Help & documentation

What's new in ADC 4

ADC 4 is a ground-up rebuild of Ovo Logger. If you're coming from ADC 3 or the classic Ovo Logger 7.1, the workflow will feel familiar — but there's a lot that's new.

• A modern, themeable interface organized into four pages — Record, Study Setup, Analysis, and Configuration — with full light and dark modes and keyboard access throughout.
• Local AI analysis that runs entirely on your machine: per-session summaries, a plain-language findings report with clickable evidence, a grounded question-and-answer surface, and an AI study designer. Nothing leaves your network.
• Self-guided studies via the Participant Station and task-runner — participants can walk the tasks themselves, with timing and questionnaires delivered inline.
• Remote observers who take timestamped notes from any device, with an optional secure relay for observers outside the lab network.
• Modern questionnaires (including SUS and single-ease questions), highlight clips with a background render queue, multi-source composited review, and migrated lab hardware control.

Quick starts

Five short paths through the app. Pick the one that matches what you're trying to do — each links into the fuller reference.

Record something right now

You don't need a project to capture a recording. This is the fastest way to try Ovo Logger or grab a quick screen capture.

1. Open Ovo Logger. On the welcome screen, choose Record without a project (standalone).
2. On the Record page, pick a Recording setup. The first time, the default “This screen + webcam” setup is ready to go.
3. Click Start. The window minimizes out of the way so it isn't captured; the live monitor shows what's being recorded.
4. When you're done, click Stop. Your MP4 is saved to your Videos folder.
5. Click Review to play it back, scrub the timeline, and search any on-screen text or speech.

Set up and run a moderated study

A study lives in a project — a single .adc4 file plus its media folders. You (the moderator) sit with the participant and run the session.

1. From the project menu (top-left), choose New project and pick a location. Ovo Logger creates the project file and its folders.
2. Go to Study setup. Add your participants and your scenarios (the tasks people will attempt). Optionally add questionnaires and Quicklog tags for fast note-taking.
3. Return to Record. Choose the recording setup for your room, then the participant for this session. If that person already has recordings in the study, it says so under the picker — useful for catching the wrong pick, and expected when you're running someone a second time.
4. Press Start Recording when the session begins. The left column becomes your logging workspace: set the current task as each one begins, and type to log observations as they happen.
5. Stop when finished. The session is filed into the project automatically. Open Analysis to review it.

Run a self-guided (unmoderated) study

In a self-guided study the participant walks the tasks on their own. Ovo Logger presents the protocol, times each task, and can collect questionnaires — no moderator required.

1. Set up the project and scenarios as usual. For each scenario, write clear instructions and, for web tasks, a starting URL.
2. Open the Participant Station from the command bar at the top of the window.
3. Choose Run study, pick the participant, then either Copy participant link or Open on this machine.
4. Start recording so task boundaries land on the session clock. The participant advances through the tasks themselves; if you've enabled self-scoring, they mark each task's outcome.
5. Stop and review — the participant's timeline appears alongside any observer timelines, labeled self-reported.

Review a session and make highlights

The review workspace plays a session back with a searchable timeline of clicks, keystrokes, speech, and notes — and lets you clip the moments that matter.

1. Open Analysis → Sessions. Pick a session from the left rail; it loads in place.
2. Play and scrub the timeline. Search spoken words or on-screen text and jump straight to the moment they appear.
3. At the start of a good moment click Mark in, play to the end, then Mark out.
4. Click Save clip. The clip renders in the background and appears in the Highlights list — click it to play once it's ready.

Generate an AI report

With the AI Pack installed and licensed, Ovo Logger can read a study and draft a stakeholder-ready findings report — entirely on your machine.

1. With a project open and sessions recorded, open Analysis → AI findings (or the ✨ AI Report button in the review workspace).
2. Click Generate. Ovo Logger summarizes each session, then writes a plain-language report grounded in what it can verify.
3. Every claim carries a citation — click one to jump to that exact moment in the recording.
4. Use 💬 Ask to pose a specific question; answers are drawn only from your study's data and cite their evidence.

Projects

A project is the container for an entire study — its participants, tasks, recordings, notes, questionnaires, highlights, and analysis, all in one place.

What a project is

A project is a single .adc4 file plus a folder of media beside it. The .adc4 is a self-contained database — there's nothing to install to open it, so lab machines need no separate database engine.

Everything about a study lives in the project: the participants and tasks you define, every recorded session, observer and participant notes, task timings, questionnaire responses, highlight clips, and any AI outputs. On disk you'll find:

• the .adc4 project file,
• a Tapes folder holding the recordings, and
• a Highlights folder holding rendered clips.

The self-contained unit you back up or hand to a colleague is the whole project folder — keep the .adc4 and its media folders together.

Creating, opening & recent projects

1. From the project menu at the top-left, choose New project (Ctrl+N) and pick a location. Ovo Logger creates the .adc4 and its folders, seeded with sensible defaults — placeholder participants and task slots, and a set of Quicklog tags — that you can edit or replace.
   If you keep all your studies in one place, set that folder once under Configuration → Studies. New project then simply asks for a name and creates the study there, with a Choose location… button for the occasional one that belongs somewhere else.
2. Open project (Ctrl+O) opens an existing .adc4.
3. The welcome screen lists your recent projects for one-click reopening. Ovo Logger does not reopen a study by itself — it always starts at the welcome screen, so which study you are working in is always a choice you made.

A study can't be created inside another study. If you pick a location that is already a study folder — easily done when a Save As dialog is showing you one — Ovo Logger says so and asks for somewhere else, rather than quietly nesting one study in another where the two are almost impossible to tell apart afterwards.

Projects vs standalone recording

You can also record without a project (see Quick starts). The difference:

• Standalone saves a plain MP4 with sidecar files for its notes and transcripts — good for a quick capture with no study around it.
• In a project, a finished recording is filed automatically as a session, joined to a participant, tasks, questionnaires, and everything else that makes it a study — and it's available to review and analyze.

The welcome screen offers both paths, so you're never locked in.

Moving & archiving a project

Because a project is just a folder — the .adc4 alongside its Tapes and Highlights folders — moving, copying, or archiving a study is simply moving that folder. Everything travels together.

Unused recordings

Everything a study records goes into its Tapes folder. Occasionally a recording ends up there without becoming a session — an attempt that was abandoned, or one whose entry was lost. Those files aren't referenced by anything, but they still take up space, and they still travel with the folder when you archive it.

When a study has any, the Analysis page shows an Unused recordings entry with the count and the total size. Open it to see the list — each file with its size and when it was written — and remove the ones you don't need.

• They go to the Recycle Bin, not straight to deletion, so a mistake is recoverable.
• An unused recording is usually the remains of an abandoned attempt — but it can also be a real session whose entry was lost. If you aren't sure, play the file before removing it.
• Nothing a session actually uses is ever listed, so you can't remove a recording the study depends on.
• The entry doesn't appear at all while you're recording, because the session being captured is written into that same folder and doesn't belong to a session until it's filed.

Projects & app updates

Projects migrate forward automatically. The first time you open an older project in a newer build, Ovo Logger quietly upgrades it in place — you don't do anything.

• Migration is forward-only: once a project has been opened and upgraded by a newer build, it won't reopen in an older one. Keep the lab's machines on the same version.
• Updating the app never touches your projects — they live outside the program folder, so an update replaces application files only. Your studies, settings, and license are untouched.

Study setup

Everything you define before you record — who you're testing, the tasks they'll attempt, what you'll ask them, and how designs compare. The Study setup page is a hub of editors.

Participants

Add the people — or personas — in your study. Each participant has a name and an optional rich-text profile (background, device, recruiting notes — anything you want on hand during a session).

• Names stay plain text; profiles support formatting — headings, lists, emphasis.
• On the Record page you choose the participant for each session from this list.

Scenarios (tasks)

Scenarios are the tasks participants attempt — and the scenario is the thing that gets timed during a session. Each has:

• a title and rich-text instructions,
• an optional success criterion, and
• for web tasks, a starting URL so the task-runner can offer an “Open the starting point” button.

Resolutions — Success, Success with difficulty, Failure, Gave up, Skipped — are the outcomes used when scoring time-on-task. The Task outcomes editor lets you rename them or bring your own vocabulary (a 5-point scale, a protocol's use error / close call), and each outcome carries two independent facts: its score (does it count as completed — blank means excluded from the statistics) and its problem severity (did a usability problem occur, 1–3). The two are separate on purpose: Success with difficulty counts as completed and flags a real problem. The AI report reads both — never the outcome's wording — so your vocabulary can say anything.

Quicklog tags

Quicklogs are single-key tags (A–Z) for the codes you reach for most while taking notes. Give each a label; the letter is assigned for you. During a session, one tap drops a tagged marker — fast coding without typing a word.

Questionnaires

Build questionnaires as sections, each independently deliverable — a pre-study section, one attached to a specific task, or a post-study section.

• All the classic question types are available: instructions, short answer, essay, bulleted, multiple choice, Likert, ranking, and matrix.
• Standard instruments are built in — add a SUS section in one click, and attach a single-ease question (SEQ) to a task.
• Each section's Ordering decides when the participant sees it: Pre-study (once at the start, before task 1 — consent, background, eligibility), Post-task (right after one particular task, every time it's run — where a single-ease question goes), or Post-study (once at the end — SUS and wrap-up). The editor explains each as you pick it.
• A post-task section asks which task it follows. Until you answer, it's delivered at the end of the session with the post-study questions — the editor says so, because a study in that state looks like it's working.
• Deliver questionnaires from the Participant Station, or let the task-runner deliver them inline during a self-guided run.
• View results per section — every question's answer distribution as counted bars, average scores, ranking positions, and the written answers in full. Export to CSV for your own tools; SUS and single-ease scores are computed for you and also feed the AI report.

A/B treatments & variants

For comparative studies, define the designs you're comparing — each a name and a base URL — plus per-task URL overrides where a task differs between designs.

• Choose between-subjects (each participant sees one design) or within-subjects (each participant sees both). Ovo Logger can auto-counterbalance the order per participant so the sequence is balanced across your sample.
• Each recorded session is tagged with the design it used, and the comparative results (times, success, questionnaire scores by design) feed the analysis.

Study Designer (AI)

Describe your study in plain language — the product, what you want to learn, and who your users are — and the Study Designer drafts a plan: tasks with success criteria, a screener, Quicklog labels, and a moderator guide.

1. Open the Study Designer from the Study setup page and fill in the brief.
2. Review and edit the draft it produces — tasks, tags, screener, and guide are all editable.
3. Click Apply to project to write the tasks, tags, and study metadata. Nothing is written until you apply — you stay in control.

Recording setups

A recording setup is a named, reusable capture configuration. Configure your room's cameras, screens, and audio once, then just pick the setup on the Record page for every session.

What a recording setup is

Setups are stored at the machine level — not inside a project — because lab hardware is configured once and reused across every study on that machine. You create and edit them on the Configuration page, under Recording Setups — that is the only place setups are edited. The Record page just picks one from the list.

• There are two kinds: composite (one blended picture) and multi-source (several independent feeds).
• On first run, Ovo Logger seeds a “This screen + webcam” composite setup so you can record immediately.

Composite setups

A composite setup records one blended picture: your screen, optionally with a webcam picture-in-picture, plus an audio device. It's the common setup for a single-machine session.

• Choose the webcam's corner, size, and opacity for the picture-in-picture.
• Pick the audio input; a level meter beside the preview confirms the mic is live.

Multi-source setups

A multi-source setup records several feeds at once — for example a screen feed, a room camera, and a scan-converted device — each to its own file, on a shared timebase so they line up perfectly in review.

• Add a row per source; each row has its own video device, optional audio, and (for capture devices) an explicit capture mode.
• In review, a multi-source session plays as a composited layout you can arrange.

Each source with audio also has an input level slider, directly under its audio device. It sets the capture device's own level — the software equivalent of turning up the preamp — rather than amplifying the recording afterwards, so it can't clip what was captured.

• It starts unset, and unset means Ovo Logger leaves your levels alone. Until you move it, it just shows where the device currently sits — a window onto the hardware, not a change to it.
• It's a Windows device setting, so it affects other applications and persists after Ovo Logger closes. The same as turning a knob on the rack, because that's what it is.
• Some devices — a digital capture card's audio pin, often — have no adjustable level. The row says so rather than leaving you dragging something that does nothing.

Each row also has an Encoding… button, next to the capture mode. Most rigs never need it: by default Ovo Logger picks a bitrate from the capture size and frame rate. Open it when you want to set one yourself for a particular feed.

• Variable bitrate (VBR) spends what the picture needs, up to the maximum you set. Best general choice — a still screen costs almost nothing, a busy one gets the bits.
• Constant bitrate (CBR) holds the same rate whether the picture is still or busy. Choose it when predictable file sizes matter more than efficiency. Its ceiling is its average, so there's only one number to set.
• Leave a box empty to keep the automatic value for that number alone.
• When a source has a budget set, the row says so underneath the button — so a hand-set bitrate is never something you have to go looking for.

It's per source on purpose: capture hardware differs more than you'd expect. On one rig, measured in the same hour at the same resolution and settings, one capture device produced roughly a third the bitrate of another — at better picture quality. If one feed's files look larger than they should, this is the control for it.

Making a test recording

The live preview and level meter tell you a device is connected. A test recording tells you it records, at a level worth keeping — which is the question worth answering before a participant arrives.

• In a multi-source setup, each source row has its own Test recording button under its preview. You test one source at a time, because that's how the question comes: whether this camera's microphone is recording says nothing about the next one's.
• A composite setup blends its screen and webcam into a single file, so it has one Make test recording button beside Save.

Either way it works the same:

• The setup is saved first, then recorded exactly as a real session would record it — same device, same capture mode, same encoder and bitrate. A test that worked differently wouldn't tell you anything about the real thing.
• It runs for ten seconds and stops on its own, so walking away from one is harmless. The button becomes Stop test to end it sooner. Speak normally while it runs — that's what you'll be listening back to.
• The clip plays back in its own window with ordinary playback controls.
• The clip is deleted when you close that window. It isn't filed into a study and it doesn't go to the Recycle Bin. If a level needs adjusting, change it and test again.

If your licence doesn't cover recording, the test clip carries the same trial watermark a real recording would — it shows you what the product would actually produce.

Using the screen as a source

Any source row can capture “This PC's screen” instead of a device — useful in a multi-source setup that combines the screen with camera feeds. The screen source captures the primary monitor.

Encoders & quality

Ovo Logger detects the hardware video encoders available on the machine and defaults to the best one, falling back to software encoding when none is present. The active encoder is shown in the setup.

• Pick a quality level — Low, Medium, or High — to trade file size against fidelity.

The virtual camera

A composite setup can also expose its blended picture as a virtual webcam, so you can select it as your camera in your web-conferencing app and share the composited feed live.

• The first time you enable it, a one-time setup step registers the virtual camera — the only step that asks for elevated permission.
• The virtual camera is not a licensed feature.

Live device preview

While building a multi-source setup, each source row shows a live thumbnail of the chosen device — so you can confirm you grabbed the right camera or capture device before you record. A device can only be previewed in one place at a time, and previews release as you switch rows.

A/V hardware tips

• Set explicit modes for capture devices. Professional capture devices often default to a low or mismatched capture mode. For those, set an explicit resolution and frame rate on the source row rather than relying on the driver default.
• A live pipeline isn't proof of signal. Some capture devices deliver a frame even with no input connected, so a session that looks like it's running may have no real signal. The per-source preview is the true signal check.
• Keep per-source resolution sane. A very high capture resolution from a scan-converter can overwhelm a shared hardware encoder and starve the other sources. 1080p is plenty for most feeds.

Running a session

Everything that happens on the Record page while a study is live — capturing the session, timing tasks, taking notes, and bringing in observers and participants.

The Record page & live monitor

The Record page is the home base for a live session. The left column follows the order of the daily loop: choose the participant, confirm the recording setup, and press Start. The right column is the live monitor — a preview of what's being captured, plus a running readout.

• Recording setup — the named capture configuration for your room. The Record page only picks one, and a short summary flags anything that would stop you recording. Creating and editing setups lives on the Configuration page under Recording Setups — configuring capture hardware is a setup-day job, kept out of the page you work in during a session.
• Live monitor — shows the composited preview (or a tile per source for multi-source setups), audio level meters, and a capturing at N fps · grab · write readout that tells you the capture is keeping up.
• The left column changes when you press Start. Setup, participant and output collapse to a single line naming what is recording — you can't change them mid-session anyway — and the freed space becomes your logging workspace: current task with time-on-task, a note box, your tag chips, and a running log of the session. Press Stop and the column turns back. See Taking notes & Quicklogs.
• Observers, Participant Station and Lab Controls sit in the command bar at the top of the window, so they're reachable from any page and at any moment. They stay available during recording.

Checking cameras & levels before you record

The live monitor doesn't wait for Start. As soon as a recording setup is selected, the Record page opens that setup's cameras, capture cards and microphones and shows them live — so you can aim a camera, confirm a capture card actually has signal, and set the input gain with a participant in the chair and nothing yet written to disk. Pressing Start hands the same devices straight to the recorder.

• Picture — each source shows its live feed. A card with no signal reads black; that is the check, not a fault.
• Level — the meter beside each preview is the real input, and the slider sets the capture device's own input gain. Speak at conversational volume and aim for the green band, with peaks short of the top.
• Composite setups preview the webcam and microphone; the screen is added when recording starts.

Choosing the participant & timing tasks

The participant is fixed for a recording — pick them before you start. Tasks are the scenarios you defined in Study setup, and time-on-task is measured as each task runs.

In a moderated study, note-takers time the tasks from their console: switching the current task stamps a boundary on the recording clock. Every note that observer takes is tagged with whichever task was active at that moment, so time-on-task and observations line up automatically. In a self-guided study, the participant's own Start task presses create the timeline instead.

Taking notes & Quicklogs

You log where you already are. Press Start and the Record page's left column becomes your logging workspace — no separate window to find, no button to press before you can type.

Just start typing. The moment your first character lands, the time is caught and shown beside the box (⏱ 03:42). Finish the sentence at your own pace and press Enter — the note is filed at the moment you started typing, which is when the behaviour happened, not when you found the words. Esc throws the entry away.

• Quicklogs — press \ and then a letter to log that code instantly. The hint line turns green while it's waiting for the letter. If the letter isn't mapped to anything yet, Ovo Logger offers to name it there and then, and files the observation at the moment you pressed the key — so growing your coding vocabulary mid-session costs you nothing.
• Tag chips — the same codes as buttons. Either way, a quicklog files immediately: on its own if the note box is empty, and carrying your note if you were part-way through one. There is nothing further to press. The note keeps the moment you started typing; a quicklog on its own is stamped as you press it.
• Current task — the picker at the top of the column. Changing it stamps a task boundary on your timeline and starts the time-on-task readout beside it. Every note you take is tagged with whichever task was active.
• The session log beneath shows what has happened, oldest first, and remote observers' notes appear in it too, attributed by name — so the person running the session can see all of the logging, not just their own half.
• Made a mistake? Double-click your note in the log to fix its wording, or right-click it to edit, change or clear its tag, or delete it — mid-session, before it's filed. The note's time never changes: when it happened is a fact. Only your own notes are editable here; a remote observer's line is theirs.

Marking highlights live

You don't have to wait until review to capture a good moment. While recording, use the highlight controls to mark in at the start of a moment and mark out at the end. The clip is queued and renders later in the background, then appears in the Highlights list in the review workspace.

Remote note-takers: the Observer Console

Observers on any device — a phone, a laptop, another PC — can take timestamped notes into the same session. Click Observers to show the join details.

1. Click Observers. Ovo Logger shows a join URL, a numeric PIN, and a QR code with the PIN pre-filled.
2. An observer scans the QR code (or opens the URL and enters the PIN), types their name, and joins.
3. They see a big Mark button, tag chips, and a note box. Notes are timestamped on the server against the recording clock — client clocks are never trusted, and notes are back-dated to when the observer started typing.

Observer notes are attributed by name, color-coded in the review timeline's Notes lane, and searchable. Notes are only accepted while recording.

The Participant Station & task-runner

The Participant Station is where you hand the session over. Pick the participant, choose what goes on their device, and the station shows you the running order they'll actually see — tasks and questionnaires in sequence, composed from your study.

In the task-runner, the participant walks the study protocol on their own — one task at a time, with your instructions and a “Open the starting point” button for web tasks. Each Start task stamps a boundary on the recording clock, and any per-task or post-study questionnaires (such as a single-ease question or SUS) are delivered inline between tasks.

On the participant's device offers only what your study can actually produce:

• Tasks and questionnaires — the full self-guided study.
• Tasks only — for a study with no questionnaires, or when you're handing them out yourself.
• Questionnaires only — you moderate and read the tasks aloud, and their device carries just the questionnaires. Note that after-task questionnaires can't be delivered this way: each one follows a task boundary their device never sees. The station says so, and strikes them out of the running order, when your study has any.

Participant marks their own outcomes asks them how each task went. This adds their answers — you and any observers still keep your own task timelines and score independently, which is what makes inter-rater time-on-task possible.

If a study has neither tasks nor questionnaires there's nothing to hand over, and the station points you at Study Setup or Questionnaires instead.

Remote access (relay)

By default the console and Participant Station are reachable only on your local network — the air-gapped default. To let observers or participants outside the lab connect, enable the relay from the Observers dialog's Remote access block.

• The recorder dials out to your relay and is given a public address — no inbound firewall holes.
• Remote access is per session and never persisted; you turn it on deliberately each time.
• When connected, the console and participant links switch to their public URLs automatically.

Lab Control

If your room has serial-controlled A/V hardware — video switchers, picture-in-picture inserters, an audio matrix, or pan-tilt-zoom cameras — the licensed Lab Control surface drives it from inside Ovo Logger.

• Open Lab Controls from the command bar at the top of the window (shown when the feature is licensed). It stays usable during recording and can float always-on-top.
• Route inputs to outputs, recall camera presets with press-and-hold pan/tilt/zoom pads, position picture-in-picture, and set audio levels.
• Save the current routing, presets, and PIP as a template to replay for the next session — the ⋯ menu, Save template as….

In Lab setup, each switcher's inputs and outputs can be put in whatever order matches your rack, using the up and down arrows on each row. That is display order only — the jack number stays with its row, so an output patched to jack 8 can sit at the bottom of the list and still address jack 8.

Delivering questionnaires

Questionnaires you build in Study setup are delivered through the Participant Station. Pick the section and the participant, then copy a link, show a QR code for them to scan, or open on this machine. Responses save into the project immediately. In a self-guided run, the relevant questionnaires are delivered inline by the task-runner instead.

Stopping & filing the session

Press Stop to end the recording. Ovo Logger finalizes the video, files the session into the project with its notes and task timings, and — if analysis is licensed — queues transcription and on-screen-text indexing to run in the background when you're not recording.

Review & analysis

Turning recordings into findings — play sessions back, search everything that was said and shown, clip the moments that matter, and let local AI draft a report you can trust because every claim is cited.

The review workspace

Open the workspace from Analysis → Sessions (or AI findings). It reviews the whole study in one window, not one recording at a time.

• A session rail on the left lists every session — participant, tasks, and counts. Click one to load its video and narrow the data on the right to it. The session currently playing is marked now playing.
• The first row is All sessions: it widens the data view to the whole study and leaves the video you're watching alone. The session-scope selector above the data view does the same thing, and is how you change scope in fullscreen, where the rail is hidden.
• The data view is a table of everything logged — notes, clicks, speech, task timings, and highlights. Clicking any row jumps to that moment, switching sessions first if the row belongs to another one; doing that keeps your current scope, so a jump out of the study-wide list never collapses the list you were reading.
• Double-click a note row to edit it, or right-click it (or press the Menu key) to edit its text and tag or delete it — the same actions, and the same gestures, as the live session log. Double-click only ever edits; deleting stays on the menu, where a slipped click can't reach it. Speech rows aren't editable: a transcript is a record of what was said, and re-transcribing is its correction path. Editing a note refreshes the session's AI summary next time one is generated.
• When docked, the rail and a toolbar frame the video. In fullscreen, the video takes the whole screen and the panels float.

Timeline, search & playback

Under the video, an interactive timeline plots markers in lanes so you can see the shape of the session at a glance:

• Clicks, Keys, Speech, and Notes (color-coded by observer). Hover a marker for its detail, click it to seek, or click empty track to scrub. A red playhead follows playback.
• Zoom in like an editing suite. Ctrl+wheel zooms about your pointer — the moment under the cursor stays put — and plain wheel pans when zoomed; the − / + / Fit buttons do the same from the keyboard. A time ruler gains precision as you lean in (click it to seek), and the navigator strip below the lanes shows the whole session with a thumb framing your view — drag it to pan, drag its ends to zoom, click outside it to jump. During playback the view pages over when the playhead reaches the edge, and never fights a view you've panned deliberately.
• Markers that pile up merge into a counted badge at the current zoom — a dense burst of clicks shows as one 12 instead of an unclickable smear. Click the badge to zoom straight to where its events come apart.
• Above the lanes, an optional task band shows one observer's tasks as colored segments — tap a task to jump to it, or drag either end to adjust when it started or finished. A picker switches whose timeline you're viewing when more than one person timed tasks. See Timing tasks from the video.

Search spans both on-screen text and speech at once. Type a word and jump straight to where it appeared or was said. Search is exact-match first, then fuzzy — fuzzy matches are marked with a leading ~, because automatic on-screen-text recognition sometimes mangles unusual words.

Fullscreen (F11) hands the whole screen to the video; the search panel and timeline slide in when you move the pointer to the edge, and each has a pin to keep it open. Esc exits.

Multi-source layouts

A session recorded from several sources plays as a composited canvas — every feed in sync on its shared timebase.

• Pick a layout from the toolbar. Ovo Logger predicts a best fit for the number and shape of your sources — solo, picture-in-picture, side-by-side, or grid.
• To change one, choose ✏ Edit layout… from the bottom of that same layout list. The session data list gives way to the editor, so you can see what you're doing.
• Drag a source to move it, use the corner grip or the mouse wheel to resize it (its shape is preserved), and arrow keys to nudge — Ctrl with an arrow for fine steps. Set each source's opacity, volume, visibility and stacking order in the panel.
• Dragging snaps to the palette edges and centre as an assist. If you want a source somewhere the snap keeps pulling it away from — a small inset near a corner, say — turn off Snap to edges and centre while dragging. The guide lines appear only while you're actually dragging.
• Give the layout a name and click Save, or Cancel to put everything back as it was. Editing the predicted best fit saves a new custom layout and leaves the prediction untouched, so it's always there to return to. The saved layout also drives how highlight clips from the session are composited.

Highlights & clips

Capture the good moments as clips you can share.

1. At the start of a moment click Mark in, play to the end, then click Mark out.
2. Click Save clip. In a project, the clip renders in the background — the Highlights list shows each clip's status (Queued · Rendering · Ready · Failed).
3. Click a Ready clip to play it. Renders resume automatically if you close and reopen the study.

For a multi-source session the clip composites your current layout; for a single source it's a straight trim. Clips are saved in the project's Highlights folder.

Stitch reel… joins rendered clips from across the study into one video, in session order — tick the clips you want and render. The reel is a plain MP4 in the same Highlights folder, ready to hand to a stakeholder; clips of different sizes are letterboxed to a common frame so nothing is cropped.

AI report

With the AI Pack installed and licensed, click ✨ AI Report and Generate. Ovo Logger reads the study — summarizing each session locally — then drafts a plain-language findings report for stakeholders:

• What we tested · How it went overall · What got in people's way · Task by task · What we recommend.
• Every claim carries a citation like [S2 @ 6:35 "…"]. Click it to jump straight to that moment in the recording.
• The app owns the numbers and timestamps; the AI writes only the narrative. A collapsed Researcher appendix gives the exact methodology detail — themes, severity, and per-task scores — for anyone who wants it.

Reports, answers and session summaries are kept, not thrown away when the window closes. AI history lists everything the AI has produced for this study so you can reopen an earlier report, compare it with a newer one, or find an answer you asked for last week. A finished report is a record of what you knew at the time, so regenerating never overwrites the old one.

Ask the study a question

Beside the report, 💬 Ask lets you pose a specific question — “Where did people struggle with checkout?” — and get an answer drawn only from your study's data, with citations you can click to jump to the evidence.

• If the data doesn't answer the question, Ovo Logger says so rather than guessing.
• Ask is read-only — it never changes the study or writes observations.

Questionnaire results

Responses collected during the study are scored for you: a SUS section produces its 0–100 score per participant (and an average), and a single-ease question produces its per-task mean. These same scores feed the AI report's facts, so the numbers in the report match the numbers here. Click View results… in the questionnaire editor for each question's answer distribution in place, or export any section's responses to CSV for your own analysis.

Adding notes while you review

Notes don't have to be typed live. Click Logging controls under the Session data panel and a small window opens beside the video and stays there while you work. Type — the first key marks the moment, just as it does during a recording, so the note lands where you started reacting rather than where you finished typing. Enter files it, Esc clears, and \ followed by a letter files it under that quicklog tag; clicking a tag chip does the same. Double-click any note in the list to edit it, or right-click it to edit or delete.

This is how a solo researcher works: run the session thinking aloud, then log what you see on the way back through. It's also the answer for an unmoderated session, where nobody was watching live.

Timing tasks from the video

Tasks don't have to be timed live either. The same Logging controls window carries a task picker and a Start / Stop button that work exactly as they do during a recording — except that they read the playhead instead of the clock. Pick the task, play to the moment the participant began, click Start; play on to the moment they finished, click Stop. Score the outcome while it runs, as you would live.

The task appears on the band above the timeline as soon as you stop.

Correcting a task you already have

• Drag either end of a task on the band to move its start or finish. The exact times show as you drag. Zoom the timeline in first if you want to be precise about it.
• Right-click a task for the full editor: exact start and end, which task it was, the outcome, and a comment. Each time field has a Use playhead button, so the usual way to fix a boundary is to scrub to the right frame and click it.
• Delete a task timing from that editor, or from the right-click menu. Only the timing goes — the recording and every note logged during it are untouched, and you can always time the task again.
• Task rows in the Session data list have the same right-click menu, which is the route to all of this from the keyboard — and double-clicking one opens the editor, just as it does for a note.

Exporting the study's data

Click Export data… under the Session data panel to write the whole study — every note, transcript line, click, keystroke, task timing and highlight — into an Export folder beside your project file. Two files are written together:

• CSV — one row per datum, ready for Excel, R or any statistics tool. Columns include the participant, task, observer, tag, session time, and the source recording.
• HTML data table — the same rows as a self-contained page that opens in any browser with no Ovo Logger and no network: sortable columns, filters for participant / task / observer, a checkbox per data type, an optional colour per type, and text search. Hand it to a stakeholder or run it from a USB stick.

The export is always the complete study, regardless of any filters set in the review window — the HTML page carries its own filters. Task rows say how they were measured: a timed attempt is a real duration, while selected (not timed) only records which task was chosen. Recognized on-screen text isn't included: it's a search index for finding moments in the video, not study data (see above).

Questionnaire answers export separately, per section, from the questionnaire editor.

Deleting a session

Right-click a session in the rail (or press the Menu key) and choose Delete session…. This removes the recording and everything captured with it — notes, transcript lines, clicks and keystrokes, task timings, and any highlight clips made from it.

• You are shown exactly what will go before anything happens, including the video files by name.
• Video files and highlight clips are sent to the Recycle Bin, so a mistake can be undone in Windows. The study's own records are removed for good.
• If text or speech indexing is still running on that session, the delete waits — let the background work finish, then try again.

Licensing & activation

Recording and the analysis features are unlocked by a license tied to your machine. There's no license server, so activation works even on a fully air-gapped lab PC.

Activating for the first time

1. Open the Activation window from License… on the command bar (or Configuration → License). It names the product and version you're running, under the heading.
2. It shows your Machine ID. Send that to Ovo Studios — a Copy button makes it easy to paste into an email. Your license is bound to this ID.
3. You'll receive a license, either as a key to paste or a .lic file to load. Enter it; your entitlements and any expiry dates appear.

Because the whole exchange is offline, you can do it by email — the lab PC never needs an internet connection.

The license & Software Maintenance Fee

Ovo Logger is licensed per machine, and your purchase includes an annual Software Maintenance Fee that keeps the license current and entitled to updates.

Features are licensed individually: recording (with a limit on how many sources you can record at once), the analysis features (on-screen text, speech transcription, and input logging), the AI Pack, and lab control. The virtual camera is always available.

Renewing & changing features

To renew, or to add or change features, click Copy license (for renewal) in the Activation window and send Ovo Studios the string — it carries your Machine ID and current entitlements. You'll get an updated license for the same machine; paste or load it and it replaces the old one. Projects and settings are untouched.

Moving to a new machine

Moving Ovo Logger to a different PC:

1. On the old machine, open the Activation window and click Deactivate this machine… This produces a transfer code and retires the license locally.
2. Send the transfer code to Ovo Studios; they'll issue a fresh license for the new machine's Machine ID.

The AI Pack

The AI features (report, Ask, and the Study Designer) need two things: the ai entitlement on your license, and the AI Pack installed — a separate download that delivers the local AI model. With both in place, the AI buttons appear and everything runs on your machine.

Administration & IT

Ovo Logger is built to be easy to deploy and keep current across lab machines — no server, no administrator rights, and nothing to pre-install.

Installing

The installer is per-user and needs no administrator rights. It installs into your user profile, so locked-down machines that can't approve elevation prompts can still install it. Everything Ovo Logger needs is bundled — there are no prerequisites to install first (no runtime, no database engine, no media framework); the media tools ship alongside the app.

Updating

To update, just run the new installer. It upgrades in place — no admin rights, no internet connection, and no re-activation. Your license, settings, and projects live outside the program folder, so an update replaces application files only and never touches your data.

Installing the AI Pack

The AI features are delivered by a separate AI Pack installer, which places the local AI model next to the app. It's also per-user with no admin rights. Install it on the machines that will run AI analysis and whose license includes the ai entitlement (see The AI Pack).

Remote observers & the firewall

• Local note-taking and observers on the same machine work with no special setup.
• Observers connecting from other devices on the LAN reach the machine over the network. On a firewalled PC that may need a one-time firewall rule allowing Ovo Logger to accept incoming connections — a step IT performs once.
• For observers or participants outside the lab network, use the relay instead (Running a session → Remote access). It dials out and needs no inbound firewall change.

Where settings & data live

• Projects live wherever you save them — a project is a self-contained folder whose location you choose.
• License and machine-level configuration (recording setups, theme, lab hardware) are stored per machine, outside the program folder, so they survive app updates.
• Per-user preferences (selected devices, last project, window state) are stored in your user profile.

Power settings for long sessions

For long unattended or self-guided sessions, make sure the machine won't sleep or hibernate mid-recording. Set the power plan so the display may turn off but the computer stays awake.

Accessibility

Ovo Logger is designed to be operated by keyboard and screen reader, and to adapt to how you see and work — accessibility is a feature here, not an afterthought.

Keyboard operation

The app is fully operable from the keyboard. The essentials:

• Start and Stop deliberately have no keyboard shortcut — they are the only actions in the product that cannot be undone, so they take a real click (the tray menu is the other way in)
• Ctrl+N / Ctrl+O — new / open project
• Ctrl+1–4 — jump between Record, Study setup, Analysis, and Configuration
• F6 — cycle the panes on a page
• F1 — open this guide, at the chapter for wherever you are
• Alt — reveal access keys for the command bar and buttons

In the review workspace the timeline is keyboard-operable: focus it and use the arrow keys to move the playhead, with keys to jump between events and to the start or end.

Screen-reader support

Controls carry accessible names and roles, and important status changes — recording started, processing progress — are announced through live regions, so you hear them without hunting for them. The interactive timeline exposes its position to assistive technology as a slider.

Zoom & scaling

Ovo Logger respects your Windows display scaling and text size, and reading layouts reflow rather than clip, so you can work comfortably zoomed in.

Light, dark & system themes

Choose Light, Dark, or Follow system from Configuration → Appearance. The whole app — including the window title bars — follows your choice, and the setting is shared across accounts on the machine.

Conformance

Ovo Logger targets WCAG 2.2 AA. If your organization requires an accessibility conformance report (such as a VPAT) for procurement, contact Ovo Studios.

Troubleshooting & reference

When something doesn't look right — and where to find the diagnostics that explain why.

Recording looks choppy, or the length is wrong

The live monitor's readout — capturing at N fps · grab · write — tells you where the time is going. Grab is the cost of capturing the screen; write is the cost of handing frames to the encoder.

• If fps is well below your setting: try a hardware encoder (from the setup's encoder list) instead of software encoding, which competes for the same CPU as capture — or lower the recording frame rate.
• The readout also names the capture method; the faster one is used automatically when your display supports it.

A capture device won't appear, or shows black

• Not listed: make sure it's connected and not already in use — a capture device can usually be opened by only one program at a time. Close other apps that might hold it, then reopen the setup.
• Black despite a live source: it may be defaulting to the wrong capture mode. Set an explicit resolution and frame rate on the source row (see A/V hardware tips).
• Remember the per-source preview is the real signal check — some devices output a frame even with nothing connected.

“A source stopped producing frames”

During a multi-source recording Ovo Logger watches each source, and what it does about a frozen one depends on when it freezes.

• In the first half-minute — the source never really got going, so Ovo Logger restarts that one source. It costs a couple of seconds, the other sources are undisturbed, and the restarted source's video still lines up with them; it simply starts a moment later.
• Later in the session — the healthy sources keep recording. Only the failed source is lost, and it's named in the summary when you stop. A participant can't be re-run, so a session is never thrown away because one camera dropped out. The session only ends if every source stops.

Why one might freeze in the first place:

• The usual cause is one source asking for far more picture than it needs. Sources share a single hardware encoder, so one source running at an enormous resolution can starve the others until they stall. Ovo Logger now requests a sensible high-definition size automatically, even from cards that advertise huge ones.
• Best practice for capture cards: set an explicit resolution and frame rate on the source row rather than relying on the card's own default — see A/V hardware tips.
• Each source keeps its own .ffmpeg.log beside the recording. The stalled source says so in its log, and the source at fault is usually the one running at an unusually large size.
• A source can also stall because the device itself dropped out. The per-source preview tells you whether a picture is still arriving.

Audio problems

• No audio in the recording: confirm the correct audio input is selected in the recording setup, and that its level meter moves when there's sound.
• Transcription comes up short: first confirm the recording's own audio is complete — the transcript can only be as good as the captured audio.

The virtual camera in web conferencing

• Select “Ovo Studios Screen Capture” as your camera in the web-conferencing app. If you just enabled the virtual camera, complete the one-time setup step (it asks for elevated permission once).
• If the app shows the wrong size or a placeholder, it's negotiating a resolution with the camera and the feed is scaled to fit. The composited picture is sent at a standard high-definition size that common web-conferencing apps handle well.

Log files & diagnostics

• Every recording keeps a technical log beside it (an .ffmpeg.log file) recording exactly what the encoder did. If a recording fails or looks wrong, that's the first place to look — and the most useful thing to include when you report a problem.
• If the app fails to start, it writes a startup-error log in your user profile's Ovo Studios folder.
• You can send a problem report to Ovo Studios directly from the app — look for Report an issue.
• Not sure which version you're running? The Activation window names it under the heading, alongside the product. Include it when you get in touch — you can select the line and copy it, or just send a screenshot of the window.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Start and Stop deliberately have no keyboard shortcut — they are the only actions in the product that cannot be undone, so they take a real click (the tray menu is the other way in)
• Ctrl+N / Ctrl+O — new / open project
• Ctrl+1–4 — Record / Study setup / Analysis / Configuration
• F6 — cycle panes · Alt — show access keys
• F1 — open this guide, at the chapter for wherever you are
• F11 — fullscreen review · Esc — exit fullscreen

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an internet connection?

No. Ovo Logger runs fully offline — including transcription and all AI features.

Where are my recordings?

In the project's Tapes folder, or your Videos folder for standalone recordings.

Can two people take notes at once?

Yes. Each observer's notes are attributed and timed independently, and appear color-coded in review.

Why is my recording watermarked?

The machine isn't licensed for recording. Activate to remove it — see Licensing & activation.

Does the AI send my data anywhere?

No. All AI analysis runs locally on your machine; nothing about your study leaves your network.