VERTES — Changelog & version history

A note from the developer

Version 2.31 is the last update on a daily development pace, until further funding or an acquisition. Development has not stopped — the developer simply no longer has the finances to work on VERTES day to day. The app works as intended, licences and auto-updates keep working, and updates will keep coming — just less often. Questions any time: contact@vertes.co.uk.

2.40Latest26 August 2026

The voice list could come up empty right after updating to 2.39 — two parts of VERTES were loading their shared components at the same moment during start-up, and one of them ended up with a half-loaded copy. Nothing was wrong with your voice model or your install. They are loaded in order now, and the voice list fills in as it always did.

2.3926 August 2026

YouTube downloads work again — YouTube changed how it hands out video data in August and every download started failing with "403 Forbidden" after the first 10-30 MB. VERTES now keeps its downloader up to date by itself, quietly in the background, so a change on YouTube's side stops being your problem.
An interrupted download no longer blocks that video forever — a half-finished file was being resumed against a link that had already expired, which failed every single time afterwards. Leftovers are cleared before each download, so a dropped connection costs you one retry, not that video.
The trial is the whole app now — Strategist, Coach, Marketing, SEO, scheduling and uploading are open during the trial. The VERTES watermark stays on your shorts until you subscribe; nothing else is held back.
Refusals are no longer silent — when the app declined something, the reason never reached the screen: the Coach drew an empty bubble and Marketing sat there loading. Whatever the app answers, you now see it.
On-screen kill reading only when you ask for it — it could switch itself on and read the kill feed across an entire video, which took over half an hour on a long VOD and was never what the buttons said. It is a confirmation step again: your moments are chosen from speech and audio, and the kill feed is checked on those moments only.
No more black windows — the console windows that flashed on screen while VERTES worked are gone.
The AI voice no longer freezes the app while it loads — the first use after opening VERTES takes about half a minute to warm up. That now happens in the background with the voice list saying so, instead of a frozen window and an empty dropdown.
A half-downloaded voice model is recognised as half-downloaded — an interrupted download could leave the app convinced the voice was installed, so it never offered to finish the job and the voices simply never appeared. It now checks what is actually on disk and repairs itself when you press download again.

2.3328 July 2026

Caption styles — one dropdown, four complete looks: Classic (the current style), Diary (the podcast quote look — white caps, the spoken word in red, and the hook as a big quote card), Minimal (clean sans, natural case, soft fades — where short-form is heading), and Chunky (the bold high-energy gaming look). Fonts, colours, animation and hook style switch together; your own font/colour choices still win.
Kill sensors that earn their strictness — before dropping "no kill detected" moments, VERTES now tests its own sensors on your video's loudest windows. A sensor that can't see in dark/suppressed footage softens itself and says so in the log, instead of silently throwing away good clips. Game defaults follow the game type too: killfeed games get full detection, extraction shooters get soft mode.
Spectate filter — kills that appear on screen while you're dead and spectating a teammate are no longer counted as yours.
Captions were 6 seconds late on "Smart (faces)" framing — hooks and captions on face-tracked clips (podcast clips included) now appear right at the start, as designed.
Facecam split with a right-side webcam framed the wrong spot — the gameplay window stayed hard-left, cutting off your gun. It now centres on the action and still avoids the cam.
Re-runs no longer sit on "Starting…" — cached videos jump straight to picking moments, and the progress bar says so.

2.3228 July 2026

Podcast Mode — VERTES now cuts podcasts, not just gameplay. Pick Podcast as the content type (or just tell the AI editor "podcast"), and the whole pipeline switches to speech: every clip is a self-contained thought, the hook quotes the boldest line actually said, and framing follows the speaker.
Cut by topic — type a subject in the new Podcast topic bar ("pricing strategy", "Iran's oil plan") and VERTES finds ONLY the parts of the episode genuinely about it — passing mentions don't count. Leave it empty (or type "viral") and it picks the strongest moments of the whole episode. First run transcribes the episode; after that, new topics on the same episode cut in seconds.
Titles that hear the short — the SEO agent now listens to each short's own audio (voiceovers included) and packages the title around what is actually said, guided by a marketer's playbook and the topics ranking on YouTube right now — instead of labelling clips by their noise level.
Podcasts never pad with noise — if the episode only has 3 genuinely strong on-topic moments, you get 3 honest clips, not 5 with loud-audio filler.
Max length is respected to the second — the payoff-teaser opening is now counted inside your "Max sec", so a 60-second cap can't produce a 63-second file.
"5 shorts, 30-40s" parses right — the shorts count can no longer be mistaken for the clip length in the AI editor.

2.3119 July 2026

Kill-first cutting — on games that print kills on screen (Warzone, Apex, Blood Strike and 40+ more), VERTES now reads the whole video's kill feed and cuts each clip centred on the kill itself — build-up, the kill, a beat after. Close kills merge into one multi-kill clip. No more clips that end four seconds before the kill.
Your deaths are not "kills" — the on-screen reader now tells "KILL CONFIRMED" apart from "KILLED BY…", so a clip is never centred on the moment you died.
The facecam band shows your whole cam — face and setup, like the big channels' shorts, instead of a tight face crop. Sharper too: half the upscaling.
A thumbs-down can't switch off a whole category — disliking a couple of weak kill clips used to teach the app to stop cutting kills entirely. A 👎 now means "bad take", and category changes need a clear pattern.

2.3017 July 2026

Cleaner facecam in split-cam mode — your webcam is now denoised and sharpened before it's scaled up, so a small corner cam looks crisp instead of soft. Works on bar, circle and square.
Gameplay framed on the action — the gameplay half now crops around the centre of the action (your gun and crosshair stay in frame) instead of leaving blurred bars above and below. No blur, all real pixels.
No more double webcam — the gameplay half never shows a second copy of your facecam corner.
Watermark moved to top-right — where YouTube's Shorts buttons don't cover it.

2.2917 July 2026

Your agents always answer in English — the coach and strategist used to reply in whatever language you typed. They now understand you in any language and always answer in English, so the app reads the same for everyone.
Consistent everywhere — the same rule now covers SEO title rewrites and drafted comment replies, which previously had no language rule at all.

2.2817 July 2026

Your agents now DO, they don't just advise — the coach, strategist and analyst read your real retention, work out what holds viewers for each game, and those conclusions go straight into how your next clips are cut (when you cut from my data). No more homework: they tell you what they concluded and what's already applied.
An AI brain you can read — everything your agents conclude is written to a plain folder of notes (open it in Obsidian or any editor). See what your AI believes about your channel — and delete or correct anything you disagree with.
Deeper analytics — VERTES now reads your retention curve, how you hold viewers versus similar videos on YouTube, whether strangers drop earlier than your subscribers, the real search terms bringing people in, subscribers lost (not just gained), and what your viewers actually commented.
Your comments, answered — VERTES drafts a reply to every comment you haven't answered, in your voice. You edit and approve; nothing posts without you.
Every agent got a proper growth playbook — hooks, retention, strategy, repurposing and SEO, aimed at creators rather than generic marketing advice.

2.2716 July 2026

Guided AI setup — just say what you want (e.g. "cut 10 shorts") and VERTES walks you through the rest, one quick question at a time, then makes them. Prefer full control? Flip to Manual mode anytime.
It understands you now — say it however you like: "portrait", "9:16", "phone format", "best frags", "funny fails", "kills only". It even knows what a great clip looks like per game genre (FPS, MOBA, MMO, extraction, horror…).
On-screen kill detection — VERTES now sees your gunfire. Muzzle-flash detection works on every shooter, including Escape from Tarkov (no kill text needed); for games that show a kill feed (Warzone, Apex, CoD, Fortnite, Valorant…) it can also read the "eliminated / knocked" text for exact kills. Ask for best kills and you get kills, not loud filler.
Re-frame any short — made a clip full-screen but want it as a facecam split (or the reverse)? Say "make short 3 full vertical" or use the new ⛶ button. Change the look without redoing the timing.
"Surprise me" captions now rotate colours AND fonts line-by-line, like the big podcast channels.
Facebook added to your Channel Branding badges.
60+ games recognised — every popular shooter (CoD, Valorant, Fortnite, Apex, Battlefield, Delta Force, Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, Tarkov, Gray Zone, Hunt…).
Sharper facecam split — and your webcam no longer appears twice in the frame.
"Best kills" stays on kills — no more padding a kills request with loud non-combat moments.
The progress bar now stops when a job is done (no endless pulsing), and re-cutting a short keeps its framing instead of falling back to full-screen.

2.2614 July 2026

Caption a batch — "Caption selected" now works on several clips at once.
YouTube upload works smoothly once your channel is connected.
Maximising the window now keeps your Windows taskbar visible.

2.2514 July 2026

Shorts open with the payoff — a ~2s preview of the best moment first, to hook viewers. Works best on action / kill-focused clips (Clips-from: Action, focus: best kills).
Hook text now actually shows — the "wait for it"-style hook was being cut off on clips taken from mid-video; fixed.
One-click Start — set your options and just hit Start; no need to type.
"Give me the best shorts" — VERTES decides how many to make instead of a fixed number.
Unique titles per batch — no more ten shorts all named the same thing; each gets its own SEO title.
Fine-tune any short by chat: "short 4, use 32–35s as the opening, add hook: wait for it".

2.2214 July 2026

Batch a whole folder — point VERTES at a folder of VODs and it makes Shorts from every one, remembering what it already did. Leave it running overnight.
Auto-censor swearing — optional brand-safe mode mutes swear words automatically, for monetisation-friendly clips.
Smarter moment picking — detects genuine hype (yelling / big reactions) and skips menu/inventory screens, so you get real gameplay, not someone chatting over a menu.
Crash / power-loss resume — if a run is interrupted, just re-run the same video: it skips everything it already did and finishes the rest, instead of starting over.
More reliable high-resolution YouTube downloads (auto-sets up what's needed to avoid throttling).

2.17 – 2.1813 July 2026

AMD & Intel support — GPU transcription (Vulkan) and hardware encoding on AMD/Intel, shown correctly in Setup — not just NVIDIA.
More reliable YouTube downloads for long VODs, and a cleaner clip picker (quality over quantity).
First Testers & Partners credit — early supporters featured right inside the app.

2.1613 July 2026

Browse Twitch VODs in-app — pull your past broadcasts straight from Twitch, no API key needed.
Clear gallery without deleting — tidy the clip list while keeping the files, plus multi-select delete.
Friendlier status messages on AMD/Intel machines.

2.1513 July 2026

Fixed a rare freeze while downloading long videos.
Gentler zoom on the face-cam split layout.
The Setup YouTube tile now jumps straight to the connect wizard.

2.12 – 2.1413 July 2026

Hardware video encoding on AMD (AMF) & Intel (QSV) — VERTES now runs fast well beyond NVIDIA cards.
Guest passes for invited testers.
Built-in diagnostics log so support can help you faster.

2.8 – 2.1112 July 2026

Fixed clips that wouldn't play in some media players.
New "Crop to fill" vertical framing — full-frame 9:16 with no bars.
Fixed downloading long, multi-session Twitch VODs and a YouTube connection error.
Fixed a crash on video titles with non-Latin characters (Cyrillic, CJK, emoji).

2.6 – 2.712 July 2026

Claude-powered moment picking — bring your own Anthropic key for smarter, more accurate clip selection (video editing always stays on your PC).
Cleaner social-badge layout and a fixed YouTube connect flow.

2.2 – 2.512 July 2026

In-app Discord, Feedback and Website buttons.
Signed automatic updates with tamper protection.
Snappier interface — no more click lag.
Professional new sidebar icons and a smoother installer.

Foundation — v1.x · 10–12 July 2026

1.0 – 2.1July 2026

The core studio — drop a long video (or paste a link) and VERTES finds, cuts and ranks the best moments into vertical Shorts.
Conversational AI Editor — just describe what you want; refine by number.
Strategist & Content Coach — niches, hooks, scripts, best posting times and channel feedback.
Auto captions (14 styles), channel branding, YouTube upload & scheduling.
Automatic GPU model selection and the single Founder plan.