Questions, answered straight

Those are services: your media uploads to their servers, everyone needs an account, and you rent access monthly. ReviewDeck is a tool: your media stays in your folders on drives you already own, nobody needs an account, and the app is yours once installed. Reviews travel as ordinary files you send however you already talk to people.

Yes - that's where it comes from. ReviewDeck is made by Adam Broder, a cinematic artist and trailer editor with a decade in games, and shaped around the reviews game teams actually run: trailer cuts, gameplay captures, key art and 3D assets. It also fits how studios already work. The library lives on your own drives behind your own permissions, so an unannounced title never touches a third-party server, and there's no per-seat subscription to get signed off.

It isn't game-only, though. If you work in film, motion design or archviz, everything works exactly the same way.

The core app is free for libraries of up to 5 people, solo or a team on a shared drive: a library on your own drive, reviewing, notes and markup, versions, sending and collecting notes, 3D. Five people can add to a library; anyone can read, play and send, and the people you send work to never count. The catch: files you send out carry a small "Made with ReviewDeck" note, and the studio tools are paid. Team (up to 12 people on a library), Studio 50 and Studio 100 are a one-off payment, half price during early access: your name and logo on outgoing reviews, admin tools for activity and sign-off, 3D folders and 3D elements, Compare for video and images, and on Studio watermarks, the register, roles and the drop folder. The core app stays free. That's the deal.

No. There is no ReviewDeck server to upload to. Your media lives in your folders; reviews you send travel through whatever channel you choose (email, chat, a shared drive). Even the browser portal works entirely on the reviewer's device. After the page loads it is blocked from all network access, which you can verify in the browser's network tab. Full details in the privacy policy.

Windows 10 and up, and Mac: Apple silicon Macs (M1 and later) on macOS 13 Ventura or newer (Intel Macs aren't supported yet). One shared library works from a Mac and a PC at once. Reviewers don't need the app at all: the browser portal works on anything with a modern browser, including phones.

Video, stills, image sequences, audio and 3D. Stills: PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, HEIC and AVIF, and the game and VFX formats TGA, DDS, PSD, EXR, HDR, DPX, JPEG 2000, SGI and QOI. A folder of numbered frames (EXR, PNG, TIFF and the rest) imports as one review at the frame rate you choose. Audio (WAV, MP3, FLAC, AIFF and more) reviews on its waveform. Video is baked into quality tiers, so playback is instant even off a network drive over WiFi. 3D meshes and Gaussian splat captures open in the same app, with notes that remember the exact camera view.

Meshes: glTF/GLB, FBX, OBJ, COLLADA, PLY, STL and 3MF. Everything converts to one clean format at import, with rigs, animation and materials preserved where the source carries them, and units and axes normalised so a Maya export and a Blender export sit the same way up at the same size.

Gaussian splat captures open natively too: PLY, SPZ, SPLAT, KSPLAT and SOG. A scan of a set, a prop or a location reviews the same way a mesh does.

Fly or orbit the asset, then mark it up with a grease pencil that draws in real 3D space: on a placement plane you push through the scene, directly on the surface, or flat on the lens like a 2D note. Strokes live in the scene, so you can orbit around your own drawing.

Beyond the pen: drop motion trails on a rigged character to talk about movement, isolate or hide named parts, and switch shading (clay, wireframe, an AO form pass and more) and lighting to interrogate the surface. Animated assets get the same frame-accurate transport as video, so a note lands on the exact frame of the exact move.

Every note bakes the exact camera view you were looking from when you added it, along with the view state that mattered (shading mode, active trails). Selecting a note flies the viewport straight back there, so "this bit, from this angle" survives the trip to another machine. Text-only notes carry the view too; no drawing required.

Yes. The portal ships the full viewer: orbit and fly, the 3D grease pencil, trails, parts, all of it, and phones orbit with a finger. Their 3D notes come back in the same feedback file as everything else and land in your library with the camera views intact. Very large splat captures are happiest on a computer.

A single .rdeck file containing the media, and everything needed to leave frame-accurate notes and drawings. They open it at portal.reviewdeck.app in any browser (phone or computer, nothing installs) or with the free desktop app. Step-by-step for reviewers: reviewdeck.app/open.

When they finish, they click Send feedback and return the saved file on the same channel the review arrived on. You click Import feedback in your library and ReviewDeck files every note, including their drawings, to the right review automatically, even if you sent several pieces in one package.

Worth knowing: their notes live only on their device until they send that file back. Nothing syncs behind the scenes, so a reviewer who finishes but never returns the file has sent you nothing. The covering note ReviewDeck writes for you spells this out for them.

Yes: real encryption (AES-256-GCM), not a hidden-field gate. Share the password through a separate channel from the file. Honest warning: a lost password is genuinely unrecoverable, by you or by anyone. That's what makes it worth using.

Nine times out of ten: they're previewing it inside email or a cloud drive instead of opening the downloaded file. Have them save it first, then open it, or just use the portal, which sidesteps all of that. If a .rdeck was re-zipped by another tool along the way, re-export and re-send it.

Point everyone's app at the same library folder on a shared drive or NAS. Everyone's notes merge into one timeline, colour-coded per person, with @mentions, presence, and a "Needs you" view for things waiting on you. No server to set up. The folder is the server.

Yes. Mark the library as cloud-synced when you create it and ReviewDeck adapts (it also detects and flags sync-conflict copies so they never show up as phantom feedback). A proper shared drive or NAS is still the smoothest home for a busy team library.

The same way you already control the drive: folder permissions. A library is ordinary files, so whatever your file server or NAS enforces, ReviewDeck respects. Read-only users can look but not touch. The app deliberately doesn't duplicate your IT's permission system with its own.

A library is plain files and folders. Back it up exactly like the rest of your project data. No export step, no proprietary database to rescue. If you can copy a folder, you can back up ReviewDeck.

The installer is code-signed, but Windows SmartScreen also scores software by download reputation, which new releases earn over time. If you see the warning: keep the file, click More info, then Run anyway. As more people install, the warning disappears on its own.

Yes. Export notes as timeline markers: EDL for DaVinci Resolve, FCPXML for Final Cut Pro, XML for Premiere Pro sequence markers, CSV for spreadsheets, plus a PDF report with each note's frame and drawings for anyone who just wants to read it.

Anonymous feature-usage counts only: event names and numbers, never file names, note text, media or any identifier that could link back to you. There's a notice on first launch and an off switch in Settings. People you send reviews to are never counted at all. The full list of what's counted ships with the app; details in the privacy policy.

A standard zip archive with a readable manifest inside. Deliberately boring. Rename one to .zip and any unzip tool will show you exactly what's in it: your media, thumbnails, and a JSON file describing the review. No proprietary lock-in; your data is inspectable with tools you already have.

If you set a password, unzipping still works but the contents don't: the media, notes and thumbnails are each individually encrypted (AES-256-GCM), so without the password they're unreadable noise. Only the basic metadata (the review's title, the sender's name, file names and sizes) stays visible. Treat the title accordingly if the project itself is secret.

The core app is free for libraries of up to 5 people. Team and Studio are the studio tools on top: flat levels, each a single payment (not per seat, not per year), both 50% off during early access, which ends with 1.0. Team, £75 once (regular price £150) for up to 12 people on a library, adds your name and logo on sends, the Activity view, Final and the admin rules, pop-ups from every saved library, 3D folders with one environment behind every 3D review, 3D elements for more than one file in a 3D review, and Compare for two versions of a video or image; Studio 50, £300 once (regular £600) for up to 50 people on a library, and Studio 100, £750 once (regular £1,500) for up to 100, add watermarks with trace codes, the send register, roles and the delete policy, the drop folder that turns renders into reviews with no hands on it, and sends that carry only your name. More than 100 people on a library is by arrangement: get in touch. Moving up later costs only the difference. One payment covers this version and every update to it. If a 2.0 ever ships it would be an optional upgrade, and I'm still working out what that should cost. What you bought keeps working. Never a subscription. Buy from the pricing section; questions to adam@adambroder.com.

ReviewDeck is new and moving quickly: updates land often, and what the people using it ask for shapes what comes next. While early access lasts, every Team and Studio level is 50% off; early access ends with 1.0, and the regular prices (£150, £600 and £1,500) apply from then. A licence bought now is the same licence as any other: it covers every update to this version and keeps working. Found something odd? Email adam@adambroder.com.

No. It is one payment per organisation for the level you choose, and it covers every release of that major version - every 0.x and 1.x update is included. If a 2.0 ever ships it would be an optional paid upgrade, and what you bought keeps working. Moving up later - Team to Studio, or Studio 50 to Studio 100 - costs only the difference: email adam@adambroder.com and you get a code worth what you already paid. If a move-up is refunded, the licence goes back to the level before it rather than being cancelled.

Yes. Each licensed copy checks in about once a day with the licence id, an anonymous machine token, a hashed library id and how many people add to that library - a number, never files, notes or people. Settings → Licence in the app shows how many machines and libraries use your licence and when it last checked in. For the list itself, or to remove a machine that has gone, email adam@adambroder.com and I'll do it the same day.

Every library has a number of people who can add to it: 5 on the free app, 12 with Team, 50 with Studio 50, 100 with Studio 100. Adding means a note, a version or a status change; reading, playing and sending never count, and nor do the people you send work to. The first people to add hold the seats, in the order they first did. A seat frees itself after 30 days without adding anything, and on Team and Studio an admin can free one at once by removing someone who has left (Settings, People).

Go over the number and nothing changes for a month: a banner names the date. When it comes, the people beyond the number see a short note on the review screen and can read, play and send as before, but not add, until a seat frees or the library moves up a level. Moving up costs only the difference: email adam@adambroder.com for a code worth what you already paid, or, past 100, for a licence sized for you. Nothing already in the library changes, and nothing is ever deleted or made unreadable. It is all decided from the library's own files, library by library: there is no server watching, and nothing about any of it ever appears on what you send.

About once a day a licensed library tells reviewdeck.app it is in use: the licence id, an anonymous machine token, a hashed library id, the app version and how many people add to the library - a number, never file names, notes, media or people's names - and it shows that it holds the licence file. Settings → Licence shows the last check-in and has a Check now button. A copy that can't reach us for 30 days shows a banner; one that can't for 90 days quietly behaves as the free app until it can, which is also how a revoked or refunded licence stops working everywhere within three months, even offline. The free app sends none of this and never creates a machine token.