Over the past few years, the economics of media production have changed quite a bit. Costs have gone up across the board, while production budgets haven’t exactly followed the same curve. We’re seeing it everywhere: crews are getting stretched thin, timelines are being squeezed, and freelancers are juggling more roles than ever.

Meanwhile, we’ve kept building. Each Hedge app has been growing steadily in functionality, even to the point where many are considered feature-complete. That kind of progress comes with engineering costs, and like everyone else, we’ve felt the pressure of rising expenses.

At the same time, we try hard to keep our products as affordable as possible. We’re not afraid to drop prices when we can, a rarity in this industry. When we do so, it’s because the core technology in several of our apps has been rock-solid for years and requires minimal upkeep. An example of this is OffShoot Solo for iPad and iPhone, which is based on the technology driving its bigger brother on macOS. Solo allows more people to use our proven technology at a lower price point.

Both FoolCat and EditReady have recently come to a crossroads: the bits that make FoolCat and EditReady do what they do best — generating camera reports and transcoding media — no longer need constant tinkering. What does need upkeep is everything around that: new cameras and firmware, macOS changes (hello, macOS 26 Tahoe 👋), and the ever-expanding landscape of RAW formats.

Humble Beginnings

Both FoolCat and EditReady began as simple tools that excelled at one thing. And while those foundations haven’t changed, the workflows around them have. As a result, both apps have, over the years, become RAW powerhouses.

The original versions of FoolCat and EditReady didn’t have all these adjacent advanced capabilities like Color Awareness - they offered much less codec support, at a lower price point. Both apps have increased in price over the years due to the cost of maintaining all things RAW, keeping codecs working and up to date. So far, everyone has been bearing the cost of those capabilities — even if their workflow didn’t call for it. Not everyone needs RAW, LUTs, Color Awareness, or even Phantom support.

That’s why today, we’re reintroducing those versions - plus a bunch of new features ✨

Standard & Pro

A lite version? Nano? Mini? None of the above. These new baseline versions of FoolCat and EditReady are simply called FoolCat and EditReady, and we’ve made them cheaper.

Both apps offer the same functionality as the current apps for non-RAW media. Ideal for users who don’t have RAW workflows but still want the speed, simplicity, and reliability they’ve always had.

If you’ve been looking to add reporting and transcoding to your workflow, these new base tiers make our apps more affordable than ever. If you have a RAW-heavy workflow, Pro keeps you right where you need to be:

Free As In Beer

While EditReady already had a Pro tier, FoolCat didn’t. As of today, it does, with support for all codecs - RAW and non-RAW. All existing FoolCat and EditReady users, of course, already had RAW support in their current apps, which means you all got a free Pro upgrade. Nothing changes in your current workflow, your license just got better 🥳

As part of this release, we’re also adding two new flavours to the already extensive list of supported RAW codecs:

• Nikon RAW (”NRAW”)
• ARRICORE

And that’s not all: we’re adding our much heralded Scripting feature to FoolCat Pro. All EditReady users also get this feature as part of their free upgrade to Pro, plus Phantom Cine support.

Moar Clips

While FoolCat was initially designed to create a report for just REDMAGs, we see many of you using it to generate massive reports of whatever’s on a hard drive or server. That easily exceeds 100 clips per report, which is quite a substantial load to bear. It’s been on our to-do for a while to be able to support such reports, and today’s release gets you exactly that.

FoolCat now supports report generation with much larger amounts of clips, and does so with a brand-new report design for improved intelligibility:

Why we’re doing this

When we founded Hedge, we did so because many industry tools were just too expensive for people who were starting out. Above all, we want to make tools that everybody can afford. In hard times, that also means making sure those same Hedge tools remain accessible, sustainable, and have good value for money.

In the end, it’s about keeping things lean — for you and for us — so we can focus on improving what actually matters, not padding feature lists. We’re simplifying so you don’t have to.