Daniel Boist, founder of DBSonic Labs, recently contacted me about their new application called PostProAnalytics. I found his description very intriguing, so I emailed Daniel to learn more about it.
NOTE: The PPA website is: www.dbsoniclabs.com/products/post-pro-analytics/
Larry: Daniel, what is PostProAnalytics?
Daniel Boist, Founder, dbSonic
Daniel: PostProAnalytics (PPA) is a Mac-based application for automatically analyzing working hours and project activities in DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, and After Effects (more applications are coming soon). It shows how much time is spent on projects, timelines, and creative tasks.
PPA helps freelancers, post-production studios, and agencies better understand their workflows, capacity utilization, and project effort, bill accurately, and become more efficient.
Larry: What problem were you trying to solve by developing this application?
Daniel: The app actually grew out of our day-to-day business. I’ve been running a small film and post-production company in Germany for almost 30 years, and we frequently deal with a variety of client projects that generate a wide range of different deliverables. And it used to be very time-consuming—and sometimes prone to errors, especially when working as a team—to manually track which individual assets and projects we created and how much time we spent on them, all so we could ultimately bill the client accurately. It’s also helped us optimize our cost estimates because, thanks to PPA, we finally have reliable data showing which projects are profitable and which aren’t.
Larry: How does it work?
Daniel: PostPro Analytics tracks the active time a user spends in Resolve, Premiere, and/or After Effects. PPA distinguishes whether the user is actively working, whether the app is active but idle in the foreground, whether rendering is currently in progress, and so on. These recorded times, along with the metadata read from the application, are stored in a database and can then be visually displayed, sorted and filtered using various filters, and used as a report for further processing—for example, for billing, team and resource planning, etc.
Larry: When you talk about “project tracking,” what exactly is tracked?
Daniel: That depends a bit on the specific app. What all supported applications have in common is the current project and timeline data. In DaVinci Resolve, for example, we can also extract the current page and additional metadata. This allows the user, for example, to see in PPA how much time they’ve spent on a specific project, in one or more timelines on the COLOR page.
Larry: Who do you see as the typical user?
Typical users are primarily freelancers in the fields of editing, color grading, VFX, and animation—in short, anyone working in content creation and post-production. But larger post-production studios and advertising agencies are also ideal PPA users thanks to PPA Studio, which can log up to 20 (and eventually more) workstations simultaneously on a local network.
Larry: Is the application intended only for individual editors, or can it be used collaboratively by a team?
Daniel: As I just mentioned, in addition to the PPA Single-User version for individual users, we also offer the PPA Studio version for larger teams, which currently supports up to 20 concurrent PPA instances on a local network. In future versions of PPA, support for even larger teams of 50–100 local users should be feasible without any issues.
Larry: What are the hardware and software requirements?
Daniel: PPA was originally developed around DaVinci Resolve because Resolve is the “heart” of our post-production workflow. In addition, we’ve already integrated Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects into PPA. We plan to add more apps in the future, such as Final Cut Pro, Motion, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Blender, Cinema 4D, etc. Currently, we require at least macOS 14.x. DaVinci users must have DaVinci Studio version 19.x or later, and Premiere Pro and After Effects should be running the latest versions (26.x).
Larry: Give me some examples of typical reports that an individual editor might see.
Daniel: The simplest example would be the total time a user spent on a specific project, for example, last month (see below).
See the total time an editor spent on a project. (Click to see a larger image.)
If we want to go “deeper,” we can analyze how much time a user spent on a specific project, on a specific timeline, and there, for example, only on the Color page. (See the screen shot below.) I could label the results of this analysis with one of the 10 freely definable custom tags (e.g., “Invoice to client” or “Call/Talk to client,” etc.) so that I can get a quick and personalized overview of the status of my projects.
See how much time an editor spent on a specific timeline. (Click to see a larger image.)
In the Studio version, see below, the PPA host can get an overview of the team hours worked on a project, or how much time a specific user has spent working on a project, or how much time was spent in a specific timeline—for example, on color grading and/or in Fusion. The possibilities for analysis are virtually endless.
In the Studio version, see total team hours spent on a project. (Click to see a larger image.)
Larry: What other reports can be generated with this?
Daniel: I’ve already described a few things. There are a lot of attributes available that I can combine using a flexible, rule-based filtering system to create virtually any conceivable analysis or report. In addition, PPA also offers integrated project management. Here, to-dos and reminders based on actual project data can be defined and combined, for example, with reminders, to-do emails, or—in future versions—with triggers for external CRM or project management solutions.
Larry: How do you use this in your own work?
Daniel: Internally at DBSONIC MEDIA, we use PPA as a reporting tool to generate accurate invoices for specific projects that aren’t billed at a flat rate, to gain an overview of larger projects, and to optimize the creation of cost estimates.
Larry: Is this a tool for employee monitoring? In other words: How do you ensure data protection—both for individuals and for team members?
Daniel: Since I’ve been active in the industry with my own company for nearly 30 years, I know that our greatest assets—besides the quality of our work—are reliability and data security. This means that PPA never retrieves project or other data and never sends it externally. All data generated by PPA is stored exclusively locally on the user’s computer (or within their local network in the case of the Studio version).
As far as user privacy is concerned, we’ve integrated a “Privacy Mode” into PPA. When this is enabled, all logged data is anonymized. In other words, no user data or machine IDs are stored—only the project metadata. This ensures that, especially in studio environments, it’s impossible to directly link the logged data to a specific user. Beyond that, we assume that professional administrators and users in larger studios handle privacy responsibly and inform their staff about the use of PPA. PPA also doesn’t run “invisibly” in the background but is always visible in the Mac menu bar.
Larry: How is this priced?
Daniel: Since we’re currently in the public beta phase, that’s not entirely clear yet. However, the single-user version is expected to cost somewhere between €70 and €90. This will be a version with no time limit that will include all V1.x updates.
Larry: To wrap up, please write a one-paragraph promotional blurb for PostPro Analytics.
Daniel: I don’t think a promotional blurb is necessary at all, since anyone who works professionally in post-production and makes a living from it will immediately see the enormous benefits of PPA for their business.
Larry: Daniel, thank you very much for your time. This seems to be a very useful application for the post-production business sector.
Daniel: Thank you, Larry. It’s an honor to conduct this interview with you!!
