EditReady has long been one of our favorite transcoding tools for not only its simplicity, but also its speed. If you have to get footage from your camera format to ProRes or DNxHD for editing, it offers a really compelling option with speeds that can be 2x Resolve, 3x Premiere, and 5x Media Encoder.
Because all it does is transcode, that's where the devs put all their effort, and depending on hard drives and source format, it can scream.
The biggest competition is of course Resolve, since it's the fastest, and it's free. But Resolve currently doesn't support ProRes RAW, and isn't likely into the future, though we can keep hoping the support will come. This is why the newest update for EditReady, adding full RAW support to a host of camera native RAW formats but best of all ProRes RAW, is huge.
Sure, you can currently work with ProRes RAW files natively in FCPX, Premiere, and Media Encoder, but you are doing that on their terms. You have to use their internal dailies tools to make your proxy files, and depending on your setup, you might not love those tools.
EditReady Helps Your Workflow
Let's say you shot 8K ProRes RAW. You aren't going to want to put that in your 2015 laptop and create proxies.
With this update to EditReady, you can fire up a powerful system, plug in your ProRes RAW files, then crank out lightweight ProResLT 720p files to edit with and have a fast, fluid edit process on even an older or less powerful system.
For us, EditReady is going to be the main choice for tight turnaround jobs where you need your dailies as fast as possible, and all ProRes RAW jobs (we're looking at you, DJI 4D).
For jobs with more time, we're still likely going to do dailies in Resolve since we like being able to do a quick look at the color and make sure things are "roughed in" before we send them off to editorial, but there isn't always the time or the need to do that, and that's where EditReady really shines.
Just for the ability to deal with dailies from ProRes RAW alone, it's worth the price of admission. But having the ability to manipulate proprietary RAW files as you see fit is just the cherry on top.
On the Topic of Trust
One nice thing about this update is that the EditReady team is honest about the technical but also commercial limitations of implementing RAW. Right now it's supported for Apple, improved for Blackmagic RAW (which was already supported), and RED and Codex, with Sony coming soon.
The refreshing honesty is that some of their reluctance was the high price of licensing Sony RAW software technology. It's great to see a window into the decision-making process behind software support, and that it's customer demand (driven by the popularity of Sony VENICE) that has led to them implementing the tech.
Some New Additions
The team behind EditReady is also rolling out a great update for its companion tool Hedge. Hedge is their download solution, and they are extending its toolset with a whole set of metadata tools called Elements that are worth exploring.
Hedge has long used MHL files to allow for a lot of data to travel along with the clip, but the new Elements tools extend that functionality to make it more powerful for passing info along from set to post.
Elements are nifty in that they are widely customizable for passing along technical content (about the shot, like color space or format) or creative content (what is in the shot), and having them be triggered by workflow, so you aren't constantly being asked to fill in metadata when it's not needed.
The EditReady update is available now, and there is a trial version available for testing that allows for transcoding up to 1 minute of any clip. Check out the site for more.
