Yippee! Sony Catalyst Prepare is now publicly released! This is a media preparation tool, which means that it lets you import camera footage to view and sort it. You can do light editing (color correction and rough-cut storyboards) and you can render to several video formats or just have the tool copy the media to a location with the files all renamed logically. If you make a storyboard, you can export that to Avid, Apple, Adobe or Sony Vegas Pro.
I’ve been working on this product for the last 5 months. I’m fortunate to work with a very talented team, so this development process was a genuine pleasure. The GUI turned out really beautiful and the underlying video engine is remarkably fast. This is software that’s built to last, and I’m proud to have my name attached to it.
If you want to play around, there’s a free trial. Or if you own a Sony camera, try out its little brother, Catalyst Browse which is completely free but supports a narrower list of file formats and has fewer organization features.