ProRes on Windows, metadata workflows galore, Final Cut legacy media filter, transcoding and playback improvements and more, are all present in Kyno 1.7, the smart all-in-one media management app.

The ingest-free media management, screening and transcoding that adjusts to your workflow is back, with a new version. Kyno 1.7 represents another big leap in workflow productivity adding more options to manage crucial metadata in NLE workflows and for teamwork in a project as well as a host of improvements in playback of the most important formats and yet more media management and transcoding functionality.

Starting with this release of Kyno, Apple ProRes export on the Windows platform is supported. This functionality will bring the power of ProRes to workflows using Kyno as a logging, preselection and conversion tool on Windows. Kyno 1.7 has support for exporting all flavours of ProRes on macOS and Windows 7 or higher. This enables users of Kyno to best prepare, convert and sub-clip material to deliver it to later stages of ProRes-based workflows on all of these platforms.

Metadata handling for professionals

Lesspain Software, creators of Kyno, know that metadata is the cornerstone of efficient video workflows and this release of Kyno puts its focus on that area. Premiere Pro users now can send all metadata, including XMP-based fields, to their NLE of choice. Tags, ratings and other fields can now be automatically updated in XMP of the respective files when sending to Premiere.

The company describes some typical situations where Kyno 1.7 can be used. Here are two:

• You have valuable markers, tags, keywords, ratings, descriptions your editor added in the NLE in the course of their project and you want to use that metadata in other projects or for making your stock archive more valuable when browsing it in Kyno? Import XML exported from Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro into Kyno and choose what to merge into Kyno’s metadata set.
• You have had an assistant editor log important information in long proxy clips and want to transfer that metadata to the original master clip? It’s as easy as copying effects in Final Cut or Premiere. Just use the new “Paste Metadata” function in the context menu and you’re done.

A whole new series of features

The new version includes a series of new features and options that make for faster workflows. For example, with the new “keep folder structure” option in Kyno’s transcoder, you can export a proxy version of an entire folder structure for your client, director or assistant editor in just a few clicks.  Final Cut users also do not have to fear Quicktime 32 going away with Catalina, because the brand-new FCPX legacy media filter will help you find material on your drives that will no longer be compatible with Final Cut or other Mac applications which used to rely on the 32bit Quicktime framework. This will even work on macOS Catalina, so you can always find and convert material in Kyno.

With HEVC making its mark as an acquisition codec that is becoming more important, especially for 4k recording and beyond, Kyno evolves with it, introducing hardware-accelerated playback of HEVC for Mac and Windows and HEVC encoding for Mac.

Lesspain Software also points that this version improves in the metadata import and export workflow introduced with Kyno 1.6, that was also highlighted in the company’s Netflix case study,  to make that easy as one, two, three. So, if you need to hand a drive with proxies of your footage to a production assistant to do the logging, you just export your proxies in the same folder structure using the “keep folder structure” described above, let someone do the logging on the proxies and export that metadata to import it back into your originals with Kyno’s improved reconnection mechanism. This works even when the file extensions have changed, e.g. when you use mov proxies for MXF originals.

Video collaboration with Frame.io, now supercharged with Kyno, and available for Kyno Premium users. The brand new Frame.io integration lets you submit footage with metadata with automated client-side transcoding and subclipping in a workflow that couldn’t be easier. Integrated LTO and cloud backup with Archiware P5 Archive can also be operated from within Kyno, allowing you to send selected folders or clips to archive plans defined in Archiware P5 archive, so you have full end-to-end workflow support in Kyno starting from camera media backup to archiving on a P5 server.

Avid Op-Atom support, ProRes and R3D improvements

Kyno 1.7 premium adds a number of improvements for users of high-end formats. Avid Op-Atom clips, storing video and audio in separate files, can now be played back and transcoded seamlessly in Kyno. The new low-resolution playback option makes it possible to play back ProRes 4k and 8k files on slower machines. RED users will appreciate higher playback performance as well as playback of spanned ProRes proxies, created by RED cameras, as one clip.

Browsing and filtering improvements for more productivity are also part of the new version. The software’s ability to show users all footage they have with one click even if it is dispersed over dozens or even hundreds of folders can now be combined with the new folder name filter and you can, for example, says Lesspain Software, “find all files on your production drive that reside in a folder called “dailies” in just a few clicks. Support for simple boolean expressions gives users a simple, yet immensely powerful new tool to query by text-based metadata. The date display in Kyno’s browse view has also been improved as requested by many users.”

There is a free trial of Kyno 1.7 available on the company’s website. Give it a try, to better understand how this smart all-in-one media management app can fit in your workflow.