The queue

Drop a folder, answer three questions, let the GPU work the batch. Review takes in the morning.

FrameLathe is built as a queue, not a single-clip click-and-wait tab.

The queue lives on the Videos page. Drop files or a folder anywhere in the window; a drop of clips on another page takes you to Videos with them. Scanned photos go to Photos instead: a drop of only photos, or a folder of scans, opens Photos, and a drop of both says where each went. Both pages share one run order: Start on either runs everything waiting, one job at a time, so the graphics card is never asked to do two things at once. Answer what is wrong, where it is going, and how far to take it. Start the batch from the toolbar. The GPU can work overnight. In the morning you review a wipe and keep the take you want.

The recipe rail

The header names the clips the recipe is for — Recipe for the selected clips, All pending, or Future imports — and says so once.

Under it, the rail reads the source (for example SD / dirty · 476p · 29.97 fps · 8 s) and lists the recipe in one place, by section: Clean, Size and detail, Motion, File, and Also. Each problem sits on the row of the step that fixes it — Noisy / grainy is the Clean up noise switch, Shaky is Steady the shot, Choppy motion is Smooth to 60 fps — and an interlaced source shows that it is deinterlaced automatically. Made for (a 4K TV, phone, an editor, archive) sits above the output size it caps. What the source suggested is marked as a suggestion, and you can change it. After a clip is added, FrameLathe looks at a few seconds from three places in it for grain and camera shake, on this computer, and pre-ticks Noisy / grainy or Shaky when it sees them. Until that check finishes (a few seconds a clip), SD footage is assumed noisy. A recipe you have changed is never re-suggested; a fast pan or a frame full of moving water can read as shake, so untick it if it is wrong.

How far to take it, at the end of the list, is three steps: Quick, Full, and Best possible. Each step shows what it produces for this footage (1440p, 4K · rebuilt) and how long this machine expects it to take. Each step means one thing, whatever problems are ticked: Quick and Full add detail one frame at a time (Quick at a smaller size, Full at 4K), and only Best possible rebuilds detail from nearby frames (Remaster). The problems add or remove clean-up steps; they never change which step is which. When two steps would produce the same recipe (HD footage, where Remaster does not run, or a phone, which caps every step at 1080p), the later one says same as … instead of pretending to differ. As a rough guide Quick is about 40 minutes and Full about 4 hours, but the step’s own estimate is the one to read. Clean 8K is in a different league — read the estimate before you start one.

Made for and How far pick a preset, keeping the switches as you set them. Rows with more than on and off say what set them (from Export Ready, capped by destination). Change a step and it is marked changed with a reset, and the Recipe header at the top names what changed after the preset — for example Export Ready · no denoise or Remaster · 1440p, not 4K — as does the clip’s recipe chip in the queue (two changes, then +1 more). Changes stay on that clip, never on the preset: Back to Export Ready beside it (or clicking the preset the clip already starts from, under Start from) drops every change made to the clip by hand, with Undo. A clip you answered for goes back to what its answers give. The switches under Also are rail-wide settings and are not cleared. Also holds the rest — flicker, colour, subtitles, a LUT, face blur, background removal — and the Recipe header opens Start from, which switches the whole recipe to another preset, and Models….

One sentence at the foot of the rail says what will come out — for example Remaster · 1440p, not 4K → 1440p · 29.97 fps · H.264 · steadied — with the time and whether it was measured on this machine or is still an estimate. An estimate offers Try a 2 s sample.

On a freshly dropped batch each answer applies at once. Once a batch has history, changes are a draft: the header counts them, and Apply or Discard (Enter / Esc) decides. Start stays on the toolbar.

Reading a row

Each row is a frame of the clip, its recipe, one status word with a line under it, and one next action. The line under the Videos title counts the batch — for example 8 clips · 3 delivered · 1 rendering · done by 6:41 AM. Under a clip’s name is its size as it plays: a phone clip filmed upright reads 1080×1920, not the 1920×1080 the file stores.

• Delivered — the frame is split: source on the left, output on the right. The line under it gives the size change, how long the run took and when it finished (480p → 2160p · 41 min · done 3:12 AM). Review opens it.
• Rendering — the percent, the pass it is on and the time left, with a thin progress line along the bottom of the row. Edit the next clips changes the recipe for the clips that have not started yet.
• Failed — the cause in plain words. Click it for the full explanation, the short error code, and Copy for support. A clip that ran out of GPU memory offers Switch to Export Ready (it upscales one frame at a time and fits smaller cards), or Change recipe and re-run if it already was Export Ready.
• Queued — the forecast, and whether it is measured on this machine or still an estimate.

A row’s frame is taken about a tenth of the way into the clip, not from its first frame, so a film that opens on black still shows a picture.

Quick actions in a row’s right-click menu runs one step on that one clip without touching its recipe: Upscale to 4K or Denoise, each with its usual settings and nothing else switched on. Each shows its time for this clip before you pick it. It adds a copy of the clip as a new row, so the row you started from keeps its recipe and its file, and the copy writes to its own file (numbered when the usual name is taken). If the queue is idle the copy starts straight away and nothing else runs; if the queue is running it waits its turn. Undo on the notice that follows takes the copy back out. It works on one clip at a time, and Upscale to 4K is greyed out on a clip that is already 4K.

Where it writes, and when it is done

The toolbar’s Output line says where finished files go: a folder, or beside each source when none is set. Click it to choose a folder. Open shows the folder and Beside sources goes back to writing next to each source. Changing it moves every queued clip at once, and the toast offers Undo. To send some clips elsewhere, select them, right-click, and choose Set output folder; those rows show their own folder, and the toolbar counts them. Settings → Files → File names sets the pattern for delivered names from {name}, {preset} and {codec} (the default is {name}_{preset}_{codec}). A pattern without {name} is not used, because every clip would get the same name.

When done, beside Start, picks what happens after the last clip: nothing, a notification, sleep, or shut down.

Before you start, above the list, collects what to know before a run. It stays closed, naming its warnings on one line, and opens itself in red only for something that would stop the run: no engine, a plan that failed, or a disk that will fill. Warnings explain themselves; notes take one line, with the explanation on hover. Each one names its clips, and clicking a name selects that row. A Very long job warning can price cheaper recipes on that clip, such as keeping the source frame rate, stopping at 1080p, cleaning up without upscaling, or skipping steadying. It shows each option’s estimate, and only options that save at least a quarter of the time. Applying one changes that row and re-prices it, with Undo.

Compose vs delivered

The rail composes a recipe for pending and paused clips, and for All pending / Future imports in the header’s Recipe for menu. Future imports is a standing recipe for the next drop: nothing is priced until clips arrive, and Save for future imports keeps it. A delivered clip is a receipt: the same one-line sentence of what ran, not a recipe to edit. Change the recipe from Review if you want another pass.

Interrupted runs

If you quit while a row is running, the next launch pauses that row at a checkpoint. Start / Resume continues it: steps that finished are kept, and the step that was rendering starts again. The exception is the upscale step of Export Ready or Clean 8K on a clip or range of 30 seconds or less: it keeps the frames it had finished, apart from the last few, and renders only the rest. If the clip’s settings were changed since it stopped, it starts again from the beginning instead, so one video never comes out partly at the old settings. Smooth 60 fps does the same when Settings → Advanced → Storage → temp folder is set. Stop queue / Remove can drop it. Cancel this clip (right-click the running row) stops only that clip and the queue moves on to the next; Stop queue ends the run and leaves waiting clips pending. Both ask first, because the render in progress is lost. You do not lose the overnight because the window closed.

History

Finished clips — delivered, failed, or cancelled — show in History as soon as they finish. That list is the recipe (preset, extras, where it wrote), not a second copy of the video. Clear done on the queue files finished clips off the live list, and Clear failed does the same for failed ones; both have Undo, never touch photos, and the clips stay in History for 90 days. Any clip that is not rendering can be removed on its own (right-click, or Delete) or with others you selected, finished ones included; a finished clip removed this way goes to History too. Removing never deletes a file.

Each batch shows a frame from its clips and a strip with one segment per clip, sized by how long it ran, so a failure stands out. The pane beside the list shows the newest batch as a before-and-after until you pick another. The frames come from the same thumbnail cache the queue uses; if a source file is moved, History keeps the last frame it showed.

A failed clip reads the way it does in the queue: the plain reason and what to try first. The engine’s own text is one click away under Details, with a copy button for support.

Tray and recap

Overnight runs are meant to outlive a focused session. The app can sit in the tray: bring the window back after a run finishes there and the morning recap of what finished opens, as it does at launch. While a batch renders, the taskbar button shows how far through the whole batch it is, and hovering the tray icon says which clip is rendering and with what (Rendering 1 of 2 · Export Ready), its time left and, once every clip after it has an estimate, when the batch will be done. Exact chrome depends on the build you installed; the contract is local files in, local files out.