Njord Player 3 (Preview)

Njord Player 3 is a ground-up rewrite of the Player, built for the debriefs that ask the most of it. Documents with a lot of parallel video streams and several boats — the ones where version 2 starts to feel heavy — run far better in version 3. It also plays 360 footage straight from cameras that version 2 needs a vendor export step for, and its video export is faster, more reliable, and no longer limited to one file at a time.

It is a preview. It installs alongside Njord Player 2 rather than replacing it, and it never writes over your .sail2 documents: version 3 saves .sail3 only, so editing one opened from .sail2 produces a new file and leaves the original as it was. It saves a .sail3 document in place, as you would expect. Njord Player 2 opens .sail3 as well, so documents move both ways. Version 3 itself is early software: expect rough edges, and expect it to change.

Download Njord Player 3 and read the changelog →

Available for macOS and Windows.

What is new compared to Player 2

Only features that already work in the preview are listed here.

• Speed, on the documents that need it. Everything version 2 can put on screen, version 3 can too — the difference is how it copes when there is a lot of it. Several video streams playing at once, a map and charts alongside them, multiple boats drawn in each: that is where version 2 begins to labour and version 3 stays responsive. It is lighter on memory as well, and quicker to start, though neither is what you notice first.
• 360° video, including two-hemisphere cameras. Equirectangular 360 footage plays as it does in version 2, and version 3 adds cameras that record the sphere as two fisheye hemispheres, stitching them as it plays: the GoPro Max, the DJI Osmo 360, and the Insta360 X4 and X5. Drag inside the pane to look around and change the field of view. In version 2 these need a vendor export step first.
• Export is faster and more reliable, and it is no longer tied to a single file. You select a time range and export the whole media group across it, so a stretch recorded as several files — GoPro chapter files, or a camera restarted mid-race — comes out as one continuous clip with the data overlay burned in throughout. Gaps in coverage export as black with the overlay still running, so exported time stays true to the timeline. Exports are queued and run in the background while you keep working. See Exporting Media with Data Overlays.
• More panes in a single window. A window can be split as many times as you need, with each pane showing any media source, the map, a chart, or a large-figure Number readout — not just two side by side. See Arranging panes below, and Multi-Window and Multi-Screen for spreading a debrief across screens.

Editing and saving

Version 3 edits documents as well as plays them. Add media, remove it, and organise it into groups; correct how a file's timestamp is read and which time zone it is in; nudge a media time offset; rotate video; and add or delete comments — with undo and redo, saved into the document. Locate… points version 3 at a media file that has moved.

You can work in version 3 alone, whether your data comes from log files or from Njord Analytics:

• From log files: create a document with File ▸ New Document (⌘/Ctrl + N), or use one you already have, and load your boat's logs into it — see Loading data from log files below. Add your media and save.
• From Njord Analytics: the Njord Player button on an event's date view downloads a document for that event, with boat data, race structure and comments already in it and an empty media group waiting for your footage. Open it in version 3, add your media, and save. The download dialog starts on .sail3, which is the format to keep: version 3 saves a .sail3 document in place.

A new document is saved with Save As, with or without data in it.

Loading data from log files

Edit ▸ Load Data… opens the Load Data window for the open document. Loading works as it does in version 2:

1. Sign in to your Njord account and choose your boat. The window shows the boat's Njord Player license, which has to cover the data you load.
2. Add files with Add Files… or by dragging them onto the window. Version 3 reads most of the log formats Njord Analytics does, including files inside ZIP archives. Each file shows what it is, the time range it covers and its sample rate, and whether it is read as your boat's data, wind, or extra metrics, which you can change.
3. Adjust what you need. Options… on a file sets its time zone, date format and sample rates, as version 2's file settings do. Add step… under Process calculates a metric, drops metrics, or trims the data before it is loaded. Any warning or error about the files is listed in full, with a Copy button for a support request.
4. Load Data adds the data to the document. Each load is recorded against your boat's license, as in version 2.

Loading into a document that already holds data adds to it, so you can load a second day, or a second boat, into the same document. Edit ▸ Undo takes a load back out.

New interaction concepts

A few things work differently enough from version 2 to be worth spelling out.

Arranging panes

A window in version 3 is a grid you build as you go, rather than a choice between fixed layouts. Version 2 gives you at most two views side by side; version 3 lets you keep splitting.

Every pane carries its own controls in its header:

• ⬍ splits it top and bottom, ⬌ splits it left and right. Any pane can be split again, so a window holds as many views as the screen will usefully take.
• The content picker assigns that pane any media source in the document, the map, a chart, or a Number readout. Panes are interchangeable — nothing is fixed to a particular spot.
• ⚙ holds that pane's own settings: which metrics it shows before and after the gun, whether the picture is fitted or cropped to the pane, and what the map follows.
• 🗗 opens this pane's view in a window of its own.
• ✖ closes the pane, and the space returns to its neighbour.
• Drag a pane's header onto another pane to swap the two. The layout stays put; the contents trade places, which is the quick way to promote a camera to the big pane without rebuilding the grid.

Each window keeps its own arrangement, and the whole set of windows comes back the next time you open the app.

Zooming and panning the timeline

Version 2 can zoom the timeline to a race, but only from the menu or with a keyboard shortcut. Version 3 lets you zoom and pan it freely, with the mouse or trackpad.

• Scroll or pinch over the timeline to zoom. It zooms around the pointer, so put the cursor on the moment you care about and it stays under the cursor as the view expands.
• Shift-scroll, or a horizontal two-finger swipe on a trackpad, pans left and right.
• Drag anywhere on the strip to scrub, exactly as before. Scrubbing stays the plain, unmodified gesture — everything else asks for a modifier key.

Selecting a time range with Shift-drag

A time range is a first-class thing in version 3. It is what an export uses, and it is how you mark a stretch of the day you want to work with.

• Shift-drag across the timeline to select a range. This always starts a fresh selection, even if you begin the drag on top of an existing one.
• Drag either edge of the selected band to adjust where it starts or ends. No modifier needed — the handles are right where your hand is already aiming.
• Alt-drag inside the band to slide the whole range without changing its length. This one needs Alt on purpose: a selection can cover most of the visible timeline, and a plain drag there needs to keep scrubbing.
• Press Escape to clear the selection.

When you open the export dialog with a range selected, the export is pre-filled with it.

Keyboard

Holding an arrow key repeats the step. Version 2's [ and ] also work for previous and next clip, but O and P are the bindings the menus name, because the bracket keys need a modifier on several keyboard layouts.

Where the settings are

Settings that apply everywhere, rather than to one pane, live in their own window — Njord Player ▸ Settings… on macOS, File ▸ Settings on Windows, or the ⚙ at the right-hand end of the status bar, which is also where this window's own options are:

• Metric values — whether a number is interpolated between the samples either side of the playhead, damped over a window you choose, or held at the last recorded sample. This is one setting with visible reach: it governs the metrics overlay, the Number view, and the line a chart draws, so the value at the playhead always sits on the curve beside it. A chart's own ⚙ can additionally draw the recorded samples faintly under a damped line.
• Boat colours — the default colour for the primary boat and the next two selection slots. A boat that carries its own colour in the document keeps it.

What is not in the preview yet

• No download from Njord Analytics inside the app. Version 3 loads log files from disk, but cannot yet fetch an event's data from your account or refresh it, and the online sharing features are not there yet. Downloading the document from Analytics in your browser works in the meantime — see Editing and saving above. Loading Data covers the in-app download in version 2.
• Some log formats cannot be loaded yet. Version 3 reads most of the formats Njord Analytics does, and says so when it cannot read a file; load those in version 2, or upload them to Analytics and download the document.
• Some of version 2's load options are missing: choosing which NMEA source a metric comes from, and the separate wind source control. A wind file loaded as a file of its own works.
• Version 3 saves .sail3 only. A document opened from .sail2 offers Save As rather than Save, and the .sail2 file itself is never modified. A few .sail2 documents cannot be saved at all, and version 3 greys out both Save and Save As for those.
• Some views are still simpler than their version 2 counterparts — the map has no background tiles, for instance.

Staying up to date

Njord Player 3 checks for updates itself and will offer them as they are released. Because this is a preview, updates come often, and taking them is the easiest way to stay clear of bugs that are already fixed.

A note for Windows users

Windows does not always include an HEVC video decoder, and a lot of action-camera footage is HEVC. If you open a document with video that Windows cannot decode, Player 3 tells you so and links you straight to the free decoder in the Microsoft Store. Installing it once fixes it for good.

Telling us what you find

Preview feedback is genuinely useful, especially crashes and footage that will not play. Email support@sailnjord.com, and if you can, say which camera the video came from and attach a screenshot — the window title bar shows the exact version number, which tells us a great deal.