Smoothing the workflow: Lesspain's Kyno receives major update

The newly improved Kyno 1.3 media management software

Less pain with more gain? The Kyno media management application from Lesspain Software is popular amongst producers and photographers alike. Now the software has received a major update, promising to further increase its usability. 

Kyno from German developer Lesspain Software, allows anyone to view, log, organise, and transcode footage from just about any type of camera or codec. It is aimed at situations when you’re working with people who don’t have NLE’s on their Macs, such as producers in the field, causing massive slow downs when they want to log and view material as well. Since its first release only a year ago, Kyno has become the media manager of choice for a large number of well-known professionals, including Andy Lesauvage, a London-based photographer and videographer, and ChiliCake Films, a specialist in music videos. 

When I reviewed Kyno, it was still a bit of a diamond in the rough, but Lesspain Software hasn’t rested on its laurels and has been busy updating the application. Kyno has now reached version 1.3 and many of the rough edges have been ironed out.

Version 1.3 extends usability functions across multiple workflows, creating easier access to Kyno’s most commonly used tools. New keyboard shortcuts allow for faster workflows, enabling users to quickly send files to Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro, export to Excel, toggle drill down and shift between different viewpoints.

In the transcoding area, the dialogues for renaming and transcoding single files have been extended, giving users the full range of presets and variables as batch operations. Shot lists can now be built in parallel to marking frames for still export and you can now filter material based on scene, shot, take and more descriptive metadata fields.

One way to speed up screening and logging is by generating content tab thumbnails in advance, which Kyno 1.3 now optionally will do. Thumbnails and technical metadata now also remain intact when moving files around within Kyno — this was one of the criticisms I had when reviewing the very first version. Also, exported subclips now inherit all descriptive metadata from the original clip. It was odd that Kyno 1 didn’t support this, as it’s targeted at workgroup workflows.

Kyno 1.3 also adds new features to increase the flexibility of its Premiere Pro integration. Subclips can now be used as duration markers in Premiere Pro. This offers a smooth workflow for Premiere users who use markers to organise their editing projects. Finally, when reimporting XML, all contained metadata fields are automatically added to Kyno metadata. This allows you to use metadata added during an editing project to be used in Kyno workflows, including batch still frame or Excel shot list exports.