FrameDeck

FrameDeck is a portable VFX shot-review player for Windows and Ubuntu. It is based on subing85/viewline and extends that project with an RV-inspired review workflow, editorial playlists, modern color management, image-sequence playback, annotations, caching, and portable release builds.

Download FrameDeck

Platform	Direct download	How to run
Windows 10/11 x64	Download FrameDeck-Windows-x64.zip	Extract the complete ZIP, then double-click FrameDeck.exe.
Ubuntu x86_64	Download FrameDeck-Ubuntu-x86_64.AppImage	Mark the AppImage executable, then run it.

View the release page, notes, file sizes, and checksums.

Highlights

• Import multiple MP4, MOV, AVI, EXR, PNG, JPG, and JPEG sources at once.
• Build and reorder a horizontal Shot Playlist Timeline; play it on one continuous global frame range.
• Compare two sources using vertical/horizontal wipe, opacity overlay, difference, side-by-side, checkerboard, A-only, B-only, or flicker modes.
• Review EXR AOVs and numbered EXR/JPG/PNG sequences.
• OCIO project settings with bundled ACES 1.2 Legacy and built-in ACES 1.3/ ACES 2.0 CG and Studio configs, user configs, display/view selection, and common camera/log presets.
• Pencil and Text notes stored per frame, with annotated-frame export.
• RV-style wheel zoom, middle-button pan, continuous right-drag zoom, and double-click immersive full screen while playback remains active.
• Production image inspection with Y-drag Gamma, E-drag Exposure, RGB/R/G/B/A/ Luma channel views, and 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 aspect masks.
• Audio playback, volume/mute controls, and synchronized playlist playback.
• Local media/proxy cache for server sources and color-aware 2K EXR previews.
• Broad FFmpeg/PyAV movie decoding for MP4/MOV/MXF/MKV/WebM/MTS and other professional containers, with codec metadata and visible probe diagnostics.
• SMPTE timecode including correct 29.97/59.94 drop-frame display.
• Persistent frame comments with viewer pins, open/resolved filters, frame navigation, and a dedicated professional review sidebar.
• Ping-Pong playback for image sequences and VFX shot-name matching for quickly finding related plate/comp versions in A/B Compare.
• Full-resolution JPG/PNG extraction and high-quality MP4 export.
• Portable Windows build and Ubuntu AppImage release automation.

What FrameDeck adds to Viewline

The upstream Viewline project supplied the original Python/PySide review-player foundation. FrameDeck keeps that history and license, then adds a substantially expanded production workflow:

Review interface and navigation

• A redesigned graphite/navy interface inspired by professional review tools, with completely new application branding and icon treatment.
• A compact Sources bin, main viewer, persistent playback controls, and an editorial Shot Playlist Timeline that remains available in the new layout.
• Smooth wheel zoom during playback, cursor-centered zoom, middle/Alt-left pan, right-drag continuous zoom, Fit, and immersive full screen.
• Display-only Gamma and Exposure inspection, channel isolation, cinema masks, and on-viewer value HUDs without changing source, cache, OCIO, or exports.
• Blank startup with no bundled test project or automatically loaded media.

Sources, playlists, and editorial playback

• Multi-file drag/drop and import for local disks and server paths.
• Select Sources and append them to the playlist; one source may appear more than once.
• Horizontal drag reorder, Earlier/Later controls, deletion of individual playlist occurrences, and source deletion without touching original files.
• Continuous playlist playback whose frame range is the sum of every shot, including cross-clip scrubbing, frame stepping, and automatic advance.
• Portable .fdplaylist save/restore with relative paths, order, active media, frame position, and timeline visibility.
• Invalid or unreadable media is skipped so the remaining playlist can continue.

Playback, media, and performance

• Long-video timeline optimization and bounded frame caches.
• 2K/4K-aware decode buffering, background sequence decode, frame prefetch, and persistent 2K display proxies for heavy EXR review.
• Server-media background caching with progress, configurable limits, cache inspection, multi-shot caching, and safe cache clearing.
• MOV thumbnail support, audio decode/output, mute and volume controls.
• H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1, VP8/VP9, ProRes and other decoders exposed by the bundled FFmpeg/PyAV runtime, across MP4, MOV, MXF, MKV, WebM, MTS/M2TS, TS, AVI, MPEG, WMV/ASF, FLV, OGV, 3GP and other supported containers.
• Numbered EXR/DPX/JPG/PNG/TIFF sequences, EXR AOVs, bounded corruption recovery, VFR frame-rate fallback, and detailed errors for unsupported or damaged streams.

Color management

• User/studio OCIO config loading and project-level working space, input, display, view, and per-file-type defaults.
• Bundled offline ACES 1.2 Legacy plus OCIO built-in ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0 CG/ Studio configurations.
• Film/VFX presets for ACES2065-1, ACEScg, ACEScct, Rec.709, ARRI LogC3/4, Sony S-Log3, RED Log3G10, Blackmagic Film Gen 5, and Raw/data viewing.
• Correct float-before-display processing, independent RGB/RGBA handling, alpha preservation, data-AOV bypass, explicit Raw mode, and color-aware proxy invalidation.
• Independent OCIO processors for the A and B sources in comparison mode.

Comparison and annotations

• Synchronized A/B review with vertical/horizontal wipe, opacity overlay, difference, side-by-side, checkerboard, A-only, B-only, and flicker modes.
• Per-frame Pencil, Text and Arrow annotations, Navigate/Esc tool exit, undo/redo/erase, automatic note sidecars, and export of annotated frames.
• Per-frame review comments with optional on-image pins, open/resolved state, All/Current Frame filters, frame jumping, deletion and immediate persistence.
• Ping-Pong image-sequence review and automatic VFX shot/version matching for fast A/B source setup.

Export and delivery

• Full-resolution JPG/PNG extraction from the current display view.
• Excel-friendly UTF-8 CSV export for comments, text and drawing notes, including frame, SMPTE timecode, normalized pin position and resolved state.
• Searchable PDF review reports with a shot cover, annotated full-resolution frames, wrapped comments, matching pin numbers and per-frame timecode.
• High-quality MP4 conversion from movies or image sequences, preserving movie FPS/audio and allowing user-defined image-sequence FPS.
• PyInstaller-based Windows portable packaging and Ubuntu AppImage packaging.
• GitHub Actions builds and publishes both portable formats from one release.

Keyboard and mouse

Input	Action
Space	Play / pause
Left / Right	Previous / next frame
Mouse wheel	Zoom at pointer
Middle drag	Pan
Right drag	Continuous zoom
Y, then Left drag up/down	Gamma Check; Y or Esc resets
E, then Left drag up/down	Exposure Check; E or Esc resets
Double-click viewer / F11	Toggle immersive full screen
F	Fit image
Esc	Exit full screen or annotation mode
Alt+Left / Alt+Right	Reorder selected playlist shot
Ctrl+Shift+S / Ctrl+Shift+O	Save / open .fdplaylist
Ctrl+Enter	Add the current review comment

Build from source

Detailed instructions are available in README_WINDOWS.md and README_UBUNTU.md.

# Windows
.\build-windows.ps1

# Ubuntu 22.04+
bash build-ubuntu-appimage.sh

Attribution and license

FrameDeck retains the original Viewline Git history and Apache-2.0 license. See LICENSE. The bundled ACES 1.2 archive source and checksum are documented in resources/ocio/ACES_1.2_SOURCE.txt.