Evidor
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Media & Import

Evidor plays and edits whatever the built-in Chromium decoders can handle, and transcribes the rest through the bundled FFmpeg. This page covers what imports, what does not, and how to deal with both.

Supported formats

The following container and codec combinations import directly and play back in the preview without any conversion:

  • Video - MP4 (H.264, H.265, AV1), WebM (VP8, VP9, AV1), OGG (Theora), M4V
  • Audio - MP3, WAV, OGG Vorbis, M4A (AAC), FLAC, Opus
  • Images - PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP, GIF

Formats that get transcoded

Files with the following extensions are not natively playable, but Evidor offers to transcode them to MP4 on import:

  • MOV, MKV, AVI, WMV, FLV, MXF, R3D, BRAW, ARI, DNG, M2TS, MTS, VOB, F4V, 3GP

When you drag one of these into the project, a dialog appears: "This file uses a format the browser cannot play directly. Evidor can transcode it to MP4. This may take a while." Click Convert to start. A progress overlay appears while FFmpeg runs. When it finishes, the transcoded file appears in Project media with a .mp4 name.

Transcoding is lossy The transcoded copy is encoded with H.264 at CRF 23, which is visually near-lossless but not mathematically lossless. If you need frame-perfect colour, transcode your footage to ProRes or DNxHR before importing it into Evidor.

Importing

There are three ways to bring media into a project:

  1. Click the + button in the Project media panel.
  2. Drag files directly from File Explorer onto the panel.
  3. Drag files onto a specific track lane to import and place them in one step.

Duplicate imports are detected automatically. If you import the same file twice, Evidor keeps the first copy and ignores the second. The check compares the file name, size, and last-modified timestamp.

A single project supports up to 999 media items, and a project file can be up to 2 GB.

Images

Images are treated as still clips. When you place one on the timeline, its default duration is 5 seconds. You can change that default in Settings under the New projects tab.

Because images have no inherent duration, you can extend them along the timeline as far as you like by dragging the right edge. Evidor does not loop or repeat the image, it just shows the same frame for the entire duration.

Proxies

Large source files, especially 4K or higher, can strain playback. A proxy is a smaller, lower-resolution copy that Evidor plays in place of the original while you edit. On export, the original is used, so the output quality is never affected.

Proxy generation is controlled from the File menu:

  • Auto-proxy on import - when checked, any file above 200 MB gets a proxy generated automatically in the background.
  • Generate proxies now - generates a proxy for every video that does not have one yet.
  • Use proxies for playback - switches playback to the proxy files. If no proxies exist, this is disabled.

Proxy resolution is set in Settings and defaults to 360p. The proxy lives only inside Evidor's temporary storage, so it never clogs up your project folder.

Proxy badge Media items with a proxy show a small PROXY badge in their type line in the media grid.

Relinking missing files

If a source file is moved, renamed, or deleted after import, Evidor marks the media item as offline and shows a red banner at the top of the Project media panel: "1 file offline" with a Locate files button.

Clicking that button opens a file picker. Select one or more replacement files, and Evidor matches them to the missing entries by file name first, then by name-without-extension. Any clip on the timeline that uses the missing media updates immediately to the relinked file.

If a file cannot be relinked, clips that reference it will show a placeholder in the preview and will be skipped during export. The project still opens and saves normally.

Media context menu

Right-clicking a media thumbnail opens a small menu:

  • Add to timeline - places the media at the playhead, asking where it should go if there is no compatible track
  • Rename - changes the display name shown in the panel and on clip labels. The underlying file is not renamed on disk.
  • Remove from project - removes the media. If any timeline clips use it, Evidor asks first, then removes those clips too.

Recording voiceover

The microphone button in the Project media panel records audio from your default input device. When you click it, the button turns red and starts pulsing. Recording begins immediately at the current playhead position, so you can use it to dub over a specific section of a video.

Click the button again to stop. The recording is imported as a new audio asset named "Voiceover HH-MM-SS.webm", and Evidor asks whether to place it on the timeline at the position where you started recording.

Storage notes

Evidor does not copy your media into the project folder. The .evi project file contains only the timeline, clip settings, and a small manifest. On save, media is embedded in the file for portability, but the original files stay where they are on disk.

This means that if you want to move a project to another computer, saving the .evi file is enough. Everything the project needs, including the actual media, is inside it.