Hedge – A Brief Overview of Workflow Tools for Filmmakers

by Olaf von VossSeptember 15^th, 2022

During IBC 2022 we met with Paul Matthijs, CEO at Hedge for a friendly conversation that covers the latest activities of the company including the acquirement of Mimiq, a leading developer of so-called Bin Locking software. Mimiq allows Avid Media Composer users to work collaboratively on shared timelines and storage without interfering with each other. The only other way to do this is to buy into Avid’s proprietary NEXIS hardware.

When working with Avid Media Composer, editors typically organize their footage (and other assets) into bins, which is what the corresponding folders are called in the Avid world. Now, if you are such an editor, but you are not the only one working on a particular project, but rather with an entire team of editors, a collaborative workflow needs to be established.

How can you store all the footage, audio, effects, timeline snippets, etc. centrally so that any editor can easily access it? And how do you avoid conflicts when you’re working on a particular asset, so no other editor should be able to change it during the process?

That’s where Avid NEXIS comes in. These hardware units not only provide teams with ample shared storage over the network, but they also monitor individual editors’ access to specific bins so that that bin is locked to all other editors.

What’s Hedge?

In case you don’t know Hedge, Paul Matthijs Lombert, CEO of the company, gives a brief overview of Hedge’s beginnings and current state. In the beginning, Hedge (for Mac, there was no Windows version at the time) was a fairly straightforward, but very efficient and fast offloading software. It let you transfer verified copies from the camera’s recording media to your hard drive and multiple backup destinations while making sure everything arrived safely.

All of this is still true today, and Hedge is still the flagship product in the portfolio, but that portfolio has grown significantly over the years. Not only have Windows versions been added, but also all sorts of workflow apps, from offloading to transcoding (EditReady) and visual verification (ScopeBox), collaboration for FinalCut Pro and Premiere Pro (Postlab), archiving (Canister), and more. So, the company really covers all the bases here, from camera to archive.

Hedge Mimiq

Using NEXIS hardware is the only way to use conflict-free shared storage in Avid Media Composer. Unless you use a hardware solution from another NAS vendor to solve the same problem. The downside is that you again need to purchase a NAS storage solution from a specific vendor to use the bin locking feature.

Mimiq, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. Developed by Indiestor, another NAS vendor, it doesn’t tie you to its own hardware to enable bin locking in Avid Media Composer. You are free to choose the hardware depending on your requirements.

In a nutshell, Mimiq lets you use your own shared storage, but with the benefits of bin locking when working collaboratively with Avid Media Composer. Mimiq makes Media Composer believe it’s talking to a NEXIS system, and therefore all the features that come along with that are being enabled.

Pricing

Now that Mimiq is part of Hedge (article here), there are some new additions: This is an entirely new version of Mimiq that is fully Apple-Silicon-native. A version for Microsoft Windows is also available and has its own code base to achieve the best possible result.

Furthermore, licensing becomes easier, as Mimiq licenses were previously tied to the MAC addresses of the host computers. As part of the Hedge family, you can now move licenses between computers. There are also multi-activation licenses, so not everyone needs their own license key, and even granular remote deactivation via Hedge’s online license manager is possible.

The new Mimiq is available immediately and comes with a 10-day trial. Other than that, there are different tiers (and cross grades from legacy licenses) available:

These are all perpetual licenses that include upgrades and support for one year. After that, you can decide if you want to renew the license. Paul even suggests upgrading only when new features are added that are actually useful to you, so the company can gather feedback on those features. If you choose not to update, your software will continue to run and nothing will change; you will even receive critical security updates. The only exception to this rule (of perpetual licensing) is PostLab, as it relies on cloud storage and thus incurs ongoing costs.

I think Mimiq is a great addition to Hedge because, like most of Hedge’s products, it aims to streamline repetitive or cumbersome tasks in the world of video editing and processing. Switching from legacy Mimiq to the new Mimiq is seemingly pretty easy as well, check out this blog post for details.

Link: Hedge Mimiq website

What do you think? Are you an Avid Media Composer editor? Share your experiences in the comments below!