Video review and approval software:
how to choose one your client can actually open.

Almost everyone starts here, and it works until the second round. The failure is not that it is unprofessional. The failure is that three specific pieces of information are never captured, and you spend the rest of the job reconstructing them.

The first is time. A note in an email body has no timecode, so someone has to translate “the bit after the interview” into a frame, and that someone is usually the editor, guessing. The second is version identity. A file called final_v3_NEW.mp4 in a drive folder tells you nothing about whether the client watched it, and two people commenting on two different downloads produce contradictory notes that look identical. The third is the decision itself. An email saying “looks great” is not an approval record: it does not name a file, it does not carry a date against a specific cut, and it is worthless the day someone asks why the wrong version went out.

There is a fourth cost that is easier to measure. Sending a large export by email is impossible, so the file goes to a transfer service or a drive, which means the client downloads a copy, plays it in whatever player is on their machine, and forms an opinion about your grade based on a decoder you never tested. If you are going to review in a browser, the thing they are watching should be the thing you exported.

The first is the price shape. Frame.io bills per member, not per plan: the pricing page lists Pro at $15 a member a month with 2 TB included plus 2 TB for each additional member, and Team at $25 a member a month with 3 TB included plus 2 TB per member, with annual billing advertised as 13 percent off. Storage therefore grows by hiring, not by need. The free plan is $0 with 2 GB, up to 2 members and up to 2 projects. That model is excellent when the people reviewing are staff and awkward when they are clients, because the cost of the tool tracks the size of the room rather than the size of the work.

The second is what happens to your file. Frame.io stores the original and offers it for download, and encodes a separate version for web playback, so the reviewer in a browser is watching an encode of your export while the original stays available. That is a fair design and it is worth saying plainly, because the common accusation that Frame.io throws away your master is false. Its documented over-quota and post-cancellation behaviour is likewise not deletion: exceeding a limit or reducing licenses can lock the account, and cancelling downgrades you to the free plan with reduced storage, with the user deleting files to fit. No automatic deletion is documented anywhere.

The review runs on the file you uploaded. Nothing is transcoded on the way in and nothing is transcoded on the way out, so the client is judging your export rather than an encode of it. Every review feature is on every plan, the free one included, and external reviewers are never seats, so the number of people in a review does not change the bill. The plan you pick is a storage decision.

There is no rendition ladder here, which is the direct consequence of not transcoding. On a weak connection the player buffers rather than dropping to a smaller version, because a smaller version was never made. A tool that builds a proxy ladder will feel better on a phone in a car park, and that is a real trade. Send a lighter export when reach matters more than the data rate.

Files cap at 50 GB each. Frame.io accepts assets up to 5 TB, so a one-off camera-card dump belongs somewhere else. Passwords here are set per film rather than across a collection, so a client hub protected by one password for many videos is not something this product does today. There is also no custom domain: the room and the embed live on uncompressed.io and on your own subdomain of it, and if a domain you own is a requirement, this is the row where we lose.

One last distinction worth keeping straight, because it is easy to conflate. Replacing a film is not the same as adding a version. A replace keeps the link, the view count, the embeds, the privacy setting and the film’s place on your page, and it deletes the previous file rather than storing it; the thumbnail, the captions and any existing timecoded notes then still refer to the old cut. Versions in the review room are the opposite: the earlier cut stays, and its notes stay with it. Use replacement for a published film you are quietly updating, and versions for anything under review. The review room page walks through the room itself, and the delivery guide covers what happens after the approval.