Kyno Support

Seems awfully quiet - maybe 1.9 this month?

I am back to using Adobe Bridge.  Far from ideal, but it's free, and has XMP metadata.   I would like to see Resolve extend the media page to include DAM functions. The clip support, scrubbing, quick thumbnail generation is all there (the hard part?) already.

Signiant media shuttle... no thanks!   IMHO this takeover is just finance guys messing about.

Yeah, I'm back to Bridge, as well. Although I never fully left it, because Kyno doesn't show unsupported files... It's bugs and missing features left and right in these tools. Makes you wonder how much (or little) of the customer feedback is truly considered.

My only hope rests on Blackmagic now...

Please folks, stop this endless complaining. Less Pain has built a fantastic product with Kyno, and you know this! It is a powerful tool. So powerful even that It makes perfect sense that companies like Signiant recognize its potential. Why is this a problem?

It has been recently confirmed that version 1.9 is on it’s way (although no definite date has been mentioned). So give Lesspain some slack! With all previous versions they have already proven that they deserve that. 

No.

It isn't just that the software is VERY  late,  it is the complete disregard for keeping customers informed.  There have been almost no posts on twitter, facebook, or here for many months.   If one "begs"  then occasionally Thomas Meyer or  Robert Kruger well say "it's coming"  but no real information is given.  And then silence continues.  

So, I ask myself, should I commit huge amounts of effort cataloging a library of clips using software that uses non-standard (i.e. XMP), proprietary metadata that is very much at risk of having development crippled or halted altogether.   

No, that would be foolish.

Willem, when I receive zero support on a ticket from November 2020 for a paid piece of software (back then it came with support, now after the acquisition it's on "may or may not" basis), I think I have a legitimate reason to voice a complaint.

My second ticket, 2 months without an answer, is regarding an intermittent playback issue with BRAW files, which often leaves me shooting in the dark for 30-40min until the Kyno wind blows in the right direction and it starts playing the files properly.

The latest BRAW is completely incompatible, so one of my cameras is out of the workflow at the moment.

Regarding the update - you purchase a license with 1yr of free feature updates. It may not be guaranteed, but why set an expectation for it if you can't deliver? At the current level of service, I have zero incentive to invest for an update if 1.9 doesn't come on time for my license and/or doesn't fix the issues I have.

Kyno is unique in that it offers ProRes encoding on Windows, has a decent renaming engine and most of the interface is practical. I won't go as far as trashing the whole program - the concept is great, as was the potential. But the total lack of support - look at the amount of unaddressed requests/questions. Not excusable for a product aimed at professionals. A phone number for support is not even available.

I hesitated to buy a license for years and now that I did - I've used it for half a year and it's becoming obsolete for basic functionality.

I am truely agreeing, that the outlook is bad. Signiant - it doesn't feel like a company, who believes in small creative teams, but in complex production houses. Their regular stuff start's at around 7500 USD / year (for UDP file transfer... you can get that way cheaper) and looking at their portfolio, it feals like promising as calling an insurance agent, or knocking at SAP and Deutsche Telekom and asking, if they have a fancy tool for you.

They want to include the knowledge and code of KYNO into a SAAS onpremise solution.
Late at the show, i would say, with competitors as Frame.io and Iconik.io.

The ProRes encoding might be something unique right now, but as Resolve opened their API and enabled external plugins for their encoding, I am pretty sure, that there will be a solution in the near future. The Preview-Player with the LUTs integration is something, I feel sorry about. Copy & verify and the rename stuff is also very handy, but there are also competitors. 

For me its purely the lack of serious information on status, future plans and general feedback on legitimate concerns lots of us have about the future of an otherwise great product with potential to become greater.

The worst enemy for trust and new/further investments in a product/company is in this case zero or vague replies to any questions regarding what is going to happen.

I am a user for example that struggled in maintaining a completely integrated mam solution that was dropped unexpectedly (final cut serverj. While searching for a long time and keeping it alive in virtual machines trying to find an alternative ,  i moved away from a DB centric solution as i could not find any affordable one that matched my needs and by now adapted workflows.

Kyno was not a perfect match but solved together with some other solutions large parts of the puzzle so hesitantly after following their development for a while i eventualy moved over to be only shortly afterwards , just before going all in with all workstations etc , confronted with a buyout .

And yes i am worried and would be sad and pissed to have to start from scratch again.

Like others i believe in Blackmagic a lot (have also a small software business for a product related to Resolve) and likely they will offer us something that makes the need for Kyno even less, but still .....

Would love to be wrong as i still believe in a future for the product, but not if its in the hands of a new company that couldnt care less. Again hope i am wrong. Please just prove us wrong and we will all swallow our words gladly i am sure. But if is talks, walks , smells like a Duck, mostly its because it is a Duck.

fyi Been eyeing at Flow lately that announced some months ago a full integration to resolve . Had a demo running on a central linux db some time ago (pre resolve integration ) and at that time they had an interesting price model that would not break the back and offered waaaaaaaaay. more then Kyno . But no news there yet and the price model disappeared into a scary "contact us for the price" model which typicaly means "if you have to ask you cant afford it" model.  

Well said Petar & Jonathon!

BTW, Prores encoding on Windows can be found in Acrovid's INTERTAKE,  Voukoder plugin for Resolve (in beta) and  Vegas Pro  (with Vegasaur plug in you can batch make intermediates.)

p.s. Also a happy frame.io user and the integration with Resolve is already pretty amazing and getting better every iteration.

I hear cloud, I run. :) And a lot of the media management solutions are moving this way, so true alternatives are hard to find if on-premise is a must. This makes frame.io unsuitable for me, unfortunately.

Thanks for the tip on FLOW. I doubt it will be affordable for me, but I'll keep an eye on it.

For the rest, I'm somehow happy to see that I'm not alone in my struggles with Lesspain.

I am with you on cloud ;-). Only use it for temp/final deliverables and easy communication with customers. Saves me 10000 emails and phonecalls back and forth. But loooove the Resolve integration. Customer can even draw their notes on the video on marker position and i see it immediately in my timeline. Pretty cool.

But also need affordable full on prem MAM badly. 

Mergers and acquisitions are typically challenging (painful?) events, and exisiting product roadmaps and promises are many times thrown away. Eventually it might be better for customer - but we don't know. 

I would expect better communication from the company (but maybe they are still working with the product strategy...).

This doesn't look good for the future of Kyno...

LEXINGTON, Mass., March 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Signiant Inc. today announced the acquisition of Lesspain Software, a German provider of embedded media processing software and the desktop application Kyno. Lesspain's talent and technology will be used to extend the functionality of Signiant's market-leading Software Defined Content Exchange (SDCX) SaaS platform, adding powerful tools for interaction with media assets. With nearly one million users worldwide, the platform connects more than 50,000 Media & Entertainment companies of all sizes.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/signiant-acquires-lesspain-software-to-enhance-sdcx-saas-platform-301247256.html