Postlab Merge

Our first Workflow Extension

It's been a bad month for Xs. First, Final Cut Pro drops the X, and now MergeX does too. Meet Postlab Merge.

Postlab Merge allows you to merge Events, Clips, Projects, and more, within Final Cut Pro. Have one editor working on an edit in an Event, while another is keywording clips in the same Event, and then merging the new keywords into the project when needed – and more. Merge's granular controls allow you to manage precisely what makes it into the newly merged Event.

From app to Workflow Extension

If you think about it, exporting and importing XMLs for in-app operations is a bit weird. It's why plugins exist, and Apple's supercharged version of a plugin is the Workflow Extension. So, Postlab Merge now is a Workflow Extension too:

Workflow Extensions are less intrusive to use than having to go from Final Cut Pro to a standalone app and back. Combined with Hedge's renowned user experience and UI, using Merge is now much easier. Final Cut Pro 10.5  is of course supported and thus is the new FCPXML 1.9 standard.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Selecting a field ("Names") toggles priority. As you might have guessed, blue has priority.

Merge's biggest change is how non-priority is handled: when a side doesn't have priority, Metadata, Markers, and Ratings can be switched from having no priority to ignored ("X"). If so, if there's no value for a field in the priority Event, but there is one in the non-priority Event, it's still not included in the merger. This allows you to keep moot data out of your new Event.

In true Hedge style, we've culled a lot of options. Some had become obsolete, some no longer needed due to Merge being a Workflow Extension, and some we found a better solution for. The remaining Merging options are quite niche and required only for very specific workflows:

Fully Integrated

Postlab Merge is included in Postlab 20.4 and up, and doesn't require additional installation - if both Final Cut Pro 10.5 and Postlab are installed, you'll automatically see Merge pop up in Final Cut Pro's toolbar:

To use Merge, you have to be logged into Postlab to use the workflow extension.

Future Speak

As always, a release is a new beginning. We have some very cool features in mind for Merge, like updating angles on MC Clips. If you run into something in your workflow where you think Merge could fill a void but lacks a feature, let us know. If it makes a lot of sense to integrate, who knows? After all, 90% of Hedge features exist because of user feedback. We don't expect less from Final Cut Pro editors 😁