changed the video on another computer, the strip says Out of date, and Bring Up to Date on the video's menu makes this computer the one that builds it.

Accept Changes

When you want the film as an ordinary file, press Accept Changes?. It opens a box headed with the film's name and offers Accept Changes, Forget Changes and Cancel, with a line above them saying what each one does.

Accept Changes makes the final film at full quality, in the format the file's name says, and puts it where the film is. The film as it was before goes to the Recycle Bin, and the box says so (on a drive with no Recycle Bin it says the earlier file is deleted for good, and means it). Then it asks what to do with the project: Keep the project, which leaves it beside the film so you can go on editing later, or Delete the project, which goes to the Recycle Bin once the film is in place. The footage your links point to is never touched. It takes a while, shows its progress along the foot of the window, and can be stopped with Cancel Accepting Changes on the film's menu until it is made; if anything goes wrong the film that was there is still there. If a program still has a file open, Accept Changes waits a little and then names who it is.

Forget Changes throws the changes away, and the box says what that will mean this time. A project that was never accepted is discarded, all of it, to the Recycle Bin, and the film is not touched; a video made from nothing has no earlier version to go back to, so it is discarded with its project. A project you kept and then edited again goes back to what you last accepted, and stays. If nothing has changed since you last accepted, there is nothing to forget and that button is grayed.

The Project Beside the Film

A film that is being edited, and the folder it is edited in, are one thing to you, so Desktop Minder treats them as one.

• One item in a listing. A folder shows Film.mp4 once and never shows Film.mp4.edit. A video made from nothing, which so far is only a project, is listed as the film it will be. (Hidden Items will show the project folder as it really is.)
• Properties says whether there is a project. A Project row in the Storage section of the Properties panel reads None, Being edited (changes not yet accepted, or nothing accepted at all) or Kept (accepted, and kept to edit again), and for a project that is there it adds the project's size.
• The project goes along. Rename, cut and paste, delete, numbering, Flatten and Bulk Rename (see Folders) take the project with the film, so it is never left behind. Delete sends both to the Recycle Bin.
• Delete Project. On a film's right-click menu, when it has a project, this deletes the project alone and keeps the film as it is. It goes to the Recycle Bin, or asks first where there is none.
• No change of extension while there is a project. Renaming Film.mp4 to Film.mkv while it is being edited is refused, with "Accept or forget the changes first." That is a conversion, not a rename.

What It Needs

Playing a film, remembering where you were, tags and renaming need nothing but Desktop Minder. Exact frames, Copy Image, Convert..., reading footage you drop, making the film and Accept Changes need ffmpeg and ffprobe, which are free, and are found if they're on your path, in Program Files\ffmpeg, or in C:\ffmpeg\bin. Where they're missing, those commands are grayed with the tip Needs ffmpeg.

Not Yet

• Titles and text over the picture; transitions and cross-fades; effects, speed and reverse.
• Still pictures on a layer, a video inside another video, picture-in-picture, and moving or scaling a picture on the screen.
• Fades, and a volume of a moment's own (a layer has Volume, Pan, Mute and Solo; the recording editor has more).
• Separating a film's picture and its sound onto layers of their own: a moment carries both until then.
• Finding the scenes in footage by itself, so that long footage lands already divided.
• Naming layers, and buttons to add or remove them (use Layers on the Properties panel); Copy and Paste of moments (Ctrl-drag copies one); choosing several moments at once.
• Dropping something onto an open film in the Watch tab: it takes nothing dropped on it.