uncompressed.io vs Frame.io — an honest comparison
They review a proxy of your film. We review the film.
Frame.io is a serious product, and this page reads it straight, from its own published figures. But its 4K playback is an H.264 proxy that maxes out around 50 Mbps — so the frame your client approves is a compressed impression of your master. Here, the review room runs on the master itself: in the browser at the bitrate you exported, and in the macOS app at up to 15,000 Mbps for camera originals.
Review playback, measured
≈50 Mbps proxy vs the master, whole.
A proxy is a re-encode with a nicer name. Every note your client leaves on it is a note on pixels that are not in your film. The macOS app plays R3D, BRAW, N-RAW and ProRes up to 8K 4:2:2 HQ at 60 fps — straight off the camera original, at up to 15,000 Mbps. That is three hundred times Frame.io’s measured proxy ceiling.
uncompressed.io — R3D, BRAW, N-RAW, ProRes up to 8K 4:2:2 HQ at 60 fps
Frame.io — 4K H.264 proxy playback, maxes out at
Vimeo Enterprise — 4K re-encode, maxes out at
The uncompressed.io macOS app plays RAW camera masters at their full data rate — against the proxy ceilings of the Hollywood review suites, measured August 2026. Frame.io’s 4K H.264 proxy playback maxes out around 50 Mbps.
And the browser side is no proxy either: we stream the exact bytes you upload, never re-encoded — a 4K master at 100 Mbps streams at 100 Mbps, an 8K master at 200 Mbps streams at 200 Mbps. Your export’s bitrate is the only ceiling.
Head-to-head, from their published pages.
Every Frame.io figure below was read from Frame.io’s own pricing and help pages, August 2026. Nothing is estimated.
Read from vendor pages, August 2026. ¹ Frame.io publishes annual billing as a per-year amount: $156 (Pro) and $264 (Team) per member. Enterprise tiers are custom-quote only. Playback figure is Frame.io’s measured 4K H.264 proxy maximum, August 2026.
What a re-encode leaves behind.
Drag the line. The slider below shows the same frame of the same master twice — our byte-for-byte side against Vimeo’s re-encode. Frame.io’s proxy pipeline is a different encoder with a higher ceiling (≈50 Mbps in 4K), but it makes the same trade: your gradient, someone else’s compressor. The banding your client circles in review should at least be banding that exists in your film.
VimeoEverything below is shipped and in the product today
A full review room. On the master.
Share a clip or a whole collection with a client’s email and they get a white-label invitation page carrying your brand — no account to create, nothing to install, no seat to buy.
Timecoded comments
Every comment is pinned to the exact frame it refers to. Opening it seeks the player straight there — no more “around 2:14”.
Drawings on the frame
Your client draws directly on the image. The annotation is stored with the comment and visible on both sides.
Threads, reactions, done
Threaded replies, reactions, and a done check per comment, so a round of notes actually closes.
Versions on one card
Upload V2, V3… against the same card. Compare any two versions side by side or with a wipe, at full quality.
Aspect ratios as themselves
16:9, 9:16 and 1:1 each carry their own version stack — the social crop is reviewed as itself, not as an afterthought.
Per-version approvals
The client approves a specific version — or requests changes on it — and the sign-off is recorded against that version. Five review states show whose move it is.
Revision rounds
Set the rounds a project includes and what an extra one costs. The client sees the warning before they go over.
Deliverables, same room
Drop the final masters in the deliverables drawer and the client downloads them from the room the review happened in — original files, full fidelity.
AI captions ride along
AI transcription generates captions for any clip — edit them, style them, export .srt or .vtt. Your client can even search the dialogue and jump to the frame where a line is said.
Their security is a ladder. Ours is a price tag.
When the work must not leak, Frame.io’s protections live at the top of the Enterprise ladder — behind a sales call. Here they are one published number.
Frame.io — where each protection lives
Session watermark
Enterprise Select — a paid add-on on a quote-only tier.
Screen-capture blocking (DRM)
Enterprise Prime only.
Forensic watermarking
Enterprise Prime only.
The price of the ladder
Not published — Enterprise is a custom quote.
Read from frame.io/pricing and Frame.io’s DRM help pages, August 2026.
The Vault — $250/mo, everything included
- ✓Screen-capture and recording blocking — included
- ✓Session watermark on every frame — included
- ✓Invisible forensic watermark — per person, collusion-resistant — included
- ✓End-to-end encrypted vault, device-bound key — included
- ✓2 TB hot + 2 TB cold storage — additional seats $175/mo, each adding 1 TB + 1 TB
One honest note travels with the forensic mark: a camera pointed at the screen degrades the trace from evidence to investigative lead.
Per-member pricing counts your team against you.
Frame.io meters people: $15 (Pro) or $25 (Team) per member, per month¹. Here the only meter is storage — the review room is on every plan, and clients review through an email link, so they are never counted at all.
Frame.io Team, 10 members
$250/mo¹
10 × $25 per member per month, for 3 TB of storage and ≈50 Mbps 4K proxy playback. Watermarks and capture blocking not included at this tier.
uncompressed.io Pro, whole studio
$25/mo flat
The sticker price of one Frame.io Team member buys the entire review room here — 500 GB of storage, masters streamed at their own bitrate, unlimited client reviewers by email link.
uncompressed.io Vault
$250/mo flat
What 10 Frame.io Team memberships cost buys the whole security tier here: capture blocking, session and per-person forensic watermarks, encrypted vault, 2 TB hot + 2 TB cold.
¹ Frame.io’s published monthly per-member prices, August 2026; annual billing is published as a per-year amount — $156 (Pro) and $264 (Team) per member, which puts the same 10-member Team at $2,640/year. Our prices: uncompressed.io published plans, USD.
The questions switchers ask.
Is uncompressed.io a Frame.io alternative?+
For client review and approval, yes — and the review room is built into the host itself, not sold as a separate per-member subscription. Timecoded comments, drawings on the frame, versions with A/B compare, per-version approvals and final deliverables are all shipped and running on the same master you will eventually deliver. The structural difference: Frame.io's 4K playback is an H.264 proxy that maxes out around 50 Mbps, so notes land on a compressed impression of your film; here the review runs on the master itself.
How does the pricing compare?+
Frame.io publishes $15 (Pro) or $25 (Team) per member per month — with annual billing published as a per-year amount, $156 and $264 per member — and Enterprise is a custom quote. uncompressed.io has no per-member meter on review: plans are flat and differ by storage, from free (1 GB) through Lite $9, Pro $25 and Max $75 to Vault at $250 per month, and the review room is on every one of them. Clients review through an email invitation, so they are never counted or billed.
Do clients need an account or a seat to review?+
No. You share a clip or a whole collection with a client's email and they get a white-label invitation page carrying your brand — they comment, approve versions and download deliverables from there, with nothing to install and no account to create. The one exception is vaulted masters, which are deliberately macOS-app-only for security.
What about screen-capture blocking and watermarking?+
On Frame.io those sit high up the ladder: DRM-based screen-capture blocking and forensic watermarking are Enterprise Prime only, and the session watermark is a paid Enterprise Select add-on — all quote-only tiers. Here they are one published price: the Vault tier at $250/month includes capture blocking, a session watermark on every frame, and an invisible per-person forensic watermark that is collusion-resistant and built to survive re-encoding. One honest note: a camera pointed at the screen degrades the forensic trace from evidence to investigative lead.
Can it really play camera originals during review?+
Yes — that is the point of the macOS app. RED R3D, Blackmagic BRAW and Nikon N-RAW decode natively from the camera original, and ProRes plays up to 8K 4:2:2 HQ at 60 fps — no proxies, no transcodes, at up to 15,000 Mbps. In the browser, we stream the export you uploaded at its own bitrate — a 4K master at 100 Mbps streams at 100 Mbps.
Your client’s next note should land on your film.
Upload a master, share it by email, and run the first review round today — at the bitrate it left the suite.