Hedge, the people behind Postlab have today announced a round of funding with some familiar industry advisors joining.
Well to be honest the headline should really have said 'Company raises $3M; acquires Divergent Media assets, invests in Colourlab and establishes world-class advisory team'. A touch long and our server doesn't like the odd semi-colon thrown into a URL.
But a lot going on, so let's break it down point by point.
There is a new $3M round of funding led by ex Final Cut Pro X product manager Steve Bayes. Through that funding, Hedge will acquire Divergent Media assets EditReady & Scopebox.
They are also taking a stake in the artificial intelligence powered colour grading system Colourlab.ai. (Not too sure if we have gained an extra U on the journey there.) You can read Steve Bayes' introduction to Colourlab right here on FCP.co. Hopefully a Final Cut Pro plugin will follow!
“Hedge has had five consecutive years of profitable growth. But, even with our success and rapid development schedule, there’s still so much more we can build to make life even better for our customers,” states Paul Matthijs, co-founder and CEO of Hedge. “With this investment coming from industry leaders who understand the pain points we are trying to solve, we will grow our team and focus on optimizing the workflow for customers rather than finances, bringing new features and entirely new products to market faster. And by investing back into the industry, we are also building a new era of video workflows that are open, reliable, and fast - and that will catapult video production into the modern age.”
Two new advisors are also joining Hedge, both will be familiar to FCP.co readers.
Estelle McGechie is currently serving as the Chief Product Officer at Atomos. She was also the FCP product manager who took over from Steve Bayes when he left Apple.
Robin Moran is a filmmaker, runs a RED camera hire company in Indonesia (Coincidentally, I have one of his company T-shirts on today from IBC 2017) and is a fan of Final Cut Pro. We have seen him present at FCPX Creative Summits and of course has put together some great high-end articles for FCP.co.
Interesting times. We are a big fan of Hedge's Postlab Drive and use it daily. We can see the beginnings of a larger ecosystem starting - Are we going to see another camera-to-cloud workflow?
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
