Usher for Mac4520

Switched to OS 10.7 minimum requirements but doesn’t take the time to offer a download link for the last 10.6.8-capable version either here or on their own freakin’ website. Lame, developer. Is my license worth nothing to you? Fine, then I’ll trash your product every chance I get in every forum I can think of.

Seems extremely slow with a large library! I have around 3000 movies on my NAS, and Usher is so slow it's almost unresponsive! Am waiting to hear some feedback from the developer.

Unfortunately even if it seems a very nice and useful application alike all the others similar, it does't have any support for mkv which in my case makes this (and the others too, obviously) useless

my movie collection is on a NAS and for me usher is not working well. it keeps crashing most of the time

Nice, but I can’t find a preference to always open movies in fullscreen — a glaring omission and deal breaker.

Good app but doesn't appear to watch the folders it imports videos from. Moving a video into a folder in Finder also needs that same video manually adding to Usher. At least I couldn't find a refresh option to automate the process.

I am a teacher & use this to organize many short clips I show in class. Works great, highly recommended!

New Usher User 1.1.3 from Apple App Store. I was hoping Usher would help me do batch updating to a large directory of video files on a hard drive (NAS) not controlled with iTunes. Usher's work flow seems to be Example.. I have two copies of the movie Faster. The filenames are "Faster (Apple TV)" and "Faster (iPhone)" to note the resolution during Handbrake ripping. 1. Click on a single movie in the Library pane 2. Right click -> Edit Metadata 3. Select Auto-Properties. (Dialog appears with Could not find "Faster (Apple TV)"... 4. Manually remove " (Apple TV)". Hit search. 5. Click on a match (now finds movie since its title is "Faster". Am I asking for a miracle here? Is there a faster/easier way to get metadata?

Very good app. The solution to organizing all vids. However still to be worked on. Needs a feature to set up different player (such as Movist or VLC) to groups of files, since its own player doesn't work with many files (due to QuickTime engine problems). And hopefully it gets to work with FFMpeg installed – this would solve all problems with unsupported vids.

The remote control from my really old, first gen MacBook Pro works to start and stop my (downloaded) TV content. This is ace. If any of you download a lot of TV content, as I do, Usher is just an awesome tool/media hub. It remembers the exact playback position in a tv programme, just like TiVo

I see that it's possible to convert 'Web downloads' so they can be played back on the iPhone. Is it Adobe Flash to MOV?

I love Usher. I got the Mac AppStore version. It's ability to rip YouTube videos is a great little bonus. Are there any restrictions? Sometimes I get a message saying the YouTube download failed. I wondered if it might be due to music Copyright, but it seems to work at other times. I like the way it created a recently added playlist/smart folder thing for each playlist. I note that some of my videos have become black and white (in the grid preview mode). Is that because I have deleted them, or because they have been watched or are x-weeks old? I would love the ability to be able to have a hot key to remove all visual distractions, when watching a tv program. I want all other windows to be hidden. I note that ⌘-U invokes Usher-control-window. It would be neat if I could press ⌘-U again to make it disappear. (So it's like a _toggle_ , rather than an 'on' switch)

Overall I am quite impressed. Improving the organization of my ever growing movie library has been long overdue. Usher has finally allowed me to seize control and efficiently organize my collection. This is a clear winner in my eyes. I should have done this a long time ago. P.S. Peter/Rob have been very responsive to my questions.

I do not typically take the time to review software. It's an extra "to do" I don't have time for. However, I have been an Usher user for a while and when I saw some of the comments on this page, I had to say I have had nothing but an exceedingly positive experience both with Usher and with the support team. I have tried all of the video clip managers out there, and for many reasons Usher is the best. It's library management cannot be matched, and it is -- of course -- the sexiest. My only problem is with large libraries, it can be slower. However, there are ways around that. Most importantly, the support team is unmatched. I have emailed for support and they have given it promptly, professionally, and with enthusiasm. Likewise, I have suggested features that will likely be incorporated. Great software, great company.

i m disappointed usher is very slow ,specialli the player when maximizing /unmaximazing windows it uses a lot of cpu and it stalls,it seems like it doesn use the gpu,also i emailed for support never get a reply … be aware!

Anyone know if Usher can read VIDEO_TS folders too? Blurb on the site doesn't seem that detailed.

[Fix] Users with serial numbers (instead of license files) will no longer have upgrade-related licensing issues. Thanks, that was exactly my problem and it has been promptly solved. So far so good, nice to see this program and this company back in action!

Thanks for the taking another look, and please let me know if you have any qeustions! regards, -rob.

I too feel burned by yFlicks. yFlicks languished to the point of it just quitting all the time, so I moved to iVideo. Now, to have yFlicks/Usher work again, I have to pay $15 for this convenience. No thanks.

To be honest I've been skeptical after my experiences with yFlicks, which I bought some years ago - but the new version of yFlicks, now Usher, impresses me. All of the old issues seem to be solved. And an additional question I had to the Usher team has been answered in only one (!) hour on a Sunday. Perfect support !!

No support for yFlicks for so many years. No answers to emails, no updates to fix bugs and compatibility issues. Many Tricks treated paying customers of yFlicks really badly. Theres only one trick with this company: Take users' money and run! I‘ve switched to iVideo. Great support, regular updates, and a very responsive developer who cares about the customer/user base.

Neat if they are back… have to give this refreshed app a spin as yFlicks was the best.

Yes, it's a sad truth that Many Tricks had quite a hiatus in the past, say, two years, together with an almost non-existent communication. But NOW I'M HAPPY to witness that Many Tricks is back online, with the great communicator Rob Griffiths (of MacOSXHints fame) joining the company. There have been RECENT UPDATES, they have an ACTIVE BLOG now, and I definitely know they ARE ACTIVELY WORKING on cool new stuff as well as on more updates to their existing software. See http://www.manytricks.com and http://www.manytricks.com/blog for more information. And no, I'm not married to Peter or Rob or Alex, and I'm not affiliated with Many Tricks, I'm just a happy user of some of their stuff, and I'm in contact w/ them over their blog.

This is the best of software, this is the worst of software... I use yFlicks because I've tried many, and this is the best software available on the Mac for organizing my video collection. It lets you tag, search, sort, create thumbnails, and play your videos in very flexible and useful ways. There was a problem with the first version of Snow Leopard, but I'm now using it successfuly on Snow Leopard 10.6.2, with about 3000 videos cataloged. Having said that... The software is terrible! It's frustrating, inconsistent, full of bugs, and slow as molasses . . . And unless you figure out many tricks (pun intended) for yourself, to get around the bugs, you may not even be able to get it to work for you at all. Basically, the software was never really finished. Worst of all, it's abandonware. For the past several years, the developer, Peter Maurer, will happily take your money, but he gives no support or updates and ignores all e-mail sent to him. Even the user forums on the website have been boarded up. I guess he got bored with it and moved on to other projects. But that is no way to treat your customers. It's really a shame, because yFlicks has so much potential. I just can't understand why someone would spend so much time and effort creating and marketing a product, only to just give up, stop fixing the remaining bugs and issues, and ignore all his customers. I'd say it's 80% of the way to being a really excellent piece of software. But that missing 20% means the user experience, frankly, s*cks. I use a Mac because "Mac users swear by their computers, while windows users swear at their computers". But this is one app that I swear at constantly. Unfortunately, there's no better alternative out there. I recommend the developer google "the clue train manifesto", and learn what is important about "customer service". I know a lot of people have a habit of not finishing what they start... but that's no way to run a business, and in business, your reputation and the trust you build with customers is the most valuable asset you have.

I've used this for a while and probably bought it as an MUpromo or similar. It was reliable when it worked, but needed freqent updates to keep up with youtube etc when they changed things. A few weeks/months ago, it stopped working reliably and updates no longer show up. The company's website (manytricks.com) no longer resolves. Google's cache shows the last page from early December 2009. Looks like they have infact gone under or are on extended vacation.

This company seems to have gone to the wall. YFlicks is incompatible with Snow Leopard and the company reps do not reply to support e-mails. Avoid buying any of the software they sell! Check out their website if you don't believe me. It has not been updated in over a year. None of their software appears to have been updated for over a year.

problem to synchronise well the subtitles, impossible to select the language if several subtitles files and impossible to enable/disable subtitles on the fly in a video.

Very unstable, constant crashed with the latest version 3.3.2.

I don't know what MacMelo's problem is; I have over 300 movies (flicks) in my library and yFlicks is blisteringly fast at opening and previewing them (mousing over the movie picture). I used to experience the "hanging yflickscrawler process" problem, but that is all. This update supposedly fixes it...so here's hoping. I haven't found another Mac movie catalogue/library viewing app which is quite so obvious (user-friendly) in its objectives.

I get a 'Segmentation fault' and 'Exited abnormally' when trying to run it. Why?

Forgot to rate it, so here it is...

I was really hoping this could be a good app... However, I have already tried to use it about ten times over the last couple of years, but I give up... On the surface it has the looks of a Mac application, but it has several annoying (or non-standard/confusing behaviors) and it's slower than hell... Slow to a point that it gets impossible to use, even with just a few movies in the library... I would really love to have a great looking yet fully functional alternative...

My experience with yflicks has been pretty good, i needed an iphoto for movies, and this is by far the nicest, and most mac-like i've found. I espesially like the way you can CHOOSE the thumbnail for each movie, rather than have a randomly chosen frame, that's something i was really after. I signed up to macupdate just so i could recommend it :-)

I tried to use the software, but it doesn't work, it is unbelievably buggy, impossible to play a movie it will never show any window, only the prefences ... Also it doesn't seem to be able to read subtitle file s what is desperatly missing in QuickTime. If I pya a software it's for feature that are missing in others, paying just to catalog my movies and see a nice front .... well I don't care. So why should I pay, vlc is working pretty well, of course cosmetics in less, but it works and ofers more features and and can read subtitles.

I ordered this at 8 this morning, paid, and received my receipt. 13 hours later, I haven't received a license from the developer. I can't load their site, either through mud or directly. Hmmm?

Nice idea, but really need to work on speed.

it would be cool to have the possibility to add offline Media like DVD to the Database.

I've gotta say that I'm surprised to see so many crash reports. I've run it on Tiger and Leopard without these issues and although the auto-tagging has a modest delay of a second or two, that's as bad as things get.

Neat looking app Wonder if it's Leopard optimized

Crash Boom Bang... purchased before I tested it, based on my experience with version 2! The new version is VERY buggy.

I am still waiting/hoping for comments from the developer on the complaints about bugs and support-quality ....

I like the Front Row integration.

@MacUpdate Admin: Yes, I reported bugs immediately (i.e. 6 months ago, after purchase) and never get reply. Even automated one. I hate being anal about other people hard work, but I think when you are charging for your app, you need to care about end-user support and have plans for product life-cycle. Interaction with users doesn't hurt!

Awesome app. Though not yet stable.

Shame about the reviews. The software sounds good but obviously needs some work. Maybe one to look at again when the next version is available.

I take a look at the developers site and found the features useful. But if I read all the comments, especially this from fonix, 100lec, iJulia81 and vvarp I'm not shur if I would like to have this app. On the other hand, there are lots of positiv statments from other users... It's terrible... I still wait to buy...

if it would be better/easier interface, sounds great!

Looks like a great idea for those with plenty of videos laying around.

UPDATE: This still DOES NOT work with anything you purchase from the iTunes Music Store. All my movies and TV shows are listed in the library, but the previews have the word "Error" on them, and clicking to launch them yields a beep and nothing more. Their web page boasts "yFlicks can play any movie format the QuickTime Player can play," but the QuickTime Player easily plays my movies and TV shows from the iTMS. No Sale!

Ah, seems to be a quite nice app. I'll download and test it!

vvarp: did you ever report any of these bugs to the developer?

Concept is great and user interface is nice too, unfortunately I cannot say it's stable app for everyday use. - Loading times are terrible, it's nightmare to browse folder with a lot of items inside. - Generating thumbnails hangs the app until done. - Overlay controls sometimes appears, sometimes not - ...and there is more of it... I purchased version 2.0 at day of release (it was back in May I guess) and I was expecting to see most of the bugs fixed in next few weeks. After 2 months without even minor update I gived up and I stopped using yFlicks. Now we are getting version 3.0 which brings bunch of the new features to the table. I was really pleased when I noticed that, but my happines reduced to negative value when I discovered that old bugs are still there. I am not sure should I recommend this one. Hope to see v2.0 bugs fixed in v4.0...

Uh… just use Front Row or a free alternative that you can find here on MacUpdate. It's entirely possible to get this stuff done with some free software, just look around.

Looks a lot like Librarian Pro...

Great developer and a wonderful app that you can trust will only get better!

wow. This sounds way to cool, as it is exactly what I'm looking for :-D

Interesting, I am starting to be interested in digitizing all of my media and this would be a great tool

Looks nice. Have to try this one out

The idea is very good, but it was also in the previous version that was full of bugs, that have not been fixed till today. The first thing happened, when I started v3: it crashed. Sure, new version and new features = new bugs, no problem, but how can you be sure that the developer will fix them this time?

Nice but does it more than QuickTime Pro except the full modus for videos?

This app seems stable on Leopard, and I like being able to make smart folders to help organize my instructional videos from my music videos from my movies. The mini video preview is like having Quick Look for movies, and I like that feature. I'll have to test it with Front Row and the Apple Remote, but this could become the new player for my multimedia iMac.

I'm more interested in one that handles video clips and not so much fulls movie dvds.

Oh man, I missed iStablize yesterday. yFlicks sounds interesting, but I'm not sure it's something I would use.

I have been running the evaluation version on Leopard and so far have had no problems with fairly large mpeg-2 files. Seems pretty stable using "quicktime mpeg component" codec.

Compared to previous version it's not really huge step forward. It's still buggy, crashes a lot and developers seems to ignoring bug reports. This should be called version 2.1, not 3.0

Looks promising, but I can't find info if it will work under Leopard.

Worth investigating. Can anyone comment on Leopard compatibility as I have made the conversion?

This has to have the best UI of any player for the Mac. With such a great set of features you think Apple would have bought and included it with every Mac.

Looks nice :)

Very intuitive design, better than others such as Miro / Democracy. They have the "iTunes for video" thing nailed down. However it can be slow to show all movies, for instance my 183 movies take a while to load up, freezing the application. It would be better if the preview images could be generated in the background, with placeholders in the meantime. Navigating through the folder structure is much faster. What's really excellent about this program, though, is it's ability to be used with the remote control. I currently use Sofa Control, which lets you control a wide range of apps, but this lets you customize the files you see with smart folders (e.g. "this week") and gives you the full filename, not just the first few letters. In other words, this app is for real life use, unlike other programs that expect you to get everything organized and rename files to be able to navitage easily. I think it'll be going on my MacMini, whose job is to download TV episodes and movies and play them on the TV.

Look at their site to see the full features of this app. It maybe worth it.

Extremely cool. Mine!

Was waiting for this one.

This is evolving pretty quickly, it used to be a simple and gorgeous quicktime player, and now it is so much more...

Never heard of this one, but it sounds like something I'm going to buy...

I"ve posted this on the comments and will reiterate it here: this provides a features i've dreamed of: categorizing my movies for Front Row. The Usher Me to the Front Row feature sets up the Movies Folder with groupings based on tags. Actors, Directors, Genre and more. Then in Front Row, instead of searching through a huge list of movies, you can pick and choose based on pretty much anything. I'm still exploring but this is really one hell of a useful feature for somebody with a growing library of movie downloads.

I downloaded and tried this. HOLY CRAP! This does something to Front Row that I've dreamed of. It categorizes everything. You can browse your collection by rating, by type of movie (drama, comedy, etc) and you can add your own info as well. It just works like magic. WELL worth $14 just for this. Apple, why didn't you think of this.

wow- it looks marvellous. I am going to buy it

Nice- I think I will try it

Looks great!

There are a whole lot of features listed on the site that make this a definite bit of software to get, such as the integration of youtube/etc and included options for conversion to iPod. Thanks, R

Looks interesting, will need to try with Front Row and see if it plays well.

yFlicks is a great player!

This looks like it might be a contender for replacing iVideo for me on my 10.5/Intel machines, since iVideo so disgracefully vanished into thin air. Very interesting :)

Seems buggy still. Is it properly Leopard compatible?

I think this app would be great for me. I'd like to try it as an alternative to Quicktime.

This app has a lot of interesting features - better buy than QT pro, maybe.

very buggy in leopard... won't download clips from youtube via browser bookmark, and upon quitting the app and relaunching, no window appears. dragging a video to the dock icon will play the video, but there is no library sidebar.

I am seeing issues similar to PORTKINS. Movie thumbnails go blank and movies don't play properly, either as thumbnails or full-size versions. My movies are large home movies; 1-3GB H.264 MP4 files converted from DVD using Visual Hub. These movies play perfectly in QuickTime Player. I like the user interface and layout of yFlicks, but it seems too buggy, at least with my movies, to purchase at this time.

I used yFlicks (Version 2.0.1) for a couple weeks now and I think this is an amazing piece of software and the best movie player i now of for the mac. I dislike VLC and MPlayer for the sluggish and not mac-like interface and sometimes the lack of stability and speed. I really like the approach the autor took with the movie library concept. You can rate your movie and organise them in folders and smart folders. Overall the app is beautifully designed and lets you choose from 7 different window styles. There are a lot of options to choose from. You can customise most of the apperance, the behaviour in fullscreen and the organisation of the library. A reviewer mentioned the lack of stability of yFlicks. In my experience the current version of yFlicks (2.0.1) is very stable. I had 1 or 2 crashes, and I use yFlicks alot. Maybe the other reviewer hat a Codec issue? What I really like: - The presentation of the clips as thumbnails (size can be changed). There is also a list-view, and the "play on mouse-hover" feature can be turned of. - It uses the Quicktime Codecs. If Quicktime can play it, so can yFlicks. In combination with Perian (Codec Suite) almost all files can be played (If not, you can add codecs) - While playing a movie you can jump a 5 seconds (can be changed) with the Cmd + arrow key forward and backwards in the movie, I use this alot. There are some other noteable features which I rarely use: There is a good integration of the Apple remote, you can access your whole yFlicks library over the remote interface. You can also download movie from Youtube and integrate yFlicks with your browser, I haven't used this yet. yFlicks can also convert videos to the MP4 format. Wish-List: - It would be very nice to have "watch-folders", which would monitor user-defined folders for new movies and the add them (not copy) to the library. I have all my movies on an external drive - The speed in movie-thumbnail view while scrolling could be improved. If I have a lot of movies in one folder, yFlicks tends to slow down oder lock up for a couple seconds. You really should try out this application, it can be started 10 times in demo mode. It definitely does not deserve the current 2-star rating here on MacUpdate. So go try it and write a review here. :-)

I purchased yFlicks a few months ago. I have several movies organized on the program. When I move the cursor over a still it starts playing as described. But then the movie freezes and the other movies go blank. I need to restart the program to see the movie I want. The biggest disappointment isthat I have E-mailed the developer several times and never hear back. Sorry, good idea lousy product. terrible support!

There was a small typo in the original source code for yFlicks 1.1 that prevented you from deleting groups. Just download yFlicks 1.1 once more if you're experiencing this problem.

I have a suggestion. Wouldn't it be great if we could do a search in the library while playing a movie ... I was playing a movie and I did a search but the sound didn't continued to play or just pause it and then add a button in the bottom toolbar to go back to player mode. Also, what about a support of the Apple Remote ? You can find a lot of informations about how to do this here ( http://www.martinkahr.com/source-code/ ) at Apple Remote Controller Wrapper Class section.

Congratulations ! This application is amazing. It is built with a lot of original ideas such as video preview when the mouse enters in one of them. The user interface is also very easy-to-use and beautiful. I can just advice people to test it and then buy it !

1. Launch Apple Script Editor 2. Enter this exactly as follows… tell application “QuickTime Player” present front movie scale screen end tell 3. Save the script as an application (I save it as “full screen” and just keep it on my desktop). 4. Open the movie you want to view in full screen in Quicktime and then double-click on the apple script application you created. 5. Enjoy

The new Video Player and Video Downloading/Converting/Management Tool yFlicks is really a great leap towards the perfect integration of the Web 2.0 Video Services which are Flash based into your mac at home. The management is very easy-to-use and also intuitive. Rating is also very helpful. The converting function does also help ver much, pointing out that with the help of Perian, you can convert all formats that Quicktime Pro does, and more, for a price that is lower than what Apple wants for QT pro. At first i thought i wouldn't really use such a tool, because i could find everything with the help of Google Video/Youtube Bookmarks in Safari, but after trying the software out i changed my mind. The Previewing and Organizing abilities of this little piece of software are really great. I would really recommend you to try it, even if you're not somebody who uses Video Services Daily like me.