Unveiled, from Sony Creative Software: Catalyst Prepare

File-based workflows have all sorts of advantages, compared to the old linear days of video tape and film. But with new technology comes new hurdles. Arguably one of the biggest challenges brought by the digital revolution—since it costs virtually nothing to just let the camera roll all day—is what to do with all that footage. With tape, things were simple. The editor (or more likely assistant) pressed "capture" and hopefully took copious notes while the tape (or logged clips) digitized in real time. Now we can get video and audio onto the computer almost as soon as it shot, with terabytes of hard drive space costing next to nothing—which sounds like a boon. But more often than not, one is left with a heap of files distinguished only by date, time, and a file name something like this:

 

C0001.MXF

C0002.MXF

C0003.MXF

C0004.MXF

C0005.MXF

C0006.MXF

C0007.MXF

C0008.MXF

C0009.MXF

C0010.MXF

 

And that's just from camera A! With the time spent figuring out where all of these clips belong, one would have been better off watching the pot boil while tape after tape got ingested, especially when working on productions being shot out of sequence. Clips from C0001.MXF shot today might intercut with footage from C0036.MXF shot last week, and there's probably separate audio out there too, floating around somewhere at the sound person's station.

 

To address the demand for a pre-post-production solution, enter Sony Create Software with Catalyst Prepare. Prepare features the same media browser and transfer function as the company’s free Catalyst Browse, with which a7S users will already be familiar, but adds a host of tools to help the post team (or individual) get a head start on the editorial processes. Among these, the ability to make a rough cut and create storyboards, color correction with support for Sony's Ultra Wide Color Gamut, support for S-Log, and support for many RAW formats. Media can be imported in toto, or partial clips can be designated, much like old school tape logging, to save storage space or get rid of unusable takes right off the bat.

 

Once media is loaded, logged, organized, and ready to go—complete with meaningful metadata—you can create backups with the confidence of checksum verification, export proxies in NLE-friendly codes such as XAVC and H.264, or even upload to the cloud for multi-location, collaborative projects.

 

While it is optimized for large productions churning out massive volumes of footage, prosumer and freelance shooters will find a lot to appreciate in Prepare as well. It can be loaded on a laptop as an alternative to a full-blown suite of editing software, providing the user just the tools he or she needs while out on location. And for shooters who let others do the editing, it saves time getting the footage prepped and ready for delivery to the client.

 

Catalyst Prepare isn't just for Sony cameras, by the way. It works with GoPro, Canon cinema cameras and DSLRs, and more, and I'm sure we'll see more camera support added as time goes on. Not to mention, the software is fully supported on both Mac and Windows.

 

Digital has been sold on the promise that it saves time. But reality hasn't always lived up to expectation as productions find they are overwhelmed by more media than they can possibly sift through. Since time is money, and with competition from the Internet driving tighter deadlines, anything that can get the ball rolling on the editorial process sooner will be very much welcome. To this end, Catalyst Prepare fills a very important niche.