It’s a little bit late now, but American Cinematographer ran an article on Synaesthesia in their July 2010 issue:

Surreal Road Maps Production Data

Surreal Road has released a beta version of its flagship software product, Synaesthesia. The new version adds the capability to read-in clip information from Final Cut Pro XML files. The new feature adds to an already rich toolset, including support for Red camera footage and Google Maps integration.

Synaesthesia is a database-driven application for Max OSX, targeted at filmmakers who need to track data across the lifetime of a production. From loading in screenplays and storyboards during preproduction, through logging action during a shoot, to creating sequences during post, it forms intelligent links out of all the data and allows filmmakers to annotate and use modern data management techniques such as tagging to keep everything organized and accessible.

Synaesthesia was created to fulfill a need to organize the massive amounts of data and metadata that can be generated on a shoot.

Synaesthesia Beta 7 has been released today. There are a few fixes and some minor changes, but the most important thing is the addition of new context-dependent menus and keyboard shortcuts.

What does this mean? Well it’s much quicker to do the most common actions on any breakdown. For example, to add a new shot to a scene from the Scene Breakdown, you now have 3 ways to do it:

1. Go to the “Shots” tab, then click on the add button at the bottom (previously this was the only way to do it)
2. From the “Attach” menu, choose “Shot”
3. Press Command-Option-O

With the addition of keyboard shortcuts, navigation becomes much less of a chore. For example, to quickly move between different clips on the same reel, from the Clip Breakdown, you can now use the keyboard shortcuts Command-Left Arrow and Command-Right Arrow to go to the previous and next clips respectively. Add the shift key to either of those, and you’ll quickly go to the first or the last clips in the set. Browse the complete list of keyboard shortcuts to see more time-savers.

We’ve also fixed a bunch more issues and made some minor adjustments. You can see the full list of changes in the release notes.

If you’re currently using beta 6, you should be prompted to download and install the new version within the next few days. Otherwise, you can download it here.

It’s been 6 months since the first beta release of Synaesthesia. In that time, the application has grown, and improved, particularly thanks to the feedback received from a number of people. There are still one or two holes to be plugged, but overall, we feel that we are rapidly approaching a stable, useful product, one that will be usable by filmmakers everywhere.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to open our doors wider. So now anyone can download the Synaesthesia beta without needing to apply to be in the programme. No email, job title or preferences required. Just go to the download page, give it a spin, and tell us what you think.

First bit of news for today: Synaesthesia beta 6 is ready for download.

This release adds functionality never seen before in a FileMaker database: you will now be notified of any new updates and prompted to install them automatically. It took an awful lot of experimentation and some digital sleight-of-hand, but the end result works wonderfully (as it should do):

Aside from that, this release focuses on asset management. If your Asset Manager is packed full of cast, crew and equipment, it can be tricky to find exactly what you want when adding them to a production. Therefore, we’ve added two new features to help you out.

First of all, there are now additional (built-in) filters for different crew departments, making a specific DOP or costume designer easier to find. Secondly, you can choose between seeing all assets from the Asset Manager, or just those in the current production:

Finally, companies now have their own roles. As soon as you designate a contact as a company in the Asset Manager, you can choose an appropriate default role for it.

You can see the full list of changes in the Beta 6 Release Notes.

Anyone who has previously enrolled on the beta programme will get an email soon with the download link. Anyone else can download it directly from here. Which brings me neatly to the second bit of news of the day…

Well, it’s the end of the month, and so that means it’s time for a new beta release.

This update doesn’t really add anything new, but instead focuses on improving the nuts and bolts of the software. We’ve improved some of the codebase, which for you means that we’ll be able to roll out more integrations and add functionality faster and more reliably than before.

We’ve also made big gains in terms of performance. We’ve identified a few areas that were noticeably slow (namely, displaying lists of items on breakdowns), run tests, taken it apart and rebuilt it again to see what we can do to make it faster. That’s led to an increase in speed of about 5 times.

That’s right, displaying lists of items now happens 5 times faster. What that means is that you’ll rarely even notice that you’re waiting for the list to be displayed. And to be honest, that’s the way it should be. Of course, you’ll only really notice the difference if you’re working with huge lists anyway. But given that there are 200-300 scenes on average per production, it won’t be long before you appreciate the difference. Oh and speaking of lists, we also added the ability to filter them by free-typing (in addition to using tags), which will make it much easier to find items when looking through those long (speedy) lists.

There’s the usual bunch of fixes, and other minor changes, and you can read all the gory details in the beta 5 release notes, if you’re so inclined.

The next release is going to incorporate user feedback so far, so keep that feedback coming. As usual, everyone in the beta programme will be emailed soon with a new download link.