It's becoming a bit of a tradition - looking back at last year and looking forward to what we can expect from us in the coming time.

Last year was a tough year for many in the industry; again, fewer productions were happening worldwide due to many factors, including local recessions, the ongoing ripple effect of the strikes, and the streamers still having a lot of content "in stock." We've been getting positive signs that 2025 and 2026 will be different, so fingers crossed. Hang in there, people 🫶

100 months of Hedge

Last year was again filled with new releases, technologies, and workflows. All in all, we managed to get 32 major releases shipped across 8 apps - on average, one each app each quarter. Most companies that have been around for 100 months have started slowing down, and it's a testament to our fantastic team that this hasn't happened.

After 100 months, our website was getting a bit old in the teeth, so last September. Also, our hedge.video domain didn't fit the bill anymore, as our apps are used for much more than video production. Going forward, hedge.co is the place to find us, and there you'll find a brand new spiffy website. The brainchild of our in-house design team, we couldn't be happier with the new look.

Also new is Bluesky! As X née Twitter limited its API access last year, we haven't been able to offer support via social media. We're betting on Bluesky to make this possible again, so go forth and follow us at https://bsky.app/profile/hedge.co

Canister

Akin to 2023, when we released Canister for Windows, last year was another big year for all things LTO. While LTO-10, the upcoming new generation of LTO, has not yet materialized, we continued to build out the project we started some years ago: parity between macOS and Windows.

That's important because no software industry is as skewed towards macOS as the LTO landscape. Before Canister came to Windows, there was hardly a choice on Windows, and none were cross-platform. We now see a healthy number of customers moving back and forth between Macs and PCs for archiving, not in the least thanks to Preflight Checks being available on both platforms. LTO's famed struggle with drivers is finally a thing of the past.

Besides Preflight Checks and a gazillion other improvements, last year was marked mainly by the release of the Library Manager, the first UI for working with tape libraries that doesn't scare you at first sight.

This year, we'll be working on making the Library Manager work with multiple libraries and libraries with multiple drives - after we release Queuing, which ate up most of last year's development time. We're also looking at bringing the Library Manager to Windows.

OffShoot

For data managers, it was a busy year to keep up. Back in January, we released Stop & Resume. Great when you need to relocate, but also a one-click solution for transfers that somehow stopped running. That turned out to be a godsend for both people with large network transfers and those working with overheated or underpowered peripherals. Just reconnect the gear, click the halted transfers, and off you go.

Next, we revived Checkpoint, not as a separate app for standalone verification, but right within OffShoot. At the same time, we overhauled the verification options within OffShoot to make it easier to know which mode works best when. As OffShoot recognizes previously created checksums through MHL Awareness, it lets you verify those MHLs without transferring and will consider the existing checksums when making another copy of the drive used to offload your media.

On top of that, we added a new copy method: Move. OffShoot's organizational options have become so powerful that sometimes you just want to apply a preset without copying data. Move makes this possible; moving your data within a drive with a preset ensures all your media is organized the way you want it, not the way someone else decided to do it. Combine that with the brand-new Ingest Browser, and you have ultimate flexibility in deciding what to transfer where and how.

As promised when releasing OffShoot Pro in 2023, we've been certifying many new cloud providers. S3 is a great option to replace cheap (but slow) hard drives on-set by uploading straight to the cloud. When you have 5G available on set, S3 beats copying to a slow drive - especially if you use accelerated transfers. Last year, we certified leading providers like Amove, Backblaze, and Wasabi, and in the coming year, we'll be adding even more. For those not using S3 but cloud providers like Dropbox, OffShoot has also become a lot more streamlined.

To top it off, OffShoot gained a long-due integration with EditReady - it's now possible to automatically create proxies right after offloading your media. Combined with the FoolCat integration, your whole on-set workflow can now be a one-click process.

For the last couple of months, we've been working on two new major features: Cascading and Reporting. Both will come to the Beta Track within a few months or weeks, and we look forward to your feedback. Next up is an entirely new never seen before feature that will blow your mind 🤯

EditReady and FoolCat

With Apple Silicon setting new bars each year, many people have a lot more power in their hands than previously. To use all that raw power (pun intended), EditReady gained parallel transcoding early in the year. Automatically scaling with the available resources, EditReady kicks off as many transcodes as possible. It was a busy year with new scaling options, support for ArriRAW HDE MXFs, and a heap of camera updates for all the new cams out there.

All these camera updates also found their way into ScopeBox and FoolCat, resulting in 99% parity between FoolCat on Mac and Windows. FoolCat also gained custom LUT support, and ProRes RAW support on Windows is upcoming, so it won't take long to get to an updater near you.

On top of that, EditReady gained Connect, our remote dashboard and push notification service. No need to keep coming back to your Mac to see if the transcodes are done - Connect will ping you on your phone, computer, or watch when done. Last year, Connect did so by sending out more than 722K push notifications.

We haven't been working on new ScopeBox features since last year because we first wanted to wrap up the work on HERMES, our in-house media engine. In the works for two years, HERMES already powers FoolCat and EditReady Server and will power a new app we might have mentioned before 😉

This year, we're adding support for DNxHR with full metadata support so all Avid shops have a complete workflow between set and post, plus audio sync capabilities. LTC, you say? Waaaay better.

PostLab

2024 was the year for PostLab 2.0. With PostLab Classic's forced retirement in December, the team had to work hard to get its successor out of the door. With the help of many loyal PostLab Classic users, we managed to iron out many issues. All of that resulting a great app that goes above and beyond what the original PostLab offered. The new PostLab is maturing into an app not just for Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro collaboration but for a range of creative apps for motion designers, animators, VFX, and sound people - the whole of post-production.

PostLab's new Event Linking technology blew the minds of many attending the Creative Summit in 2023 and 2024, and we're hearing it's a godsend for many workflows; through Event Linking, you can now use a single Final Cut Pro Event across multiple libraries. We're actively looking at other apps to utilize the same technology, with Media Composer's bins being a likely candidate. In 2025, we'll also be adding support for more apps plus the quality-of-life features you've asked for the last couple of months.

Mimiq

Mimiq is one of those apps that seemingly just does what is says on the tin: bin locking for Media Composer. Behind the scenes, that means a lot of work is needed to maintain that functionality for each new Avid release. 2024 had a handful, with a final Avid .12 release upcoming, we've heard through the grapevine. We hope it'll finally bring Apple silicon native support.

This year, we brought Bin Refresh to all Avid users who don't have a NEXIS. But Mimiq is not just used by editors that don't have a NEXIS; many Avid-equipped facilities with secondary storage for various purposes utilize Mimiq. Mimiq's NEXIS Coexistence makes it possible to use Avid and non-Avid storage simultaneously.

For 2025, we're looking at making it possible to ignore network shares and share workspaces amongst other clients on the network, and a brand-new feature we'll talk more about in good time.

Arctic

While we didn't plan on bringing another app into the fold, this was one we couldn't ignore: the venerable Final Cut Library Manager ("FCLM") needed a new home, and while it's an app that's hardly commercially viable, it does serve an essential purpose: cleaning out the caches and media FCPs libraries use during the editing process, but that are not needed before archiving a project. Over the course of a decade, FCLM must have saved editors exabytes of storage.

We revamped FCLM as Arctic, an hommage to its inventors Arctic Whiteness, and now regard this app as a not-for-profit project where all its proceeds go towards fixes, improvements, and new functionality. Through Arctic, we fund independent developers who can thus find time to work on commercially unviable projects, like CommandPost.

2025 will see a PostLab integration for Arctic to make it super easy to move libraries in and out of PostLab. This way, you have a perfect pair in hand for your workflow's collaboration and archival stages.

Local License Server

Sometimes, it's needed to use apps in a completely offline environment. To support such facilities, we've introduced the Local License Server, or LLS. Available for Mimiq and PostLab, and coming to the other apps this year, the LLS allow you to set up a floating license for in-house use.

All Pro licenses can be used with the LLS, at no additional cost. Setting up and maintaining the LLS is trivial as its a super lightweight app available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. For more information, take a look at our extensive docs.

There's more…

We've been busy with a new project, and this time, it's not an app - stay tuned for news about this, as it won't take much longer to launch!