Hedge renames flagship app to Offshoot and splits it into tiers

Celebrating its seventh birthday this year, Dutch workflow specialist Hedge has decided to ring some major changes with the newly rebadged Offshoot just the start.

First up, there’s the name change to consider. According to the company the Hedge application has matured to a level where they believe it deserves its own identity and place in its lineup, so it’s being rebadged as OffShoot. Not only that, but it’s also to be split into three separate flavours.

The entry-level version is simply called OffShoot. For $149 it contains all of the most popular and most easily accessed functionality required to copy files fast and securely. For more advanced uses and workflows, the company is introducing the $249 OffShoot Pro, which includes features such as scripting, a preset builder, clip review, and Codex 7 support for compatibility with the ARRI Alexa 35. Hedge Mono, meanwhile, becomes OffShoot for iPad and gets a $49 price point. 

OffShoot and OffShoot Pro both now offer integration with iconik, a popular hybrid cloud asset management solution from Hedge’s partners at Backlight. With Offshoot, users can copy cards and send media straight to iconik to catalogue, archive, and share with their team. OffShoot Pro includes additional metadata options to further deepen the integration with iconik. OffShoot and OffShoot Pro also offer opportunities to upload files to Frame.io via a dedicated watch folder. 

And OffShoot Pro is introducing Amazon S3 integration for the first time so that users can link their offload workflow to broader corporate cloud initiatives within AWS that their business uses. 

Existing Hedge app users with active support will receive a free upgrade to the new Offshoot as well as a special offer for OffShoot Pro. For new users, pre-release discounts see OffShoot at $99 and OffShoot Pro offered at $169 for a limited time. 

Connect 3.0, FoolCat & more…lots more

Elsewhere in the company’s arsenal, Connect 3.0 further expands its comprehensive push notification system. Currently, notifications are app-based, which is inherently limited, so Hedge has developed a cloud platform that will eventually allow it to add notifications wherever they are needed across the entire product line. Connect 3.0 adds support for Android and iOS devices on 16.4 and above, as well as a new web interface for monitoring the status of transfers on every OffShoot system that users manage. This will help large productions track footage across numerous locations and better coordinate resources. For Offshoot, users will need to use a code to manually add each licensed system to their monitoring account. Offshoot Pro provides a “magic link” that automatically adds each system to the user's account. 

And the new FoolCat for macOS will be available shortly after NAB and brings the application into harmony with OffShoot. This release takes advantage of the latest advances in the proprietary Hedge Media Engine developed for EditReady to expand codec support and dramatically accelerate performance so that processing is up to 3x faster than previous versions and users can work with more professional cameras and more formats than ever before. Later this year the first version of FoolCat for Windows is due. 

There’s more too. Mimiq Pro, with support for LucidLink, is adding Workspaces, which will allow users to mount folders on block-based storage, to create shares that Avid Media Composer recognizes; a new version of Canister adds support for notifications using Connect 3.0 and the ability to accurately monitor the progress of both archive and restore jobs (there’s a Windows beta here too);  PostLab adds support for the Colourlab Ai platform; and EditReady also splits into three tiered versions, with the new EditReady Server allowing users to operate each feature from the command line, create automations and integrate the application with other services. An integration with iconik's accessible and easily searchable media asset management platform is first out of the gate.

Like we said, major changes, and major changes across the entire Hedge range.

“We want our licensing model to reflect the harmony we are creating in our products and we are going to take the opportunity of our 7th anniversary to launch a new, flexible, scalable and holistic system that includes revised pricing, tiered versions and floating licences,” writes the company. “What this means in practical terms is that customers see a change in prices, new purchase options and most importantly, the ability for our users to activate their software on the computer they’re using! We believe that this new model better addresses user requirements and offers infinitely more flexibility than we’ve been able to offer before. To ease the transition, we’ll be introducing a raft of promotional offers for existing customers so that they can be sure that they have the software and features they require.”