What's new

Review screen

• Notes have their own lane above the timeline. Click a note there to go to it. The bar below is only for scrubbing, so picking a note never moves the playhead by mistake.
• Drag a note's ends to give it a range. Drag either end of one of your notes, or drag sideways from a note's dot to turn it into a range. Ends snap to frames and to other notes' ends, the length shows as you drag, and Escape puts the range back.
• Give a note its range while you write it. As you type or draw, a dashed marker in the lane shows where the note will land. Drag sideways from it, or along an empty stretch of the lane, and Add puts the note on that range, as the line under the note box says; Remove range takes it off again. When you're not typing in the box, [ and ] set the range's ends at the playhead.
• A range loops. Select a note that covers a range and play: it plays from its start to its end over and over. Press Loop to let it play on.
• A drawing stays up for its note's whole range. Draw on a note that covers a range and the drawing shows on every frame from its start to its end, so it reads while the range loops. A note on one frame keeps its drawing to that frame. The same in the portal and in a review sent as a web page.
• The PDF shows a range. A note that covers a range prints its length beside its timecodes, and on a video or 3D review, under its picture, a strip of up to five frames from its start to its end, each with its drawing. On a 3D review the frames come from the note's camera, and a note made through a shot camera follows the shot.
• Drop a file on a review to add a version. Drag a file onto an open review: it says what the drop will do, asks, then adds the file as the next version, the same as Add version. On a 3D review it asks whether the file is a new version or a 3D element beside what is there, and several 3D files at once join as elements. When a version can't be added (a Final review, no seat), the review says why as you drag.
• An image review shows its size and format. Below the picture: its size, bit depth, whether it has transparency, and its format, such as "4096 × 4096 · 16-bit · alpha · TGA".

3D review

• Models no longer clip. Fly right up to a surface or stand at the far end of a large set, and the picture stays whole, in orbit, in fly and through a shot camera. A shot camera's clip planes from the file are no longer used.
• Shading modes cover the environment too. Wireframe, clay, normals, depth and the other shading modes now apply to a 3D folder's environment as well as the model, and Shaded puts it back to its usual grey.
• A window for a review's 3D elements. Add 3D element opens a small window: drop a 3D file on it to add an element, or Browse. Once the review holds elements the button reads Manage 3D elements, and the window lists them with Replace, Rename, Bring to first and Remove. Drop or pick several files and they all join at once.
• Adding an element no longer makes a new version. Adding, replacing or removing an element changes the version you are looking at, and a mistaken add is undone by removing it. Once someone has left a note on a version, a later change to its elements shows: "adjusted" in the version list, and the date and name in the elements window. The register lists it as a change to the elements, not a new version.
• A new version asks about the elements. Add version on a review with elements offers to carry them over to the new version or leave them behind.
• Lenses for the camera. The Camera menu has a Lens section: pick 18, 24, 35, 50, 85 or 135 mm, or type a focal length, on the film back you choose - Full frame to start, with Unreal's camera sizes in the list. The Camera button shows the lens, and Default lens puts the plain view back.
• A frame for shot development. With a lens on, the view shows the frame at the film back's shape, and a bar under it swaps the lens, crops the frame to 2.39, 2.35, 1.85, 16:9 or 4:3, and switches safe areas and thirds on and off.
• Roll the camera. The bar's second row tilts the camera for a dutch angle; Level puts it straight again. View presets are always level.
• Notes keep the camera's lens. A note added with the camera brings back its lens, film back, crop and roll when you select it, and its row in the notes list shows the lens.
• 3D notes can cover a range. On an animated model, sketches, pins and notes added with the camera take a range the way video notes do: drag an end in the notes lane, or give the note its range while you write it, and a selected range loops. A note made through a shot camera plays the shot's own move as it loops, and exported notes give a 3D note's in and out.
• An FBX camera opens at the angle it was shot with. Cameras from FBX files used to come in wider than they were shot whenever their film back was not 35 mm wide, as with Unreal's default camera. They now take their focal length and film back from the file, and a zoom in the file plays. Import such a file again to see it at its true angle.
• The Camera menu says a shot camera's lens, such as 19.5 mm on 16:9 Digital Film.
• Leaving a shot camera keeps the picture. Drag out of a shot camera or pick Free camera, and the free camera carries on with the shot camera's lens, frame and roll instead of jumping to a different view.
• A shot camera shows its whole frame in a narrow window. When the window is narrower than the shot's frame, the view widens to fit instead of cutting off the sides.

Settings

• Settings is one window, a page at a time. A list on the left in four groups - You, This computer, This library and Help & about - and the page you pick on the right, so nothing waits at the bottom of a long scroll. Settings that belong together share a page under their own headings: Profile holds your name, colour and theme, Video & sending holds playback, import and sending, and About holds the version, privacy and the legal notices. The cog opens the page you read last.
• Admin tools and Branding are part of Settings. Licence, People, Policy, Watermarks, Drop folder, Register and Branding sit under This library, headed with the library's name, and the Activity view's Admin tools and Open the register buttons open them there. Folder permissions are under Policy, and the reviewers you've sent to under Video & sending.
• Leaving Branding with unsaved changes asks first: Save, Discard or Keep editing. Every other setting applies as you change it.
• The Settings window grows with the app, up to a set size. On a large screen it stops growing instead of stretching the lines, and the wide pages use the room: Branding's preview sits beside its controls, and each watermark preview beside its settings.
• Settings shows what comes with Team and Studio. In a library without the licence for them, People, Policy, Watermarks, Drop folder, Register and Branding read quieter, with the licence that brings them, and still open to say what they do.
• A branded library says why the theme doesn't change. Profile names the studio whose colours you see, with the switch for your own theme when the studio allows it. The theme you pick there is for libraries without a brand, and what you send from those libraries wears it too.
• Switches for on and off, and the app's own dropdowns, so Settings looks like the rest of ReviewDeck.

Library

• More image types. Targa (TGA), DirectDraw (DDS), Photoshop (PSD, its flattened image), OpenEXR, Radiance HDR, DPX, JPEG 2000, AVIF, SGI and QOI open as image reviews. EXR and HDR are shown in sRGB, over black, with anything brighter than white clipped. A file that can't be read says what to try, such as saving a DDS as BC1 to BC5, or a Photoshop file with Maximize Compatibility on.
• Refresh a card's thumbnail. Right-click a card and choose Refresh thumbnail to make its picture and its hover preview again from the files in the library, for a picture that came out blank or no longer matches. With several cards selected, it refreshes them all.

Fixes

• The [ and ] keys set a note's start and end on the frame you're looking at. They could land one frame late.
• Menus and dropdowns work from the keyboard. The arrow keys move through them, Enter picks, and Escape closes only what is on top - a menu, or a dialog over Settings or What's New - never the window behind it.
• A version that fails to import no longer leaves its picture on the library card. The card takes a new version's picture once the version is in.

Free, Team and Studio

ReviewDeck is in early access, and this update gives free a size. The core of ReviewDeck - a library on your own drive, reviewing, notes and markup, versions, sending and receiving, 3D - stays free for everyone, and nothing you have made changes.

• Free is now for libraries of up to 5 people. Five people can add notes, versions and reviews to a free library, everyone else can still read, play and send, and people you send work to never count; a seat frees after 30 days without a note. Team covers up to 12 people, Studio 50 and Studio 100 the numbers in their names, and above that, email adam@adambroder.com.
• A library over its number gets a month's notice. After that, the people beyond the number can read but not add until a seat frees or the library gets a licence, and nothing already in the library changes.
• Admins can free a seat. In Admin tools, People, removing someone who has left frees their seat at once, and Restore brings them back.
• Watermarks, the register, roles and the delete policy are Studio features. Team keeps your name and logo on sends, the brand theme, the Activity view, Final, ownership and notifications from every saved library.
• Early-access prices stay until 1.0. Team is £75, Studio 50 £300 and Studio 100 £750, half the regular price, and moving up costs the difference: reply to your licence email for a code.
• The name on everything you send is the name on your licence. The Branding window still sets your logo, colours and covering note; to change the name, reply to your licence email.
• Nothing about a licence ever appears on what you send. The over-the-limit line that could appear on readers and PDFs is gone.
• What a licensed library reports. About once a day a licensed library tells reviewdeck.app its licence id, an anonymous machine token, a hashed library id, the app version and how many people add to it - a number, never names, notes or file names - and shows that it holds the licence file. A copy that can't check in for 90 days behaves as free until it can, and a refunded licence does at once.

Drop folder (Studio)

• A folder that turns renders into reviews. Turn the drop folder on in Admin tools and each project gets a folder to drop renders into: each drop becomes a review, or the next version of the review with the same title, with no hands on it. An admin sets how file names are read, with a live preview.
• Nothing is taken half-written. A drop is taken once it has stopped changing for two minutes, and a folder whose name ends in .rendering waits until it is renamed.
• The original is kept. It moves to _dropfolder/_ingested for 30 days, so a wrong ingest is undone by dropping it again.
• Nothing is guessed. A name that only nearly matches a review is held in _dropfolder/_unsorted with the reason, and the Drop folder view offers the ways to sort it.
• Any computer with the library open does the work, one file at a time and never while you are importing; Settings keeps a laptop out of it, and on a cloud-synced library one computer is named.
• The review belongs to nobody until someone takes it. It takes no seat, and nobody is pinged for it.
• A size limit for drops. A drop over the Largest drop setting, 10 GB to start, is held with the reason.

3D review

• Playback speed for 3D reviews. The gear's Speed now slows an animated 3D review too, down to a new 10%, and everything in the scene follows it.
• 3D Compare lists every version. It opens on the one just before yours, the ghost carries every element, and A/B swaps which one is solid.
• Onion skin for animation. Press Onion skin on an animated 3D review to see the frames before and after as see-through skins, warm before and cool after, so arcs, overlaps and holds read off the poses. Choose how many frames each side, up to sixty or All, and the setting saves with a note like the camera does.
• Shapes and text in 3D. Cube, Sphere, Arrow and Text join the pen in the 3D tool row: drag a shape out from its centre, point an arrow at something and drag the tail away, or place a label that always faces you. They travel with the note like any 3D ink.
• The frame rate, in the gear. The gear shows a review's frame rate, and on a 3D review you can type the rate its frames are counted in, from 1 to 240; new 3D reviews start at 30.
• Tweening off. Set Tweening to Off in the gear to hold each frame while a 3D review plays, the way stepped playback shows the poses.
• Ink on the ground. With the pen's Surface placement, a stroke, shape or label past the model now lands on the ground grid instead of being skipped.
• 3D folders: one environment behind every 3D review in a folder. Make a New 3D folder and drop the environment - the yard, the stage, the level - into its slot once, and every 3D review in the folder opens with it behind the shot, lined up as long as both were exported from the same scene in the same units. The folder can also set one frame rate for all of them. Comes with Team and Studio.
• Add 3D element: a 3D review can hold more than one file. Add a second character, a camera that could not export with the mesh, or a prop with Add 3D element beside Add version, which also replaces, renames and removes them; each joins the review on the same origin and timeline and plays in step with the rest. Comes with Team and Studio, and a review with elements opens and sends for everyone.
• Several 3D files in one drop can become one review. Drop two or more 3D files together and choose whether to combine them into one review or import them separately. Comes with Team and Studio.
• Clearer refusals at import. A compressed glTF (Draco, meshopt or KTX2) or a file with nothing to show, such as a skeleton exported without its mesh, now says so and what to export instead.
• Heavy rigged characters play smoothly. A character with hundreds of thousands of vertices now plays at the display's rate instead of a few frames a second.
• Clay reads better. The clay view is darker with a touch of sheen, and a 3D folder's environment opens in a darker matte grey so the shot stands out.
• Real shadows from the key light. The character now shadows itself, and in a 3D folder the environment and the character shadow each other; the Shadows switch in the lighting panel turns it all off.
• The viewer's menus open under their buttons. View, Light, Camera and Parts now drop down directly below the button you pressed.
• An animation opens on the character. A take exported from a level now opens on the posed character, not on the rest pose and empty floor.

Compare (Team)

• Two versions of a video or image on one clock. Press Compare to flip between two versions, wipe one over the other, set them side by side or blend them, with one transport driving both and a frame offset for a cut that changed length. Your notes stay on the version you are reviewing.

Playback

• Speed is set per review. The gear's Speed goes back to 100% when you leave a review, and a Speed chip beside the gear shows it while it is set; one click on the chip is 100% again.
• Gamma for dark footage. A Gamma slider in Playback settings lifts a dark scene while you share your screen, on video, stills and 3D. It changes only what you see, and goes back to Off when you leave the review.

Sharing a review

• Export is the one way a review leaves the library. The review screen's buttons now read Add version, Copy link and Export, and Export holds Send outside the library and Notes as PDF, CSV or markers; in the library, Send is now Export too. Colleagues who already have the library get Copy link instead, and the send window offers it.

First run

• A short tour the first time you open ReviewDeck. Six cards, about a minute, point at the real controls as they show where your reviews live and how to start; take it again any time from Settings, under About.
• The empty library says how to begin, with Make folder, Open a folder and the tour instead of a blank space.
• A one-time tip the first time you meet something. Your first review, a 3D folder, the drop folder, a review sent to you and Needs you each get one small card, once, and a licence going in gets a welcome that lists what it turned on.

Review screen

• Anyone with a seat can add a version or export. Ownership now says whose review it is rather than who may change it, and the owner hears about a colleague's cut the way they hear about new feedback.
• Buttons grey out instead of disappearing. When Add version, Export, Copy link or Add 3D element can't be used, it stays in the header, greyed, with the reason in its tooltip.
• A review nobody owns says so. A drop folder review shows a line at the top with Take ownership, so its feedback reaches someone.

Review status

• One name for each status, everywhere. The status menu, badges, filter chips and PDFs now all say Awaiting review, In review, Changes requested, Approved and Final.

Fixes

• The buttons at the top of a 3D review show again. On many machines View, Light, Camera, UV, Compare and Onion skin were drawn but never painted over the 3D view; they show now, and their panels open under them.
• The gear menu's Quality and Speed lists open in place, instead of appearing low and jumping up.
• Stills: one note's marks at a time. On an image review, selecting a note shows only its marks; select nothing, or press Escape, to see everyone's.
• The Branding window keeps its preview in view while you scroll its settings.
• Licences check in through your system's network settings, so a studio proxy no longer makes a valid Team or Studio licence read as lapsed.
• A plain message when something goes wrong inside ReviewDeck. Instead of a window full of code, it says your reviews and notes are untouched and where the details were written.
• The library refresh no longer stacks up on a slow drive. Each refresh waits for the one before it to finish.
• The thumbnail cache has a size limit. It is trimmed, oldest first, past 512 MB.
• A new display name shows straight away. Change your name or colour in Settings and your uploads, reviews and notes show it at once, and everyone else sees it at their next refresh.
• No more accidental highlighting. A stray drag or Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac) no longer highlights the whole window; text still selects where you type and in notes.
• Two people adding a version to the same review at the same moment both keep their cut. Before, one of them could be lost.

3D review

• Draw on animated characters. Surface drawing, pins and part selection now land on a rigged character wherever its animation takes it. Before, they only worked near the pose the model opened in, so a character that ran off, or an arm swung out of that pose, could not be drawn on.
• On lens drawings stay on your view. Ink drawn On lens now moves with the camera until you add the note, like markup on a video - orbit, fly, change lens or look through a shot camera and it stays where you drew it. The note keeps it with its camera view, and selecting the note brings the drawing back exactly where it was.
• A compare ghost, or a highlighted part, no longer disappears from some camera angles while a character moves.

Needs you

• Needs you only counts other people's work. Writing a note on your own upload no longer puts it back in Needs you, an @mention you have already read doesn't come back when someone else writes, and a reply to your note stays seen once you have opened the review.
• Needs you no longer depends on clocks. When you open a review, ReviewDeck remembers what was there rather than the time on your computer, so a shared drive or a synced cloud folder whose clock is a little off no longer hides new notes or brings old ones back. Reviews you opened before this update keep the old behaviour until you open them once more.

Notifications

• The taskbar shows how many reviews need you. On Windows, ReviewDeck's taskbar button carries a count of the reviews that need you, and it goes down as soon as you open one.
• The Mac shows the count on the Dock icon. ReviewDeck asks macOS for permission the first time its window opens, and the Dock menu lists each library's count. Choosing a library there brings ReviewDeck to the front on it.
• Team and Studio libraries are counted even when they are not open. With a Team or Studio licence ReviewDeck keeps an eye on your other saved libraries too, so the count covers them all and the library switcher shows how many reviews need you in each one.
• ReviewDeck can keep running in the tray. On Windows, closing the window can leave ReviewDeck in the tray, still keeping count of what needs you. The first time you close it, ReviewDeck asks. The tray icon gets a red dot when something needs you, and its menu lists each library's count. Click a line to open that library at its Needs you reviews. ReviewDeck still checks for updates once a day while it runs there, and the tray menu says when one is available.
• A pop-up tells you when something new needs you. When someone leaves notes on your upload, mentions you, replies to your note or adds a version for you to review, ReviewDeck shows a pop-up with their name and the review, never the note itself. Click it to open that review, from the banner or later from the notification list. There are no pop-ups while you are working in ReviewDeck, nothing piles up into a burst when you start it, and at most one pop-up a library every two minutes. You can turn them off in Settings, Notifications.
• ReviewDeck can start when you sign in. A new switch starts it quietly in the tray (Windows) or the Dock (Mac), so the count is there from the start of the day.
• Settings has a Notifications section. Choose which libraries notify you, and see how each one is watched.
• Closing the window while ReviewDeck is working asks first. If an import, a send or an export is running when you close the window, ReviewDeck says so. With the tray on, an import finishes there. Otherwise you can keep working, or stop it and quit.

Links to reviews

• A review now has a link you can paste into Slack or an email. Clicking it opens the review in ReviewDeck for anyone who has the library, on Windows or Mac. The review stays on your team's drive, and nothing is uploaded. Copy link is on the review screen and in a review's right-click menu.
• A link that can't open on a computer says why. The library isn't open on that computer yet, the drive can't be reached right now, or the review has been moved or deleted. On a phone, the link says to open it on a computer.

Review screen

• Final is now the last status. Choosing Final approves the review and locks it in one step: only an admin can change its status or add a version. Choosing any other status unlocks it. It replaces the Finalise button, and approved reviews finalised in 0.2.0 show as Final.
• Transfer opens from the owner's name, and the row of buttons keeps Add version, Export notes, Copy link and Send for review, as words; icons stand in only when the window is narrow.

External reviews

• The For review tab is now called External reviews. It holds the reviews other people send you as files, kept apart from your libraries.
• You can delete a review someone sent you. Right-click it in External reviews and choose Delete… to move it to the Recycle Bin (the Trash on a Mac), where you can get it back. If you haven't returned your feedback yet, ReviewDeck says so first. In a file that holds several reviews, you can delete one of them or the whole file.

Opening folders

• Open a folder… only opens ReviewDeck libraries. ReviewDeck now looks at a folder before it changes anything in it. A folder with nothing of ReviewDeck's in it is not opened - you can make a new library inside it instead - and an empty folder can be made into a library on the spot. Before, opening the wrong folder put a hidden file into every folder inside it, even if you then said no.
• Picking a folder inside a library opens that library. Choose a project, a sub-folder or a review and ReviewDeck opens the library it belongs to, straight at what you picked.
• Documents, Desktop and the other personal folders can't be libraries themselves, wherever your computer keeps them, and neither can your OneDrive folder. ReviewDeck offers to make a library inside them instead.
• Opening a folder no longer moves another app's folder that happens to hold a file called manifest.json (a browser extension or a web app, for example) into an "Unsorted" folder.
• A saved library that no longer looks like one - a drive letter that now points at a different share, say - is no longer opened.

Trash and moving reviews

• Emptying the trash stays inside the trash. If something in the trash held a link to another folder (on Windows, a junction), emptying the trash or deleting it forever could also delete the files in the folder the link pointed to. ReviewDeck now removes only the link and leaves that folder alone. And if the trash folder itself has been turned into a link to another folder, ReviewDeck now refuses to use it, instead of treating that folder's contents as trash.
• Moving a review to another drive checks for links first. If a review holds a link to another folder, ReviewDeck now says so and leaves the review where it is, instead of copying that folder's files into the review and deleting them from where they were. Move it in File Explorer or Finder instead.

Fixes

• Saving is safer while another program holds a file. If a sync client or an antivirus scanner has a review's file open just as ReviewDeck saves your notes, ReviewDeck now keeps the old file in place until the new one is in. Before, that save could be lost.
• Opening a review file someone sent you brings up the window straight away, saying the file is opening. Before, a large file showed nothing until it was in, on the Mac nothing appeared at all if no window was open, and opening the file again added a second copy.
• A password-protected review file opened while ReviewDeck is starting up asks for its password. Before, the question could be lost.
• On the Mac, Cmd+Q with the window open quits ReviewDeck. Before, it could close only the window.
• On the Mac, Cmd+W closes the window and leaves ReviewDeck in the Dock, and Window, ReviewDeck (Cmd+0) brings it back. Before, Cmd+W did nothing.
• Switching to another library no longer keeps showing a folder from the library you left.

ReviewDeck on the Mac

• ReviewDeck now runs on the Mac. A native app for Apple silicon Macs (M1 and later) on macOS 13 Ventura or newer, signed and notarized by Apple.
• One library, Mac and PC together. A library on a shared drive, a NAS or a synced cloud folder opens from both at once: notes, versions and @mentions merge exactly as they do between two PCs.
• Finder and your browser know it. Double-click a .rdeck in Finder, or open a reviewdeck:// link, and it lands in ReviewDeck. The usual Mac shortcuts work - Cmd+C, Cmd+V, Cmd+Z, Cmd+Q - and the window has the standard Mac controls.
• macOS asks once for access to Documents, where reviews sent to you are kept, and to Downloads or the Desktop the first time you import a 3D file or a single image from there: ReviewDeck looks in the same folder for textures and for the rest of an image sequence.

Admin tools for Team and Studio libraries

• Library activity, at a glance. Admins get an Activity view in the sidebar: which reviews are waiting for feedback on their latest cut, which sends have not come back, how long reviews take to get a first note and an approval, who reviewed what this week, open versus addressed notes, and approved reviews that have gone quiet. Click any row to open the review.
• A register of what left the building. Every send, delete, restore, status change, finalise and new version is written to the library's own register, with who and when. Admins see the latest entries in the Activity view and can export the whole register as CSV.
• Every send says who it was for and how it went out. The Send dialog has a For field - one person per line, optional. The register keeps it with the send, along with the format and quality versions that went out, whether your notes or other reviewers' feedback went along, the password (yes or no - never the password itself), the name the reviewer saw and any watermark with its trace code. Search the register for a name, a review or a code.
• Recent sends in the Activity view. Every send with its thumbnail, who sent it, who it was for, how it went out and whether feedback has come back since. "Sent, no return yet" now says who sent each review and to whom.
• Finalise a review. An admin can finalise a review once it is signed off: the status freezes and no new versions can be added until an admin un-finalises it. Notes stay open and everyone can still watch and export.
• A delete policy. Admins choose who can move things to the trash (anyone, owners and admins, or admins only) and who can delete forever or empty the trash. Blocked actions stay visible but greyed out with the reason, so people learn the rule instead of hunting for the button. Restore is always open to everyone.
• Require a password on sends. A library admin can make every send password-protected; the Send dialog waits for one.
• An Admin window. Settings → Admin tools opens a window with four tabs: People (roles, who owns what, reassign a leaver's reviews), Policy, Folders and the Register.
• Hand a review to someone else. The owner of a review can transfer it from the review header; the new owner gets Add version, Export notes and Send. An admin can take ownership, or move every review a leaver owned to someone else in one go from the Admin window. Who uploaded it is kept as history.
• Roles: admin, reviewer, observer. An observer can watch and read every note but not leave any. Roles tidy the screen per person; they are not a lock.
• See who can write where. The Folders tab shows, for the library and each project folder, whether you can write there and who the operating system says can, with a shortcut to the folder in Explorer where permissions are set.
• Admins are a role you set in the library. The first admin claims the seat in Settings → Admin tools (or is whoever installs the licence); admins set roles for anyone on the People roster. These tools are cooperative by design: they shape what the app offers, and your folder permissions remain the real lock.
• The Activity view shows thumbnails, and long lists fold to the first dozen with a Show all button. Admins choose after how many idle days an approved review counts as idle, or turn the hint off.

Watermarks

• A copy for each person, with their name on every frame. Tick "Watermark each copy" in the Send dialog and put who it is for in the For field - one person per line. Each person gets their own file with their name burned into every video frame and every still, whichever format you send.
• A trace code on every copy. Each copy also carries a short code, like RD-K7Q2MX, and the library's register records it with who sent what to whom. If a frame turns up somewhere, type the code into the register's search and you have the send.
• Four layouts. Centre (large and see-through across the middle), Tiled (repeated at an angle over the whole frame - the hardest to crop or paint out), Moving (a smaller block that jumps to a new spot every few seconds) and Corner (small and gentle). Choose the opacity, the size, the text and whether your studio logo goes on too.
• See it before it goes. The Admin window's new Watermarks tab and the Send dialog both show the mark on a real frame from your library, drawn exactly the way it will be burned.
• Your admin sets the rules. Watermarks can be offered, ticked by default, or required - when required, Send waits until every copy has a name.
• Watermark the library's own copies too. Turn on "Mark new imports" and every new import and new version is stored with the mark - handy for unannounced work. Your source files are never changed. It is off unless an admin turns it on.
• The viewer's name over the player. An admin option puts each person's own name and the date faintly over the player inside ReviewDeck, moving now and then, so a screen recording shows who made it. It works for 3D too.
• Audio has no picture and a 3D model cannot carry a burned-in mark, so those go out as they are - the Send dialog says so. Watermarking re-encodes the video, so a marked send takes a little longer; a Cancel button stops it, and any copies already finished are kept.

Small things

• Undo and redo for markup. Ctrl+Z takes back the last shape you drew on the frame and Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) puts it back - Cmd+Z and Cmd+Shift+Z on a Mac - and there is a Redo button next to Undo. The reader and the web portal your reviewers use work the same way. Typing in the note box keeps its own undo.

Fixes

• Your notes can no longer disappear when a cloud drive or network share is slow to hand back your notes file. If a review opened before your earlier notes had synced, adding a new note used to save over them; now saving only ever removes notes you deleted, and any earlier notes it finds come back on screen.
• A single file moved to the library trash now shows in the Trash view and can be restored or deleted forever; before, only folders were listed.
• Holding Ctrl or Cmd with a letter no longer triggers a single-key shortcut on the review screen, in the reader or in the portal: Ctrl+C used to pick the circle tool and Ctrl+A the arrow.
• Settings → Keyboard shortcuts now lists every shortcut, including the circle and text tools and setting a note's in and out points.
• Settings → About & Legal now credits the 3D libraries ReviewDeck includes (three.js, three-mesh-bvh, GaussianSplats3D and fflate), and the app now carries the licence texts of two small components it was leaving out.

Team and Studio licences

• Your name on what you send. With a Team or Studio licence, the readers, portal pages and PDF notes you send carry your organisation's name and logo instead of the ReviewDeck badge. A wide logo with your name in it stands on its own; a square symbol keeps your name beside it. Studio licences leave ReviewDeck's name off entirely.
• Your logo and colours, everywhere. Team and Studio libraries get a Branding window: choose your logo (a PNG with transparency works best), pick from starter palettes or set every colour with a live mockup of a sent review, and see the app itself wear your mark in the title bar. A contrast check keeps notes readable in whatever colours you choose. Write the covering note that goes with a send in your own words, with placeholders for the studio, the review and the reviewer. Settings → Branding opens it.
• Your studio's colours become the app for your team. Save a brand and everyone who opens that library sees the app in those colours; their own theme returns when they leave. Start from one of the app's themes or a dark or light palette, or set every colour yourself, including the attention colour and the text. Set the studio name that goes on everything you send. If you want people to keep their own theme inside the library, tick the option in Branding and each person can choose in Settings.
• Exported PDF notes follow the brand. The header band carries your name, logo and colours instead of ReviewDeck's.
• Reviews you receive remember who sent them. A review adopted from a branded file shows the sender's name in its header.
• Settings has a Licence section. It shows whether the open library is licensed, to whom and at which level, and lets you add a licence file - drag the .rdlic onto the app, pick it, or paste its text. A licence lives with the library folder (or a folder above it), so everyone who opens that library shares it with nothing to set up on their own machine.

Image sequences review as video

• Drop a folder of numbered frames and review it as one video. Render output like shot_0001.png to shot_0240.png becomes a single video review at the frame rate you choose - PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, WebP and EXR all work. Notes land on exact frames, the Fast, Normal and Quality copies are made as usual, and the frames themselves stay where they are.
• One frame is enough. Drop or pick a single frame and ReviewDeck finds the rest of the run in its folder and offers the whole sequence - or just that image if that is what you meant.
• Missing frames hold. A small gap in the numbering repeats the previous frame so timing and frame numbers stay true to the render; the import prompt tells you which frames were missing.
• New versions from frames. A re-dropped sequence with the same name is offered as the next version, and the review screen's Add version accepts a frame run too, at the review's own frame rate.
• EXR shows as its sRGB view, the same look as the viewer in your 3D app. Files saved with DWAA or DWAB compression can't be read yet - render with ZIP or PIZ.
• Right-click a project or folder for Add image sequence… to pick a folder of frames directly.

PDF notes export for 3D reviews

• PDF export now works for 3D reviews. Each note's picture is the scene rendered from the reviewer's saved viewpoint, with their sketch strokes and pins in place and the animation at the note's frame. Notes without a saved viewpoint use the default framing, or the shot camera when the file has one.
• Watch the export happen. While a PDF builds, the export window shows a progress bar with elapsed time and a running estimate, and for 3D reviews each note's frame appears in a strip as it is rendered - a long export is never a silent wait.

Portrait and non-widescreen media look right

• Library cards take the shape of the media. A vertical clip, a square render or a widescreen cut now gets a thumbnail at its own aspect instead of being cropped into a 16:9 box. Very tall media is capped at a portrait card, with the picture centred and its own blurred colours filling the rest.
• Hover-scrub matches. Scrubbing a card previews the frames at their true shape - no more squashed portrait footage.
• List view thumbnails show the whole picture, never a crop.
• Grid and list keep their own sort order. Sorting the list by a column no longer reorders the grid, and vice versa - each view remembers its own.
• Bigger frames in the PDF notes export. Widescreen frame grabs now sit under the note at twice their old size, so markup is actually readable; portrait and square frames keep their tall side column. Grabs are rendered at higher resolution too.
• The player sits in the app. Space beside a portrait clip (or above a very wide one) is now the stage's own dark grey rather than hard black, so the video feels part of the window. Fullscreen stays black.

Small things

• File dialogs open where you left off. Import, open, save and export dialogs start in the folder you last picked from or saved to, instead of your Downloads folder.
• Updated app runtime. ReviewDeck now runs on a current, supported release of the framework it is built on (Chromium and Node), with the latest security fixes and a faster cold start.

What's new, right in the app

• After an update, ReviewDeck opens a short What's New note the first time you launch the new version, so you see what changed without hunting for release notes. Fresh installs skip it.
• Settings > About has a "What's new in this version" button to bring the notes back any time.

A list view that fits your names

• Long names get the room they need. The name column now takes whatever space the other columns leave, so even long file names read in full - and hovering shows the complete name if one still runs out of room.
• A quiet header row. Click Name, Due or Activity to sort, and click again to flip the order. The ⋯ button (or a right-click on the header) lets you choose which columns to show - Thumbnail, Project, Owner, Status, Notes and Due - and the choice is remembered.
• Less repetition. Inside a folder where every review belongs to the same project, the Project column steps aside; it comes back in Needs you, where it matters. On a narrow window the least important columns make way first.
• Zero note counts sit back so the reviews with feedback stand out.

Cinematic camera support (3D)

• Reviews now support cameras shipped inside 3D files (UE CineCamera, Blender and Maya shot cameras).
• A file with a camera opens through the lens - letterboxed, with safe-area and thirds guides - so the first thing you see is the framing the artist intended. Drag or scroll to drop into free orbit right where the lens was.
• One Camera menu holds everything: the file's shot cameras (with the active one checked) and the view presets, side by side. Picking a preset steps out of the shot; picking a camera steps back in.
• Animated camera moves play through the viewer transport - scrub, step and play the take exactly as it was authored, with the character and camera running together.
• Notes capture the shot camera you were looking through, so reviewers arrive at the exact lens and framing behind each comment.

3D thumbnails

• Library cards for animated 3D files with a camera are now a preview of the actual cut: the poster is the shot's opening frame, and hovering scrubs the take from the camera's perspective, ending where the cut ends.

Sketching in 3D

• The sketch plane now draws its contact outline on the visible surface only - a clean silhouette slice instead of marking every interior part.
• The plane works on Gaussian splats: it stays visible over the cloud and shows a dotted contact band exactly where it slices the capture.
• The plane's distance range now covers the whole asset - front to back and beyond - whatever the camera position.
• Pen strokes in plane mode land just in front of the plane, so ink drawn at the slice sits clearly proud of the surface instead of cutting into it.

Materials (3D)

• Meshes from FBX and OBJ imports render double-sided, matching what you see in Blender and Maya viewports.
• Imports coming out of game-engine pipelines get automatic cleanup of shader-mask vertex data, so models show their true materials.
• When a file arrives without its textures, the review opens in a clean clay view - built for judging form and motion - with a matching thumbnail, and the same clay view carries through to review files sent to external reviewers. Files with complete materials open fully shaded as usual.

Importing

• Importing a file that matches an existing review now offers a choice: Add as new version (keeps all feedback attached to the review), Keep both, or Skip. One prompt covers a whole batch, and duplicate cards are always clearly named.

• Reliability and security fixes from a full review of the app.
• The website download and the in-app updater now always carry the same build, so everyone is on the latest fixes.

The first release

• Review video, images, audio and 3D in one library. Frame-accurate notes and drawn markup on every frame, and versions that keep each round's notes with the cut they were made on.
• Teams on a shared folder. Point everyone's app at the same library on a NAS, an office share or a synced cloud folder: notes merge into one timeline, colour-coded per person, with replies and @mentions.
• Send a review to anyone. One .rdeck file opens in any browser at portal.reviewdeck.app with no account, or send a self-contained web page. An optional password encrypts it. Reviewers' notes come back as a small file that finds its own way to the right review.
• 3D review. Meshes (glTF, GLB, FBX, OBJ and more) and Gaussian splats, with notes pinned to the model and sketches drawn on it.
• Notes into your edit. Export notes as timeline markers for DaVinci Resolve (EDL), Final Cut Pro (FCPXML) and Premiere Pro (XML), as a CSV, or as a PDF with the frame and markup for every note.