For those who don’t know the tool: DJV is an open source image sequence viewer and playback tool for VFX and animation. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, supports OCIO colour management, and is typically used for dailies, shot review and quick sequence inspection without licence infrastructure.

DJV 3 has been evolving through incremental releases, culminating for now in version 3.3.3. We missed the earlier 3.x updates, so let’s summarise.

Version 3.3.3 is the latest tagged release. It adds one feature and resolves two bugs. The new feature enables the Escape key to close the secondary window. The fixes address a flipped export issue and incorrect tool tooltips. No further technical detail is provided in the release notes regarding the root cause of the export flip or the tooltip behaviour. Not independently verified at press time. Prebuilt binaries are provided for Linux x86_64, macOS arm64 and Windows amd64. Assets include tar.gz, dmg, exe and zip packages. SHA256 checksums are published for the binaries. To understand the significance of 3.3.3, it is necessary to look at the broader 3.x changes.

Sequence awareness and file handling

One of the more practical changes in the 3.3 branch arrived in version 3.3.0. The built in file browser can now display image sequences as a single item with an associated frame range. Instead of listing every frame as an individual file, the browser aggregates them into a sequence entry.

This change affects directory navigation and review workflows directly. For facilities handling large EXR sequences, reducing file list clutter improves browsing speed and visual clarity. The release notes describe this as a display change in the built in file browser. No additional details are given about sequence detection rules or supported naming conventions beyond the example provided for command line input.

The command line in 3.3.0 now accepts file sequences written in hash notation, such as render.#.exr. This aligns with established VFX naming patterns and allows users to load sequences from the terminal using shorthand notation.

Keyboard shortcuts expanded

Keyboard customisation received significant attention in 3.3.0 and 3.3.2. Version 3.3.0 introduced primary and secondary keyboard shortcuts. It also added a search box to the keyboard shortcut settings. The Tab key can now be assigned to shortcuts, including combinations such as Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shit+Tab for changing the current file. The spelling in the official notes reads Ctrl+Shit+Tab.

A fix in 3.3.2 addressed the keyboard shortcuts search box. Another fix in 3.3.0 resolved keyboard shortcut behaviour in the secondary window. In 3.3.2, the version number was added to the window title, and a command line flag was introduced to print the version. A dialog for displaying system information was also added. These additions are small but relevant for deployment and support scenarios. Being able to query the version from the command line simplifies scripting and diagnostic workflows.

Mouse behaviour and interaction changes

Version 3.3.0 updated mouse configuration in several ways. Extra 1 and Extra 2 buttons were added to the mouse settings. A frame shuttle scale was introduced in the same settings panel. The default mouse mapping was changed so that the left mouse button performs frame shuttle and the middle mouse button pans. This represents a behavioural change for existing users migrating from earlier versions. A separate fix in 3.3.0 corrected swapped middle and right mouse buttons in the settings.

In 3.3.2, pixel and mouse binding labels were added to the colour picker and magnifier tools. The release notes state that both tools now update when picking with the mouse. This suggests synchronised feedback between cursor interaction and tool UI. Version 3.3.3 then added Escape key support for closing the secondary window. Together, these changes reflect ongoing adjustments to interaction ergonomics rather than new feature domains.

Colour management and UI indicators

DJV 3 integrates OCIO for colour management. In 3.3.0, the colour tool was updated to display the OCIO configuration name. At the same time, the path for the OCIO and LUT file names was hidden within the tool.

Status bar indicators were added in 3.3.0 to display whether colour controls, the audio sync offset or the output device are enabled. In 3.3.2, additional status bar indicators were introduced to display when mirroring is enabled.

In 3.3.0, compare overlay and difference modes were fixed to prevent image flipping. In 3.3.3, a flipped export issue was also fixed. The two issues are described separately in their respective release notes, with no explicit statement linking them.

The cumulative effect is a reduction in unexpected image inversion behaviour in both interactive comparison and export contexts, based on the wording of the fixes. The specific code paths affected are not described. Not independently verified at press time.

Playback behaviour

Version 3.3.0 modified playback speed behaviour. The release notes state that playback speed can be increased and decreased by pressing forward or reverse multiple times. This implies incremental speed changes tied to repeated transport input. A magnify tool was added in 3.3.0, along with grid labels. The magnify tool was later enhanced in 3.3.2 with pixel and mouse binding labels and updated mouse interaction behaviour.

Platform specific fixes and build updates

The 3.3.x series includes multiple platform and build fixes.

Version 3.3.0 fixed compilation on Rocky 8 and addressed excessive CPU usage caused by the clipboard on Gnome. It also fixed the mouse settings to only show the Command key on macOS.

Version 3.3.1 was dedicated to macOS package fixes. No further detail is provided in the release notes.

Version 3.3.2 fixed an issue with the window title bar appearing off screen.

The 3.3.0 release notes list a library update to SDL2 release 2.32.10. No additional third party dependency changes are described in the provided notes.

Version 3.3.3 assets include Linux, macOS and Windows builds, with SHA256 hashes published for verification.

What has not changed

Based on the official notes provided, the 3.3 branch does not introduce new file format support, new codec integrations, or changes to core rendering architecture. There is no mention of GPU acceleration updates, threading model changes or cache redesigns in the referenced releases.

There is also no pricing information, as DJV is distributed as free open source software via GitHub.

Any assumptions about performance improvements, stability gains beyond listed fixes, or pipeline scale suitability would be speculative and are not supported by the cited documentation. Not independently verified at press time.

Version 3 so far

Taken together, DJV 3 up to 3.3.3 reflects iterative refinement. Sequence aware browsing, expanded shortcut handling, improved mouse customisation, clearer OCIO labelling, and a series of bug fixes define the branch.

For studios using DJV as a lightweight review tool, the changes are operational. They reduce friction in file browsing, clarify status indicators, and address specific bugs such as flipped compare modes and flipped export.

As always, new tools and updates should be tested in controlled conditions before deployment in production environments.

// https://github.com/grizzlypeak3d/DJV

The post DJV 3.3.3 fixes flipped export and adds Escape first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Motion Spell is the exclusive commercial licensor of the GPAC Open-Source Software – a software project centered around data packaging. “GPAC Project on Advanced Content” is a software offering a modular multimedia framework for packaging, streaming, inspecting and playing content; it provides tools for processing media content.

Romain is an alumnus of Grenoble INP (École nationale supérieure d’informatique et de mathématiques appliquées), where he graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science. Romain
He is a self-proclaimed Open-Source Evangelist, Video Streaming & Broadcast Technology Entrepreneur and Advocate for Open Standards. His career began in 2009, when he joined Télécom ParisTech as a Research Engineer, where he accompanied experts on standardization in the media industry – and started building GPAC. By 2012, Romain switched to VideoStitch (renamed to Orah in 2017).

DP: Give me the sales pitch for GPAC!

Romain Bouqueau: GPAC is an open-source software. I would even go so far and say GPAC is not a software – but a project. A project focused on packaging. The majority of GPAC’s development is based on the ISOBM FF (ISO base media file format). ISOBMFF was developed in the nineties by Apple. Apple was one of these companies pioneering many media creation techno­logies, like Quick Time VR. The end of the nineties was a central period for the arts and creativity, when Second Life was a thing, for example – it was the Dotcom era. Back then, ISOBMFF was not ready yet, but the vision was promising. And that’s when both ISOBMFF and GPAC were born.
ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, had already MPEG for moving pictures. ISO wanted to move away from 2D-TV stuff, to something more accessible and interactive. They were unsure, but created a set of standards in the process, that people know today as MPEG-4.

Curiously, the ISOBMFF is something Apple gave away as a royalty free technology. Apple was a pioneer in that sense. Hence, Apple made ISOBMFF royalty free for ISO. As a consequence, ISO developed MPEG-4 inside ISOBMFF. This base media file format contains everything media related. GPAC is specialized in this.
So, GPAC started as a startup in New York City during the dotcom era. A few years later, by a conjunction of factors, GPAC became open source. That’s where our story begins.

DP: What conjunction of factors led to GPAC becoming open source?

Romain Bouqueau: The dotcom era ended. The economic crisis crushed many startups. The company where GPAC was initially developed collapsed; it was called AVIPIX, LLC and was based in New York City. But the software was very promising. Actually, some of the users based at Télécom ParisTech, the prestigious engineering school attached to the historic national telecom operator France Telecom, contacted the developers behind the software and said: “We would be interested in using your software as a research platform.”

Télécom ParisTech had issues losing control over the IP of some software they had produced. Free Software Licenses were still quite novel at the time. Those students had IP issues with their own code. You have to know: They had an equivalent code inside the university. They said: “We don’t want this to happen again. So, we would like it to be open sourced with a GNU General Public License – to make sure we can always use our own codes, and further develop it.

DP: How did you become involved with GPAC personally?
Romain Bouqueau: I was really interested in the free software movement. I was a musician. I’ve spent 10 years at the national ­music school C.R.R. Nice, and was very passionate about classical and organic music.
In parallel, when I was 12, we got a computer at home. I knew that these computers were programmable. About a year later, my father offered me a book about the C programming languages. Honestly, this was out of reach for a 12-year-old with no one to help. But that’s when the idea started to infuse. Then some students from the local university came home with a set of floppy disks containing the Linux operating system and the GCC Compiler. That’s how I learned about the Free Software movement.

Years later, after a BSc in Physical Sciences at Grenoble INP (École nationale supérieure d’informatique et de mathématiques appliquées), I shifted to Applied Mathe­matics and Computer Science. My wish was to work on audio signal processing. But at that time, I was located in a small city and my only option was to take this internship at Allegro DVT, a company doing video streaming (Romain worked there from 2005 until 2009. Editor’s note). That’s how I came from audio to video. Then, within this company, we did IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) – it was sort of the beginning of IP-related stuff with video. Back then, the company was a really small startup that is now part of ATEME (which is a company focused on software for video compression. Editor’s note).

GPAC was developed at Télécom ParisTech. I started contributing to GPAC there (Romain was a research engineer at Télécom ParisTech for three years, from 2009 until 2012. Editor’s note). And with digital video, they not only wanted to introduce the digital aspect, but also interactivity – via audience feedback for your content, for example. At the time, we were using GPAC for that. This was really complex, since the networks were not on IPs, but on hybrids between something that would be like 2G Edge or 3G using broadcast
channels.

There was a project about enriching radio when moving the transmission to digital. This project was using GPAC. I knew it was free software. One day, while struggling with the technology, we discovered the project was maintained at Télécom ParisTech. We invited two researchers for a training – one of them was the founder of Avipix, Jean Le Feuvre. When I met this guy, that’s when the story started. They proposed me a grant to work on GPAC. So, I started to work as a professional open-source developer, and then, three ­years later, I set up my company Motion Spell.

DP: What led you to the founding of Motion Spell?
Romain Bouqueau: Before 2008, GPAC had a strong focus on creative technologies such as 3D, scene rendering with BIFS and SVG. GPAC can manipulate a lot of objects in a way similar to a browser. We had a wide audience. Those were researchers, students and PhDs, video enthusiasts, but mainly ­pirates… these pirates became CTOs or founders of today’s digital video industry.

GPAC was an open-source project funded by a public entity. There was not enough money there, so we were pushed to look for partnerships with industrial partners. How­ever, our employer was slow and therefore inefficient to close deals. That’s how GPAC came to focus on OTT trends. And that’s why I decided to launch a licensing offer with professional services for the commercial users of GPAC.

When I entered the team as a professional developer, I said: “There are two things. One, I think, is that we have the potential to raise our audience. And two, we should focus on securing some funding.” I said that, because university was not a place where we could get a substantial amount of money, which we would need as a starting-off point to do things. We required more money, since we required more servers for testing our software – and we needed more devices. In those days, mobile devices were arriving on the market. Consequently, we were in dire need of some funding, but the university was not sufficient.

Universities do not provide a good structure to handle commercial deals. They don’t provide the support, they’re really slow negotiators, and the same applies to legal affairs; sometimes it takes months to get feedback. Because of that, we needed something smaller, faster – something more appropriate for commercial users. Also, I wanted to build it cooperatively, so that the people contributing to the open-source software would get proper compensation.

Our developments were based on the MPEG-4 technology, but we were also ­contributing to GPAC. At some point, we said: “Okay, the MPEG-4 wave is fading. Everybody is using H.264 as a video codec. Everybody is using AAC as an audio codec. Everybody started using MP4 and frag­mented MP4 with MPEG-DASH.“ We could see the convergence of it, and its great ­success. We felt there would be a new technology generation for streaming content over IP networks – that would be unidirectional. That would be what we call OTT today.

DP: GPAC consists of two toolboxes: Multimedia Packagers (MP4Box) and Multimedia Player (MP4Client).
How does this work?
Romain Bouqueau: When developing new technology, you need to be end-to-end. If there is a new technology, and you build an encoder for it. If you have a technology that is on the decoding side, you need an encoder to get some streams. We at Motion Spell are focused a lot on R&D, the standardization, and deployment-ready implementation.

If we wanted GPAC to be self-sufficient, we needed to have the packaging and the playback. Now, we have all of this. It’s integrated into one big piece of software. It consists of media blocks that get connected to one another. For example, a media block will ask a player for displaying or rendering. That’s the media pipeline. It enables you to stream content or play it back.

DP: In 2003, GPAC was made available as open-source. What milestones did GPAC go through since then?
Romain Bouqueau: Open-sourcing was perhaps the biggest milestone. After that, it got rapidly adapted as the recommended MP4Muxer of the x264 video encoder. This was important, because x264 was a huge success and it broadened our audience.

Around 2010, support for the OTT streaming technologies HLS and MPEG-DASH emerged. That’s what happened prior to founding my company, Motion Spell (which was founded in 2012. Editor’s note).
GPAC is pretty big. It’s 20 years of development, it’s around $20 million put in development over those years. It consists of a million lines of code. You have to make GPAC right, because otherwise, the maintenance becomes a burden.

In 2020, there was another milestone, when we, as Motion Spell, moved from our “set of tools with different functions” to a “set of modules”. Now, you’re just plugging modules together. People used to utilize
our packager, which was called MP4 box – that’s our main tool. But we are continuously moving away from the “single application model”.

In its most current iteration, GPAC allows you to have graphs. Let’s say you want a special effect. You can say: “I want this type of input. I want this special effect.” GPAC is putting all the bricks together. It’s inferring: “What are the missing bricks?”, and will make you different proposals as a consequence. But if you, as the user, are unhappy with GPAC’s solution, you can change the command line to your wish.

Regarding scripting, this is something we have extensively reworked for GPAC 2.0. It enables you to use scripting for everything – using Javascript, Python, and soon other languages like Go or C#. That allows the user to change the signal processing without dealing with the GPAC‘s code. The signal could be connected to effects or animations – but also streaming formats, or VR-related applications. As a result, there are a lot of different use cases.

DP: After an 18-month transition with Netflix, for the integration of GPAC Open-Source Software into Netflix’s worldwide content operations, the process finally succeeded. What was that like?
Romain Bouqueau: You have to know: There are many GPAC contributors! It used to be a packager for YouTube before Google did their own packaging. There were many projects and businesses build on top of GPAC. I think that’s part of the reason why Netflix wanted to use it. After some discussion and testing in tandem with Netflix, they said: “Okay, we’re going to deploy GPAC.” That’s when the 18-month phase started.

It’s important to understand that Netflix is a metrics-driven company, which makes them a bit of an outlier on the streaming market – in my opinion. If Netflix notices an increase in re-buffering or users jumping off watching the episode of a show right in the middle, they can infer an underlying problem. The same applies to when the metrics improve. A better packager will result in better caching, less latency, and reduced loading times.

For Motion Spell, as an open-source business, we’re here to help. Netflix saw GPAC as a good fit; if Netflix has questions, we provide professional services. GPAC allows Netflix to be flexible. For example, Netflix just announced a few days ago they would stream their first live-show (see the news item by Jenny Priestley at tvbeurope.com: is.gd/NetflixLiveStreaming. Editor’s note).

If there are constraints with the open-source license, you can buy the commercial license. The open-source version comes with­out any licensing fees. The important thing is: Depending on the quality of a client’s packaging, the distribution comes with attached costs. If the packaging is not sufficient, the client is distributing more bits than needed. For a company at the scale of Netflix, distributing less bits means saving costs.

DP: What are some of the major pain points with GPAC right now?
Romain Bouqueau: There is going to be a new release, which will have Dolby Vision support. Otherwise, GPAC is really stable. There are few issues. We use our resources for writing code efficient. It’s all battle-tested. I encourage users to test it.
On the packaging side, there is ProRes and HDR stuff. We have good support for metadata, where ISOBMFF is not the main format for production, but alternatives like IMF. For companies with limited scale and resources, it makes perfect sense to go back to ISOBMFF, which allows them to use the same platform for dealing with their content and distribution. For example, if a client is storing content using ProRes, they can use GPAC to enable ProRes; they can leverage the metadata (like GPAC’s capabilities of annotating content). You can use GPAC to prepare your content for streaming. Button line is: You can re-use components between different workflows. As I said, I think that makes sense for smaller businesses.

DP: Motion Spell also provides consulting for Netflix’s R&D division, right?
Romain Bouqueau: Yes. When people have problems, they report this via Netflix backtracker, so that we can investigate cooperatively. Having said that, the big problems are already solved.
Netflix has so many different users, so many metrics, so many end devices, so many different versions of its content. For us at Motion Spell, it allows us to see many different cases at the same place. This is not about issues raised by different users over a long time period. Smaller businesses than Netflix struggle with the multiplication of contents and devices.

Most companies use GPAC, but they rarely talk about it publicly. A few days before our press release was published, announcing our collaboration with Netflix, Facebook made an announcement – about Instagram facing infrastructural problems. Those problems prevented users from uploading videos. The issue behind this is a scaling issue on the infrastructure. Facing that problem, Facebook was able to reduce the computing needs by 94 percent. What they did is: Instead of transcoding everything, they used the GPAC packager. Facebook communicated this via its tech blog openly (read at: is.gd/InstagramEncoding, blog article by Software Engineering Manager Ryan Peterman and Software Engineer Haixia Shi. Editor’s note).
In order to maintain GPAC and add features, we need 5 percent of 14 million every year, which is 700,000 US-Dollars needed every year. That’s a lot of money – but that’s just for infrastructure. We don’t finance ourselves through advertisements. The money comes from somewhere else. To give you an example: There are prominent people from universities supporting GPAC’s research, It’s Motion Spell’s job to secure commercial users and shed light on its benefits (to learn how costs are estimate for GPAC: is.gd/GPAC_CostCalculator. Editor’s note).
In general, there is less funding in this type of technology, as compared to others. Most companies simply conceive of GPAC as open-source infrastructure not in need of any support. Having said that: A small number of companies understands the importance of this and contributes.

DP: If GPAC and Motion Spell are off your mind – what do you enjoy watching on Netflix, Romain?
Romain Bouqueau: I really like the Bander­snatch episode of Black Mirror. It’s an interactive episode, which excites me as a technologist. It was released in December 2018.

Terminology mentioned

An overview of the most important abbreviations and technical terms mentioned during the interview. Source: Wikipedia.org

2G: Is the short notation for second-generation cellular network, a group of technology standards employed for cellular networks.

3G: Is the third generation of wireless mobile telecommunications technology. It is the upgrade over 2G, 2.5G, GPRS and 2.75G EDGE networks, offering faster data transfer, and better voice quality.
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC): Is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate.

C Programming Language: Is a general-purpose programming language created by computer scientist Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie.

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, also known as MPEG-DASH: Is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers.

FFmpeg: Is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams.

GNU General Public License: Is a series of free software licenses that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify software.

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC: Is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding
HTTP Live Streaming, also known as HLS: Is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and streaming media servers.

IPTV (Internet Protocol Television): Describes the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats.
IMF file format: Is an audio file format created by id Software for the AdLib sound card for use in their video games. The default filename extension is also “imf”. The abbreviation stands for “id music file” or “id’s music format”.

ISOBMFF (ISO base media file format): Is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio.

Over-the-top (OTT): Is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite tele­vision platforms.

MP4: Is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio, but it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. It allows streaming over the Internet.

MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group): Is an alliance of working groups setting standards for media coding (e.g.: compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and file formats).

MPEG-4: Is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats.

Multiplexing, also known as Muxing: Is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium.

Quick Time VR: Is an image file format developed by Apple for QuickTime.

The post Video Packaging Unveiled: Netflix goes GPAC first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The VFX service provider DNEG is making its playback and reviewing software xStudio available as open source. This is according to my report, which was published by Dan Sarto on awn.com on 20 January this year. This is a beta version of xStudio. According to awn.com, xStudio is suitable for a wide range of production steps – from the film set to the production office, or even for remote reviewing sessions.

In toto: xStudio can be obtained via the GitHub account of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) and is provided as part of the Open Review Initiative. The announcement on awn com also states that xStudio is highly customisable and can be used both as a standalone player and integrated into pipelines via a C plug-in framework or the Python interface. The fact that users also have access to an extensive, open-source library is also emphasised.

Who is behind it? The open-source reviewing software xStudio is managed by a technical steering committee under the direction of DNEG. The committee is made up of engineers and contributors from the community. Chas Jarrett, Senior VFX Supervisor and Creative Director at DNEG, is quoted in the press release: “We encourage our customers, industry colleagues and partners to use and develop xStudio”; Jarrett emphasises that the community can benefit from xStudio.

Academy Softwaer Foundation (ASWF): The idea behind the initiative is standardisation – as Digital Production also reported on 9 August 2022 . The Open Review Initiative is a sandbox project of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), which is committed to building a standardised, open-source toolset for playback, reviewing and project approval. DNEG is a founding member of the ASWF, which was founded in 2018 under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation. Further information at aswf.io.

Outlook: In the coming months, the reviewing software itview from VFX house Sony Pictures Imagesworks will be made available as open source.

Click back: Just last week Thursday, 19 January 2023, Digital Production reported on how software developer Autodesk has made its reviewing & playback software Open RV accessible as part of the Open Review Initiative.

Click further: To the GitHub of xStudio. Further information on xStudio can be found at dneg.com .

Sources: awn.com ( announcement by Dan Sarto), dneg.com/xstudio/ ( official announcement)

The post Open source reviewing tool from DNEG? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The software developer Autodesk has published Open RV via the GitHub platform. This is according to an announcement that went online today, 19 January 2023, on beforeandafters.com. Open RV is an open-source version of the reviewing and playback software that is very popular within the visual effects industry. The announcement also states that Open RV would have the same core functions as the commercial version. At the same time, Autodesk intends to continue using the tool as a commercial product. As a building block of the open source community, Open VR will continue to benefit from community-driven updates and professional Autodesk engineers, according to the announcement on beforeandafters.com.

In toto: The corresponding code is hosted by the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) on GitHub as part of the Open Review Initiative. The idea behind the initiative is standardisation – as Digital Production also reported on 11.08.2022 . The Open Review Initiative is a sandbox project of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), which is dedicated to building a standardised, open-source toolset for playback, reviewing and project approval. Autodesk itself is a founding member of the ASWF, which was founded in 2018 under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

Diana Colella, Senior Vice President of Media & Entertainment at Autodesk, is quoted as saying that they want to repeat such steps in the future, as is the case now with Open RV; the open-source reviewing software is managed by a technical steering committee chaired by Autodesk. The committee is made up of engineers and contributors from the Autodesk community.

Click further: To OpenRV on GitHub. Digital Production last reported on Autodesk and the move towards open source for the reviewing & playback software RV on 9 August 2022 – the decision was announced at the time.

The post Powerful reviewing & playback software available open source! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The Academy Software Foundation is launching its Open Review Initiative. The idea behind this is standardisation. The aim is to create an open-source toolset for playback, reviewing and approval loops within professional film production. The Open Review initiative is currently in the sandbox phase. Just the day before yesterday, on 9 August 2022, Digital Production reported on Autodesk’s reviewing and playback tool RV, which was made open source – also as part of the Open Review initiative.

Background information: The Open Review initiative is driven by well-known companies, including Autodesk, DNEG and Sony Pictures Imageworks, which make RV, xStudio and parts of the itView ecosystem available as open source. The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) plays a central role in this. It brings together decision-makers from the participating companies, who work together to bring together the various components provided by the companies – with the aim of creating a modern playback-slash-reviewing-slash-release framework.

Speech: Erik Strauss, TSC Chairman of the Open Source Initiative, emphasised that the current reviewing and release landscape comprises a large number of interconnected systems (e.g. production tracking, asset management, transcoding). According to Erik, the merger of the companies involved is intended to help meet the changing needs of the creative industries.

Clicked on: Companies wishing to join the Open Review initiative can find all further information at tac.aswf.io . On 5 August 2022 , Digital Production also reported on the Academy Software Foundation. At that time, it was the open source standard developed by The Foundry called OpenAssetIO that received support from the foundation. The video below promotes the Academy Software Foundation.

2022 Academy Software Foundation Reel

The post Open-source playback & reviewing tools for creative professionals? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Autodesk has made its reviewing and playback software RV freely available – making the software open source for users. This is according to its latest press release. In addition to RV from Autodesk, the so-called Initiative Open Review is also accompanied by xStudio from DNEG and itview from Sony Pictures Imageworks. Initiative Open Review is a sandbox project of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), which is dedicated to the development of a standardised, open-source toolset for playback, reviewing and project approval. Autodesk itself is a founding member of the ASWF, which was founded in 2018 under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

Further information: In her article Autodesk envisions cloud-based production ecosystem for Media & Entertainment, Diana Colella, SVP, Media & Entertainment at Autodesk, says: “Alongside MatrialX, OpenTimelineIO and USD, RV is our next step in advancing cloud workflows and open standards.” Darin Grant, CTO at Animal Logic and ASWF board member, compares RV’s move to open source with the integration of the ALUSDMaya toolset at Autodesk and Pixar. In 2015, Autodesk acquired the RV playback tool from Tweak Software. At that time, the entire Tweak team was incorporated into the ShotGrid team (then still Shotgun). Digital Production reported on this on 18 February 2015.

Click further: All further information on: Academy Software Foundation and its open source project, ShotGrid by Autodesk and Autodesk’s commitment to open source. Digital Production last reported on the ASWF on 5 August 2022 – when OpenAssetIO entered the sandbox phase (OpenAssetIO enables artists to find and share closely interlinked assets – regardless of where the assets are stored).

The post Autodesk’s reviewing and playback tool RV becomes open source! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: DNEG is working on new open-source software for playback, reviewing, editing and grading. The software has been christened XStudio and is intended to replace all other existing reviewing tools within DNEG. According to the announcement, XStudio will be released in the course of the year. Furthermore: According to DNEG, XStudio will be tailored to the industry-specific needs of VFX professionals. On the one hand, the software will function as a standalone tool, while on the other hand, XStudio can also be integrated into existing pipelines via integrated interfaces to Python and C .

Functions of XStudio: Some of the flagship features presented in the accompanying press release are as follows. You can find out more about the full range of functions at dneg.com/xstudio.

• Playback of all common media formats and codecs – with almost any bit depth and resolution (up to 8K)
• Precise colour management thanks to integration with OCIO v2.0
• Accurate playback, where picture dropouts should be a thing of the past
• Link between audio playback and video playback: this should prevent drift or distortion
• Pop-out viewer: Used to display across multiple screens simultaneously

Clicked further: Press release about xStudio. See the corresponding Twitter posting right here below.

The post XStudio: New reviewing software from DNEG is coming! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.