By Molly Hill

Firefly Cinema, a French company that produces a full set of post production tools, premiered Version 7 of its products at NAB 2018. I visited with co-founder Philippe Reinaudo and head of business development Morgan Angove at the Flanders Scientific booth. They were knowledgeable and friendly, and they helped me to better understand their software.

Firefly’s suite includes FirePlay, FireDay, FirePost and the brand-new FireVision. All the products share the same database and Éclair color management, making for a smooth and complete workflow. However, Reinaudo says their programs were designed with specific UI/UXs to better support each product’s purpose.

Here is how they break down:
FirePlay: This is an on-set media player that supports most any format or file. The player is free to use, but there’s a paid option to include live color grading.

FireDay: Firefly Cinema’s dailies software includes a render tree for multiple versions and supports parallel processing.

FirePost: This is Firefly Cinema’s proprietary color grading software. One of its features was a set of “digital filters,” which were effects with adjustable parameters (not just pre-set LUTs). I was also excited to see the inclusion of curve controls similar to Adobe Lightroom’s Vibrance setting, which increases the saturation of just the more muted colors.

FireVision: This new product is a cloud-based review platform, with smooth integration into FirePost. Not only do tags and comments automatically move between FirePost and FireVision, but if you make a grading change in the former and hit render, the version in FireVision automatically updates. While other products such as Frame.io have this feature, Firefly Cinema offers all of these in the same package. The process was simple and impressive.

One of the downsides of their software package is its lack of support for HDR, but Raynaud says that’s a work in progress. I believe this will likely begin with ÉclairColor HDR, as Reinaudo and his co-founder Luc Geunard are both former Éclair employees. It’s also interesting that they have products for every step after shooting except audio and editing, but perhaps given the popularity of Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere and Avid Pro Tools, those are less of a priority for a young company.

Overall, their set of products was professional, comprehensive and smooth to operate, and I look forward to seeing what comes next for Firefly Cinema.

Molly Hill is a motion picture scientist and color nerd, soon-to-be based out of San Francisco. You can follow her on Twitter @mollymh4.