Postlab is one of those applications that really checks off all the major boxes of a startup. Developed in-house at a Dutch broadcasting company, it was built by people who themselves were struggling with the problem it set out to solve. It's a solution to a pain point—helping FCP-X users share libraries with groups and maintain version control.
So, what is it exactly? While Premiere Pro, Media Composer and Resolve all have robust toolsets for sharing projects across a team or group, Final Cut Pro X has been a bit behind in those features. While third-party solutions exist, what the developers of Postlab wanted was something that was similar to what you would get from working with the developer platform Gitlab, where devs have a robust and reliable set of tools for working together on complicated projects.
So they set out to build software for Final Cut Pro X users that could provide that kind of experience. This means instead of having to backup the entire version of every library, which can be massive storage hog, Postlab offers users a method of version control backup to a server that is only tracking changes in a library, without having to replicate over and over massively redundant parts of the library. Which is very cool.
As a project built while working for a public broadcaster, they gave the software away for free, but it required some development skills to be able to implement, which is where Hedge comes into the picture. Hedge is a robust and affordable backup tool that makes life easier for those who want to be confident they had a successful footage download on set. By buying Postlab, they are going to enable the two founders to focus on Postlab full-time.
While it appears that the software for Postlab will remain free, Hedge plans on launching Postlab as a service that they can charge for. Building a solution on AWS servers, instead of needing to hire a developer to implement and maintain your Postlab install, you can simply subscribe to the cloud version for your facility. After launching with FCPX, Postlab is now going to launch with other NLEs and DAWs, as well as focus on more robust Frame.io integration. This model is similar to how Wordpress works (free software, pay to use their cloud service), though we suspect a larger percentage of Postlab users will just opt for the cloud. This is going to be a massive game changer for facilities.
We're especially interested in when support for Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve database backup will roll out. While media composer bins and Premiere project files are relatively easy to archive, working with databases and versioning on a daily basis it would be amazing to have a tool like Postlab integrated with Resolve.
Source: Postlab
