Media management can often be a boring, tedious and downright confusing task for many. With the abundance of codecs, formats and colour gamma’s especially with Sony cameras, things can get out of hand pretty quickly. Luckily, the good people at Sony have come up with Catalyst Browse – a free clip-management software that lets you browse through all your video files from your Sony camera or deck or raw recorder, review them and even do basic colour and metadata adjustments before sending off to your NLE for the edit. It is compatibly with pretty much all professional Sony cameras and supports the XAVC codec, so all you Sony A7r II and Sony A7s shooters out there with XAVC-S in both HD and UltraHD, as well as Sony FS7 users with XAVC-I can take advantage of this software.
In the past, Sony would have separate software applications for viewing their major pro codecs like XDCAM and SR files. The older apps are being replaced by the Catalyst Production Suite, which includes the more advanced, but paid Catalyst Browse ($199) and Catalyst Edit ($400).
The former incorporates more advanced features then Browse and lets you verify your S-Log2/3 and Raw files on set, create backups with integrated checksum, prepare a rough cut storyboard with a quick initial colour grade, and then render or export an EDL for use in your NLE of choice. The latter and more expensive Catalyst Edit takes it further by focusing on 4K and raw editing.
In a nutshell, here’s what you can do in Sony’s Catalyst Browse:
- Browse – Quickly browse the files on your device using a thumbnail view or detailed list.
- View – See the details of each clip, check focus, mark in and out points, adjust colours, and edit metadata.
- Fast Copy – Copy all clips on the media, a subset, or only the desired portion of a clip to save time and space.
- Ultra Wide Colour Gamut– Review with confidence the full range of colour captured by your S-Log and RAW Sony cameras. Apply colour looks, and import/export standard ASC-CDL files with other workflow tools to save time.
- Clip Lists – Create, import, and export Sony Professional Disc clip lists for quick play-out needs.
Here’s a video presentation on what the Catalyst Production Suite has to offer:
New features in Catalyst Browse 2.0:
- Tree View Window (Clip Browse)
- Flashband correction
- Combine relay rec clips (NXCAM)
- CIFS connection for PMW-1000/XDS
- EDL (CMX3600) Import
- Transcoding w/ anamorphic setting
- Windows 10 Support
- GPS metadata of XAVC Proxy
- 10bit SD Uncompressed MXF support
- Transcoding w/ speed mode
- Playback w/ Full Frame (speed) mode
- The Media Browser pane allows you to browse the media files on drives and devices connected to your computer.
- The Video pane allows you to preview media files.
- The Inspector pane allows you to view metadata saved in media files.
- The Adjust Colour workspace allows you to adjust the colour content of your clips.
- Clip lists allow you to assemble clips when working with XDCAM media in an XD root folder, XAVC media in an XD root folder, and RAW media in an AxS folder.
In addition, Catalyst Browse 2.0 received a massive list of bug fixes:
Notable fixes/changes in version 2.0
- Added support for repairing flash bands.
- Added support for adjusting the split location when using split-screen preview in the Adjust Color workspace.
- Added support for editing sliders in the Color Correction section of the Inspector numerically: click the value and type a new value to specify a precise value.
- Added support for adjusting color correction when working with clip lists.
- Added a Play all frames (speed) setting to playback settings to allow you to choose to optimize decoding to preserve the frame rate.
- Added support for GPS metadata in XAVC S clips recorded by the Sony Action Cam.
- Added support for GPS metadata in XAVC proxy clips recorded by the CBK-WA100 wireless adapter.
- Added support for playing XAVC Intra CBG Class 200 MXF clips.
- Added support for combining relay-recorded clips.
- Added support for importing an EDL.
- Added support for choosing a workspace when using the Upload to Ci feature (Options > Share to Ci). Previous versions of Catalyst Browse selected your first workspace by default; if that workspace was too small, uploading was not permitted.
- Time remaining is now displayed during transcoding.
- Improved support for displaying metadata.
- Added support for browsing connected devices in Browse mode.
- Added support for browsing recently viewed folders in Browse mode.
- In Browse mode, you can now click the File button and choose Add to Favorites to add the current folder to the Favorite Folders list in the Places pane.
- In Browse mode, the bottom toolbar now displays the total number of items in the current folder if no clip is selected.
- You can now press Delete to delete files in the Media Browser.
- You can now use drag-and-drop operations to copy clips in the Media Browser.
- Added context menus for easier editing: right-click (Windows) or control-click (OS X) a clip or folder to display a context menu
- Added support for ejecting volumes in Browse mode.
- Added support for adding padding to clips during transcoding.
- Added support for transcoding 1440×1080 progressive clips to ProRes format (OS X only).
- Added support for transcoding 1440×1080 XAVC Intra clips.
- Added support for reading and transcoding uncompressed 10-bit SD MXF clips.
- When transcoding to DPX format, you can type a value in the Starting frame index box to append a numeric index to transcoded file names.
- The keyboard shortcut to reset Mark In/Out points is now Shift+R.
- ProRes render template descriptions now include bit rate information (OS X only).
- The File and Tools menus are now available in Browse and View mode.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the application to crash when transcoding spanned .smi clips to XDCAM format.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the application to crash when dragging a file from the OS X Finder to Catalyst Browse when the home folder was selected.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the application to crash when adding mark points during playback.
- Fixed a bug that could cause Mark In/Out points to be displayed incorrectly after editing them.
- Added a Favorite Folders section to the folder list in dialogs that allow you to browse your system.
- Added support for using Open With in the OS X Finder to open files with Catalyst Browse.
- Added color sampling information to the Video section of the Inspector pane to display a clip’s color space, color sampling, and video bit depth.
- Improved performance when browsing clips on the Sony PDW-U2 XDCAM Disc Drive Unit.
- The appropriate clip in a clip list is now selected when you adjust the timeline play position.
- When using Copy snapshot to clipboard, the image is now corrected for nonsquare pixels.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Start time, End time, and Length values to be displayed incorrectly when viewing clip lists.
- Fixed a bug that could cause timecode values to be displayed incorrectly for XDCAM DV 25p clips.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Grade in drop-down list in the Options menu to be empty when you first start the application.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an error if you switched away from the Mark Points tab in the Inspector while editing the name of an essence mark.
- Fixed a bug that could remove an essence mark’s name when editing with a very long name on the Mark Points tab in the Inspector.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent the Ci Login dialog from being displayed in some cases after choosing the Upload to Ci command.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Inspector pane from displaying clip names correctly after renaming.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent metadata from being displayed correctly after an edit.
- Resolved an issue that could prevent the application from displaying if you ran the application on a secondary monitor and then restarted the application with the secondary monitor disconnected.
- Fixed a bug that could cause Catalyst Browse to assume file associations unexpectedly.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an error when copying a clip to a destination that had previously contained a clip with the same file name.
- Fixed a bug that could cause clips to be sorted incorrectly when sorting by frame size.
- Fixed a bug that could cause transcoding presets to be incorrectly filtered.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the second field of each frame to be skipped when playing or transcoding interlaced media.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Tint slider in the Adjust Color workspace to be reset after closing and restarting the application.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the audio meters to display a signal when playback was paused or stopped.
- Fixed a bug that could cause clip lists to display generic thumbnail images in the Media Browser after resetting Mark In/Out points.
- Fixed a bug that prevented clip list thumbnail images from displaying updated clip counts in the left pane when adding clips.
- Fixed a bug that prevented supported files from opening correctly when dropping them on the Catalyst Browse Dock icon (OS X only).
- Fixed a bug that could cause black frames to be displayed after removing clips from a clip list.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the cursor from updating when typing a value in the time display while viewing a clip list.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the application from playing AVCHD files created by Edius Pro or Adobe Premiere.
- Fixed a bug that could cause a vertical line in the resulting image when using Copy snapshot to clipboard (Windows only).
- Updated the embedded Web browser to support TLS 1.2 encryption.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent the application from displaying some AVCHD clips in the Media Browser (Windows only).
Minimum System requirement for Catalyst Browse 2.0:
- Microsoft® Windows 7, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10 (64-bit) or Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or 10.10 (Yosemite)
- 2 GHz processor (multicore or multiprocessor CPU recommended for HD; 8 cores recommended for 4K)
- 500 MB hard-disk space for program installation
- Solid-state disk (SSD) or high-speed RAID for 4K media
- 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended; 16 GB recommended for 4K)
- NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, or Intel GPU with support for the following:
- OpenGL 2.1
- OpenCL 1.1 or later with at least 512 MB of memory (2 GB recommended for 4K) or a CPU with SSE 4.2 or higher
To download Catalyst Browse 2.0 head over to Sony here.
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