Frequently asked questions

What is Hi-Ho?

Hi-Ho is a story mining app for documentary editors. Drop the card in — camera files, recorder files, whatever you shot — and it syncs them, reads every word, finds the story, and hands the timeline back to Resolve, Premiere or Final Cut. It doesn't make the film. It finds it.

What file formats does Hi-Ho support?

ProRes, H.264/HEVC, AVCHD (.mts/.m2ts), MXF, DNxHD/HR, RED .R3D including spanned rolls, plus .mkv, .avi, .mpg, .webm and all common audio (WAV, BWF, MP3, AAC, M4A, AIFF, FLAC). Anything macOS can't play natively is rewrapped or given a proxy automatically, so playback and export always work. Camera raw from Blackmagic (.braw), Canon (.crm/.crv/.rmf) and ARRI (.ari) is NOT decoded — Hi-Ho names the format at the door and asks for a ProRes or proxy from the camera's own software, before anything is charged.

Does Hi-Ho handle RED footage?

Yes, end to end — with two free downloads from RED. Hi-Ho reads the picture through RED's own REDline decoder, which ships with REDCINE-X PRO; without it an .R3D is refused at the door and Hi-Ho names the download rather than failing quietly. A spanned roll is then treated as one clip and round-trips in sync to all three NLEs, verified frame-exact on a 69-minute HELIUM roll cut against a Sound Devices recorder. Separately, for Final Cut you also need RED Apple Workflow — without it Final Cut's own importer can't read the roll, and again Hi-Ho tells you before the export rather than after.

How do I install Hi-Ho?

Download the DMG from the homepage, drag Hi-Ho to Applications, and open it. On first launch, right-click → Open if macOS asks.

What macOS version do I need?

macOS 13 (Ventura) or later, Apple Silicon. There's no Windows or web version.

Does my footage leave my machine?

Your video never leaves your computer. Hi-Ho extracts the audio, sends a mono speech-only derivative for transcription — about a megabyte per five minutes — and then sends only the transcript text for story analysis. Sync, editing and every export run locally. A total breach of our servers would expose no footage.

I shoot dual-system or multicam — does Hi-Ho handle sync?

Yes, and it's the core of it. Drop everything in: cameras and recorders pair automatically even when their timecodes are hours apart, the transcript uses the recorder's audio rather than the camera scratch track, and playback plus every NLE export keep frame-accurate sync. Free-run timecode is not required and not trusted.

What does story mining actually mean?

The AI reads your full transcript and finds structure in it: emotional beats, turning points, thesis statements, character threads and cold-open candidates. It's narrative analysis, not transcription — the transcript is just how it reads.

What are the mining modes?

One Shot — drop footage, get a complete mined cut. Sit-Down — a guided mine you steer as it works. Story Mine — narrative arc and key moments. Structure — the natural story sections. Audit Mine — reviews an existing edit for pacing and story gaps. Transcribe — transcript only. Paper Cut — paste a written paper edit and get the timeline back.

What's the difference between Fast and Pro?

Fast runs Claude Haiku — quick, and solid for structure and transcription-led work. Pro runs Claude Opus, which is meaningfully better at emotional beats and thesis identification. Both meter the same hours; Pro draws more of your monthly AI allowance. Most editors use Pro for anything over half an hour.

Can I mine multilingual interviews?

Yes. Sixteen languages plus auto-detect, and any mine can be translated into any of them — so a Spanish interview can produce English captions and an English paper edit. Language is detected from the transcript itself rather than a file label, because a file label is wrong more often than you'd think.

Can I talk to my footage?

Yes. Story Chat answers questions about your transcript in plain language — "where does she talk about her father?", "suggest a cold open", "does he contradict himself anywhere?" — and every answer carries clickable timecodes.

How long does mining take?

Transcription is the bulk of it and runs several times faster than realtime; story analysis adds a couple of minutes on top. Hi-Ho shows a measured estimate from your own machine's last few mines rather than a generic progress bar, so what you see is what it's actually doing.

Which NLEs does Hi-Ho work with?

All three, in both directions. DaVinci Resolve: a Hi-Ho item in Workspace → Scripts that pulls a timeline in, and a Send that builds the cut live in your open project. Final Cut Pro: a workflow panel you can drag a project onto, a Share destination, and FCPXML in and out. Premiere Pro: a CEP panel that imports the sequence and relinks the media itself. Plus EDL (CMX 3600), SRT captions and a screenplay PDF for anything else.

How do I get my timeline into Resolve?

Click Send to Resolve. Hi-Ho builds the timeline directly in your open project through Resolve's scripting API — clips placed in sync, markers and captions included, no file to import or relink. FCPXML export is still there if you'd rather have a file.

Can I start from a timeline I've already cut?

Yes. Alongside dropping files, Hi-Ho can pull a timeline straight out of Resolve, Final Cut or Premiere — no export, no render — and the sync lock rides in with it, so what you already assembled stays assembled.

Do exports include the original media?

Exports reference your original files by path, so keep your media where it is or relink after import. The Premiere panel relinks for you; Resolve's live build never unlinks in the first place.

Do I get captions and subtitles?

Yes — SRT, plus captions carried into FCPXML and Premiere XML. Timing comes from per-word timestamps taken at transcription, so cards land on the syllable rather than being guessed from character counts, and translated captions stay locked to the same mouth.

How does billing work?

Every account includes 2 free hours of media a month — enough to mine a whole interview. Paid plans are $149 quarterly or $399 yearly and include 20 hours a month, with hour top-ups available any time. Subscriptions come with a 14-day trial and cancel in one click.

Is there a free plan?

Yes, and it's a real plan rather than a demo: 2 hours of media every month, no card, no watermark, with speaker ID, story structure and every NLE roundtrip included. Use it as long as you like.

What is Founding?

One payment instead of a subscription, and it's never revoked. It includes the same 20 hours a month as the paid plans, and your price never rises whatever ours does. There are only 100 of them.

Can I bill this to my client?

Yes. A plan month covers a post cycle — put it on the post invoice like any other tool.

Do you offer refunds?

If a mine fails or comes back unusable because of a bug on our end, email hi@hi-ho.ai with the date and the project name and we'll put the hours back. We do it by hand, so please do ask — nothing catches it automatically.

Do my hours roll over? Do old credits expire?

Monthly hours reset each month and don't roll over. Purchased top-up hours are a pool that carries until you use them, spent after the month's included hours. Credit balances from before August 2026 convert into that same pool the first time you mine, at five minutes a credit.