Sorting media, and more...

Four features that make media management life even easier.

With three major Hedge releases, Mono on the iPad, a completely new Foolcat, and two major Canister updates, all within a year, it's time for a shift in focus for the Hedge team.

In every work environment it's the details that create a good atmosphere. The same is true for software – the magic is in the details, but as it happens, so is the proverbial devil. With the pace of the last five years, we often had to favor releasing a feature over adding polish, resulting in a ginormous todo list of smaller and larger improvements.

After releasing Presets, we've starting working our way through this list, and we'll continue to do so for at least two more months. Some enhancements will show up as settings, but most will not visible at all. The day you stumble onto one, we hope it'll make you smile 🙂

Hedge 20.4 contains the first batch of improvements, all focused on enhancing Presets and Organize's possibilities:

Sorting

We kick things off with a much requested feature: sorting media during transfers.

Hedge was built to offload camera cards, whilst not interfering with the folder structure. However, gone are the days that only data handlers used Hedge - now used in every nook and cranny of M&E, Hedge is no longer built just for acquisition. So, it's time to broaden our scope.

By using the new file-specific elements File Creation and File Extension  in your Folder Format, Hedge moves media in a completely new way: instead of creating one folder structure per transfer, Hedge now decides if it needs to create a folder structure per file. Comes in really handy when you want to organize large batches of files like photos, stock footage, or SFX.

Both new parameters are also available for renaming purposes.

Copy Only

Say you have that UNTITLED camera card that comes with a huge folder structure, but you only want the MP4s that are buried deep inside. Instead of having to enter all the filetypes to ignore during copy, this filter flips how Hedge works: copy only the extensions you define. Quite useful with Sony cards, but also when you have a bunch of disks and want Hedge to crawl through them all and copy only JPGs. Combine it with the Flatten folders option, and you'll get a flat list of just those JPGs.

That being said, it's a dangerous setting, so use it wisely. With great power, comes great responsibility 😁

Ignore bundles

This one is mostly for Sony users, and Mac only. It allows you to ignore AVCHD bundles during copy, as those don't have an extension you can filter out. Or, combine it with the new Copy Only filter and dig up all FCP Camera Archives on a NAS.

For safety, it's mandatory to add a filter size filter, so you can filter out empty AVCHD bundles but keep the ones that do contain data.

File Counters

The enemy of all data handlers is a unique filename that isn't truly unique. So, next to the Source Counter we introduced in 20.3 as part of Presets, you can now add a File Counter and File Creation Date timestamp elements when renaming.

File Counter is smart in a couple of ways: Hedge will number your source files as one sequence - regardless of whether they end up in the same folder or not:

Images/JPG/Clip-001.jpg

Images/PNG/Clip-002.png

Duplicate Detection is also involved: when you offload a file, and the renaming result ends up being identical to a file already present in the destination folder, Hedge is smart enough to compare the files to make sure they're truly identical.

This saves you from chasing rabbits when your renaming scheme isn't bullet proof - imagine offloading and renaming  A.MOV to A-0001.MOV but then another A.MOV is offloaded, from a different camera, into the same folder. Instead of skipping the file as a duplicate, it's copied Finder-style: A-0001 2.MOV.

Closing Titles

2020 has been a wild ride for everyone, a year with so many unknowns that we didn't know we'd even make it through personally, as a company, or even as an industry. One day in March we were doing job interviews and the first envisioning session of what is now Drive, the next day was the last ever in our offices - we went fully remote, overnight.

Doubling down, we expanded the Hedge family with five new members, reached tens of thousands more people with our new products, and overall, hope we made a dent.

We have a lot planned for coming year, but more on that later. Have a great holiday season, and stay safe ✌️