Browsing footage and editing footage are different tasks. With the increasing number of cameras and formats filmmakers are working with these days, in conjunction with the huge volume of footage being captured on many projects, organizing your media is a job unto itself.
Kyno, from Lesspain Software, is designed to be the only media browser you ever need, allowing filmmakers to use one tool to browse, tag, and organize their footage with the least amount of pain possible. No more scrubbing through shots with the finder one at a time, or launching camera-specific browsers for each type of footage. Kyno organizes all of your footage in an intuitive fashion.
Kyno's all-in-one media management browser lets users find and tag footage from multiple camera formats for FCP and Premiere.Credit: Lesspain Software
One especially useful feature of Kyno is the export to Excel function, which allows you to highlight individual frames, make notes and create an export of those notes into a document nicely formatted with stills of the moments and references to their associated shots. For a director sending notes to the editor, or a cinematographer communicating with a colorist, it's a fast and efficient way to create clear, easy notes for your post team.
Kyno also allows for exporting markers as high resolution stills, which is especially helpful when working on a computer that doesn't match the full resolution of your source footage, but you want to grab a still at full resolution.
Kyno ExportCredit: Lesspain Software
Kyno just upgraded to version 1.2, which includes a complete redesign of FCP-X integration to make the workflow more seamless. The metadata is now fully user configurable, allowing different editors and post teams to build the workflow that makes their process the most efficient. Transcoding also now allows for handles and better flexibility with timestamps and timecode.
Test renders of a 4K clip on our test machine were pretty solid, with Kyno taking about 1 minute 6 seconds to transcode 1 minute of 4k H.264 footage to ProRes LT for edit, while "World's Fastest Transcoder" Editready held on to its title with a 35-second transcode. Kyno was still much faster than the 4 minutes it took Blackmagic Resolve, though in defense of Resolve, it's not designed as a speedy transcoder but a quality color grading tool, which is a good reminder that the tool you use for final finish doesn't have to be the tool you use to generate dailies.
Combining the reasonably fast transcoding capability with the core functions of batch renaming, skimming, markup, and organizing tools makes Kyno an attractive option for many workflows. Kyno is available for $159, but you can check it out free for 14 days before purchase.
Tech Specs:
- ProRes, DNxHR, Olympus and Fujifilm RAW support added with 1.2
- Integration with Premiere, FCP X, and FCP 7
- Export to Excel for team collaboration
- Transcode and re-wrap to a variety of formats
- Batch renaming
- Export all markers as stills
- Requires OS X v10.9.5 or later
