Editor's Review
Sony’s old media tools were a mess—Content Browser was clunky, RAW Viewer was too narrow, and switching between them killed my flow. Catalyst Browse finally fixes that. I imported a day’s worth of FX6 footage, and the thumbnail view made finding the right clip painless. The Fast Copy feature pulled media off my card in half the time of dragging manually.
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Catalyst Browse Tips
Sort clips directly from the card first. Don’t copy every single file over before culling. Pop in your memory card, scan thumbnails, mark only the clips you want to keep, then run the transfer. It saves time and storage space.
Use Fast Copy for full card dumps. It’s optimized for Sony media and runs faster than regular file transfers, especially for large batches of 4K or raw footage.
Fix flash band issues early. If you shot with on-camera flash and see banding, fix it here before you send clips to your editor. It’s way faster than fixing it later in a full editing suite.
Export color grades as CDL files. If you do basic color tweaks here, export them as ASC-CDL to carry over to your editing software. No need to redo all the work.
Catalyst Browse Official Introduction
Let’s be real — if you shoot regularly with Sony cameras, sorting through raw footage after a long day of shooting is always a pain. Regular Windows file explorer won’t show proper thumbnails for Sony RAW clips, you can’t quickly check metadata at a glance, and dumping footage off memory cards always feels slower than it should be. Built by Sony Electronics Inc., Catalyst Browse is the official replacement for the old Content Browser and RAW Viewer, part of Sony’s cross-platform media preparation tool family. It’s not a full video editor by any stretch — it’s built purely for browsing, sorting, and prepping your footage before you move it into your actual editing workflow. For Sony shooters, it does that specific job really well.
The biggest upgrade over a basic file browser is how it handles previewing and reviewing clips. Every video and photo loads with a clear thumbnail, so you can scan through an entire memory card in seconds without opening each file one by one. You can dive into clip details too — check focus points, set in and out points to trim clips down early, and make basic color adjustments right inside the app. For Sony-specific formats, it supports the full native color range of many Sony camera models, so previews are accurate instead of washed out and flat. You can export those color tweaks as standard ASC-CDL files to carry straight over to your editing software, which saves you from redoing the exact same work later in your NLE.
Moving files off your cards is also way smoother here than basic file transfers. You can drag and drop media between your PC and any connected storage device, or use the Fast Copy function to pull footage straight from memory cards noticeably faster than default Windows transfers. It’s not just about moving files, either. You can view full metadata for every clip, edit and fix metadata entries, and even repair flash band issues caused by mismatched flash settings. For anyone who shoots events or weddings, catching and fixing those flash artifacts early saves a ton of headache in post-production.
