Catalyst Prepare™
The ultimate preproduction assistant that allows you to easily and intuitively browse your camera, deck, or card reader, view clips, off-load the media for safe backup, view and edit metadata, batch copy, batch transcode to a wide variety of pro formats, precisely perform first-pass color correction, and more.
The fast, simple, reliable path from camera to post
As media production becomes more complicated and turnaround times grow tighter, you need a tool that eases the workload on your editor and helps you meet project deadlines. With Catalyst Prepare, you can quickly access, organize, and prepare all of your project footage — even when you use a variety of popular cameras. Create a rough-cut storyboard along with quick initial color grade to jumpstart the editing and review process. Then render it out directly or export an EDL to other popular tools you use in your workflow.
Fast
- Verify shots immediately on set, including Sony RAW, X-OCN, and S-Log clips
- Solve your camera media wrangling issues with a single application
- Deadline pressure? Quickly review and identify subclips for copying, eliminating the long transfer times needed for entire clips
Simple
- Work in the same consistent, fresh user interface on both Mac OS X and Windows platforms
- Simple, powerful interface with a quick and easy learning curve
- Secure, integrated clip upload to Ci, the video cloud service by Sony, enables collaborative review of work with your extended team
- Intuitive design provides the tools you need for each step, ending cognitive overload, clutter, and confusion
Reliable
- Back up your camera media with confidence from integrated checksum verification
- Media libraries are saved automatically and continuously, preserving critical edits
- Precise managed color workflow ensures accuracy and consistency for Sony RAW, X-OCN, and S-Log sources
Simplified workflow
Fresh, clean interface enables access to all of the important organization and preparation tasks from a single screen. Browse and view clips, make a secure backup, copy clips to a production PC or external hard drive, transcode to a variety of formats, create rough-cut storyboards, or upload to YouTube or Ci, the video cloud service by Sony, for collaborative review.
Browse and view
Browse multiple devices and view media directly from your camera, deck, or card reader. View clips as thumbnails or as lists with associated metadata. Quickly zoom in to check focus, apply a look to check color, and view and add metadata. Mark in/out points during playback or scrub the timeline and log marker points to focus on the important part of the clip. Create subclips to capture important sections of a longer file.
Copy
Copy all media, selected media, or portions of selected media to production drives and backup drives. Create full camera-card backups with strong checksum verification, and rest assured that you have perfect copies of your assets before reformatting.
Transcode
Batch transcode to a wide variety of formats, including AVC/AAC (.mp4), DPX, ProRes (Mac only), DNxHD, MP3, WAV, WAV64, OpenEXR, SStP, XDCAM, or XAVC, with a variety of frame rates and resolutions ranging from Internet- and tablet-focused delivery, to large-screen 4K displays. Include color adjustments if desired, and select output color space in the transcode process. Transcode files while maintaining copies of the originals. Rename files as you transcode. Background transcoding allows you to keep working and reviewing your next media set without waiting.
Share
Upload a group of files, a single file, a portion of selected files, or a storyboard to Ci, the video cloud service by Sony. Create a Media Box in Ci to move files from location to the studio via the cloud. Create secure Workspaces, upload media, and invite stakeholders to review and leave frame-accurate comments for cloud-based collaboration. Learn more about Sony Ci. Upload your media to Media Navigator, asset management from Sony. Learn more about Media Navigator.
Native format support
Catalyst Prepare natively supports Sony formats such as Sony RAW, X-OCN, XAVC Long, XAVC Intra, XAVC HS, XAVC S, XDCAM 422, XDCAM EX, DNxHD, ProRes (read only on Windows; read/export on macOS), HDCAM SR (SStP), NXCAM, AVCHD, AVC H.264/MPEG-4, HDV and DV, and OpenEXR image sequences are also supported. All formats can be mixed and matched when building a storyboard. Multichannel files? No problem: Catalyst Prepare supports files with up to 16 channels of audio. Supported video formats and devices.
Off load
Back up multiple media cards with checksum verification.
Dual app workflow
Use the Windows auto resize feature or the new split view in Mac to take advantage of drag and drop from Catalyst Prepare to Catalyst Edit.
Organize into libraries and bins
Catalyst Prepare is a key organizational and creative tool that allows you to arrange media into targeted, meaningful libraries and bins. Then launch the creative process with solid rough drafts. Locate the correct media, create subclips, and develop rough drafts on a storyboard in a dedicated tool designed specifically for these tasks.
Edit mode
View details, zoom to check focus, mark in/out points, adjust colors nondestructively, and create a storyboard to rough draft your vision. Edit mode enables you to zero in on the important parts of each clip. Create sub clips to easily access the best parts of each clip. Assemble, trim, and sequence a group of files into a Storyboard. Even apply color adjustments. Then render the Storyboard out in a variety of formats or export it as an EDL with media to send to Vegas Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, AVID Media Composer, Adobe Premiere or Da Vinci Resolve. The edit mode also offers the ability to automatically detect and repair flash band problems created by flash photography.
Touch enabled
Use gestures to start and stop playback, zoom and pan to check focus, select and move files, adjust color controls, and more.
Pro SDI monitoring
For critical color work, output to an external reference monitor through a Blackmagic SDI or UltraStudio device.
GPU accelerated
The entire Catalyst family takes advantage of the power of modern GPU devices from Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD to enhance playback and transcoding. The optimal GPU device is automatically selected.
Logging
Mark in and out points during playback or scrub the timeline and log marker points to focus on the important part of the clip. Create subclips to capture important sections of a longer clip.
Precise first-pass color correction
Use the brightness, contrast, tone curves, color wheels, and color correction sliders to adjust color while viewing the waveform, vectorscope, and histogram displays; for even greater accuracy when grading HDR clips, change the scale of the waveform monitor to use nits instead of percent. Transcode files that carry the new color adjustments or save the settings as standard ASC-CDL to apply later in the finishing session. The color grading tools support the SR Live for HDR and Instant HDR workflows, along with the ACES color management system. Set your preview display to a before, after, split, or 2-up view to compare before-and-after adjustments.
Support for Tangent surface controls
Use the Tangent Wave or Element line of surface control devices with Catalyst Prepare. These devices provide dedicated hardware control of the built-in color correction tools. Fluidly adjust RGB, Lift, Gamma, and Gain in addition to playback and undo/redo functions.
Want to learn even more about Catalyst Prepare?
See our application help to learn how to use the software.
Catalyst Prepare system requirements
- A 64-bit operating system: Microsoft® Windows 10 or Windows 11; macOS 10.15 (Catalina), 11 (Big Sur)*, or 12 (Monterey)*
*Intel processors only. - 2 GHz multicore processor
- An 8-core processor is recommended for 4K media
- An Ivy Bridge Core i7 with Quick Sync Video or Xeon E5 processor is recommended for XAVC S media
- A Kaby Lake Core i7 processor with Quick Sync Video is recommended for 4:2:0 XAVC HS media and required for 8k media
- An Ice Lake Core i7 processor with Quick Sync Video is recommended for 4:2:2 XAVC HS media and required for 8k media
- 500 MB hard-disk space for program installation
- Solid-state disk (SSD) or high-speed RAID for 4K or larger media
- 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended for 4K or larger media)
The XAVC Long 422 3840x2160 200 Mbps (Sony) transcoding presets require 16 GB or more RAM. If you're using a dedicated GPU, the presets also require 4 GB or more GPU memory.
- NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, or Intel GPU with support for OpenCL 1.1 or later with at least 1024 MB of memory or a CPU with SSE 4.2 or higher
- OpenGL 2.1 is recommended for optimum performance
- OpenGL 4.1 is required for video stabilization/lens breathing compensation
- 2 GB GPU memory is recommended for 4K preview, HD rendering, or HD video stabilization/lens breathing compensation
- 6 GB of GPU memory is recommended for decoding XAVC S or XAVC HS media, and we recommend using the latest GPU driver version from NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, or Intel. macOS provides software decoding of XAVC S or XAVC HS media.
- 6 GB GPU memory is recommended for 4K rendering
- 8 GB GPU memory is recommended for 8K rendering or 4K video stabilization/lens breathing compensation
- 10 GB GPU memory is recommended for 8K video stabilization/lens breathing compensation
Catalyst Browse
Free
Powerful clip-management tool for the latest portfolio of Sony cameras and decks
- Browse the media on your camera, card reader, or Professional Disc
- View metadata details
- Copy all files or a subset of select files
- Transcode and upload to the cloud
- Mac OS X and Windows
