A blazing-fast, color-accurate alternative to VLC, MPV, FFplay, and QuickTime. Built for creators, studios, and power users who need synchronized stacks, interactive split wipes, 10-bit and HDR color, camera RAW, and zero-stutter playback.
Standard players like VLC, MPV, and QuickTime are great for casual videos, but fall flat when you need frame precision, multi-file comparison, or professional color accuracy.
| Feature / Capability | OpenUTV | VLC Media Player | MPV | Apple QuickTime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-Source Stacks & Layering | ✓ Built-in Stacks Multi-track + Blend Modes |
— Single file only | — Single file only | — Single file only |
| Interactive Split Wipes | ✓ Horizontal & Vertical Real-Time Difference Comps |
— None | — None | — None |
| Color Accuracy & Pipeline | ✓ True ACES & OCIO v2 Display Transforms, LUTs, CDLs |
— Basic sRGB / Rec.709 | — LittleCMS / basic ICC | — macOS ColorSync only |
| 10-Bit Hardware Display | ✓ 10-Bit Metal & Vulkan macOS and Linux |
— 8-bit dithered | — Optional vo=gpu-next | — Display limited |
| OCIO-Managed HDR | ✓ HDR PQ & HLG macOS, Set Up Through OCIO |
— No OCIO | — No OCIO | — No OCIO |
| Cinema RAW (BRAW & RED R3D) | ✓ Dynamic Runtime Loading BRAW, RED R3D (IPP2) |
— Unsupported | — Requires custom builds | — Unsupported |
| Apple ProRes RAW | ✓ 16-Bit Half-Float Native | — Unsupported | — Unsupported | ✓ macOS native |
| VFX Image Sequences (EXR / DPX) | ✓ Instant Multi-Part EXR & DPX Multi-threaded async caching |
— Broken / unplayable | — Basic (slow prefetch) | — Unsupported |
| PNG Sequence Acceleration | ✓ SIMD libspng (3–4× Faster) | — libpng (CPU bottleneck) | — Standard decode | — Unsupported |
| Multi-Page PDF & Vector SVG | ✓ Storyboards & Scripts with Crop | — Unsupported | — Unsupported | — Separate Preview app |
| Professional Video I/O (SDI & NDI) | ✓ NDI 6, DeckLink, AJA | — None | — None | — None |
Engineered for uncompromised frame rates, instant seek response, and multi-source creative precision.
Load multiple clips, versions, or exposures simultaneously. Toggle layers with opacity, split screen with interactive horizontal/vertical wipes, or compute pixel difference comps in real time.
macOS presents 10-bit SDR, EDR, HDR PQ, and HDR HLG through Metal, and Linux presents 10-bit through Vulkan. OpenColorIO v2 with an ACES 2.0 config, Look LUTs, CDLs, and channel isolation (R, G, B, A, Luma).
With an OCIO display in use, UTV picks the display and view for your presentation mode and gives each source an input from its metadata or the config's file rules. The OCIO menus show what's active, and UTV warns when a display doesn't match the presentation.
Direct dynamic runtime debayering for Blackmagic RAW (.braw), RED Digital Cinema (.r3d with IPP2 color science), and 16-bit half-float Apple ProRes RAW.
Review scripts, storyboards, contact sheets, and lookbooks natively with auto-margin cropping alongside video assets, plus hardware-accelerated SVG vector rendering via NanoSVG.
Dedicated inspection panel with live playhead/viewport tracking, source clip dropdown, instant search filter across hundreds of metadata tags, and 1-click export (Text/CSV/JSON).
Shapes, text, input smoothing, and stamp-based brushes, with per-frame undo and redo. Turn it on in Preferences > Packages > Annotation (Beta).
UTV checks GitHub for a new release at launch and tells you when one is out. Snooze it, skip that version, or upgrade through Homebrew on macOS. Windows also hears about new OpenUTVDeps releases. Check any time from Help > Check for Updates.
On Windows: a one-line install that adds its dependencies, high-DPI scaling by default, and software rendering on machines without a GPU driver. On Linux: native Wayland, and headless utvio conversion with no X server.
Help > Collect Diagnostics Package zips your system info, logs, and crash reports for a bug report. On Windows, a crash shows its error code instead of the app just disappearing.
Modernized codebase built on Qt 6, Python 3, OpenEXR 3, and FFmpeg. Fully scriptable with custom keyboard shortcuts, viewport hooks, and studio pipeline integrations.
Permissive Apache 2.0 license. Apple Silicon signed and notarized (brew install --cask utv), official Windows PowerShell installer (irm https://openutv.com/install.ps1 | iex), and a Linux tarball. No telemetry or licenses.
Real-world inspection tools, deep camera metadata, legal proprietary codec integration, and instant keyboard navigation.
OpenUTV plays through a full FFmpeg, from Homebrew on macOS and Linux and from OpenUTVDeps on Windows, and has a guided scanner for proprietary camera SDKs installed on your workstation.
Never memorize hundreds of hotkeys or hunt through menus. Trigger the HUD anytime to search shortcuts instantly, dock it as a floating reference, or customize keybindings.
Access every frame's embedded EXIF, camera RAW parameters, and color flags. From cinema camera serial numbers to compression ratios and reel IDs, inspect everything in real time.
VFX and animation are global industries. OpenUTV supports dynamic runtime switching across 8 major languages for menus, dialogs, preferences, and tooltips without requiring an app restart.
From standard consumer web video to deep-raster uncompressed cinema archives, OpenUTV opens them all instantly.
Hardware-decoded high-bitrate containers, broadcast masters, and internet video codecs.
Zero-recompile dynamic runtime loading for leading digital cinema camera debayer pipelines.
Direct viewing and grading of RAW camera sensor captures across professional photography brands.
High-bandwidth uncompressed image sequences with SIMD optimization and vector rendering.
Review storyboard PDFs, scripts, and contact sheets side-by-side with locked multi-channel audio.
Broadcast monitor feeds and IP network output with zero vendor lock-in.
Hardware decode where the GPU can do it, multithreaded CPU decode where it can't, and a cache that sets itself up.
A community test played 8192 × 8192 fulldome footage at 60 fps from fully cached H.264 YUV 4:4:4, on a Ryzen 9 7950X and RTX 4090. Since the upload fix in 2026.16, the RGB PNG sequence and uncompressed RGB video play at 60 fps too, up from 27–33 fps.
VideoToolbox is on by default on Apple Silicon, with NVDEC and VAAPI on Linux and NVDEC and D3D11VA on Windows. When the hardware can't decode a file, UTV falls back to the CPU.
H.264 and HEVC use frame threading when they decode on the CPU, so files your GPU can't handle still decode across multiple cores.
UTV chooses its cache behavior from your media's metadata and decodes frames in parallel across its reader threads, with no cache settings to tune first.
SIMD libspng delivers 3–4× faster playback for PNG image sequences than standard libpng, preventing CPU frame drops on dense timelines.
Open FFmpeg decoders are capped, so memory stops growing during long playback. A track reuses its hardware decoder when it reopens, and EXR with WAV audio plays without stutter.
Get up and running in seconds via your favorite package manager or direct download.
# Tap official OpenUTV repository and install signed & notarized Cask
brew tap OpenUTV/utv
brew trust openutv/utv
brew install --cask utv
# To upgrade existing installation
brew update && brew upgrade --cask utvRequires macOS 15 Sequoia or later on Apple Silicon (arm64). Includes signed Developer ID and Apple Notarization ticket.
# Official PowerShell One-Liner (Installs app & dependencies)
irm https://openutv.com/install.ps1 | iexAutomatically detects and installs OpenUTVDeps MSI if missing, registers Start Menu shortcuts, and configures PATH. Also available via standalone ZIP.
# 1. Install the libraries UTV uses from Homebrew on Linux
brew install qt pyside [email protected] ffmpeg openexr imath opencolorio \
libraw libtiff libpng libspng boost openimageio openjpeg webp \
yaml-cpp spdlog openjph jpeg-turbo glew
# 2. Download UTV-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz from GitHub Releases and extract it
# 3. Run it
bin/utv
# Or build from source
git clone --recursive https://github.com/OpenUTV/utv.git
cd utv
./build.sh --releaseThe release build needs glibc 2.38 or later (Ubuntu 24.04 or newer). There is no prebuilt release for Rocky, Alma, or RHEL yet; build from source on those.
Visit all release assets and changelogs on GitHub Releases.
Whether running OpenUTV from your terminal as a lightning-fast frame viewer or integrating it into automated studio review pipelines, OpenUTV delivers an industrial-strength CLI.
-wipe or -over to compare takes instantly.# 1. Compare two takes in an interactive split wipe
utv -wipe take_01.mov take_02.mov
# 2. Stack a comp with its audio over the plate
utv -over [ comp.####.exr mix.wav ] plate.####.exr -fps 24
# 3. Direct cinema RAW playback with camera metadata
utv /media/camera_raw/A001_C005.braw
# 4. Review multi-page storyboard PDF alongside edit
utv /docs/storyboard.pdf /cuts/scene_03.movAutomated checks on macOS, Windows, and Linux, plus a test media generator anyone can run.
You don't need a folder of sample files. utv_testmedia.py in the repository builds synthetic media from more than 120 deterministic recipes, then decodes it with utvio and reports what happened.
cd scripts/testmedia
# See what this machine can build
python3 utv_testmedia.py doctor
# Generate a quick cross-section of formats
python3 utv_testmedia.py gen -t smoke
# Generate damaged files, then check that UTV survives them
python3 utv_testmedia.py gen -t corrupt
python3 utv_testmedia.py check -t corrupt
# Damage a copy of any file
python3 utv_testmedia.py corrupt shot.mov broken.mov \
--op bitflip --count 500 --seed 7Every command line tool has to start, find its libraries, and exit with the expected output on macOS, Windows, and Linux. A missing library or plugin fails the build instead of reaching you.
Every image format utvio can write is written, read back, and compared at known pixels. A flip, a channel swap, or a truncated file fails the test.
Each Windows build runs its tools from the package as users get it, with OpenUTVDeps off PATH. Changes to the installer run it for real on a clean Windows runner.
Linux builds also render a frame and repeat the smoke tests with no X server, the way a render node runs them.
UTV uses your Homebrew libraries, so a Homebrew upgrade can break a release with no change on our side. Every day a macOS runner installs the current release with that day's Homebrew and checks that it starts. If it doesn't, an issue opens automatically.
macOS releases are signed and notarized, and every release publishes SHA-256 checksums. CodeQL scans run weekly, and a weekly job watches OpenRV for new commits to port.
Everything you need to know about OpenUTV, player comparisons, and capabilities.
VLC, MPV, and QuickTime are designed for single-stream consumer video playback. They cannot layer multiple tracks in synchronized stacks, perform interactive split-screen wipes or difference blend modes, or handle uncompressed visual effects image sequences (like multi-part OpenEXR, DPX, or SIMD-accelerated PNG sequences).
OpenUTV provides 10-bit and HDR color (ACES 2.0 & OpenColorIO v2), native cinema RAW playback (Blackmagic RAW, RED R3D, ProRes RAW), multi-page PDF storyboard review, and dynamic broadcast SDI/NDI I/O—while remaining just as fast and easy to launch.
Absolutely. OpenUTV starts in milliseconds, uses minimal system RAM, and natively plays all common video formats (MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM, H.264, HEVC, AV1, ProRes) and photo formats (JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, camera RAWs). Its intelligent metadata-based RAM caching ensures buttery-smooth frame scrubbing without dropped frames.
Stacks allow you to load multiple media clips or sequences simultaneously into aligned parallel tracks. You can adjust opacity, reorder layers, and toggle composite blend modes (Over, Add, Difference) with audio synchronization.
Wipes provide an interactive vertical or horizontal divider that you can drag across your screen to compare two different versions, color grades, or VFX renders side-by-side on the exact same frame.
On macOS, OpenUTV presents through Metal in 10-bit SDR, EDR, HDR PQ, or HDR HLG. On Linux, it presents 10-bit through Vulkan. On Windows, the default view is 8-bit OpenGL, and 10-bit output is still being finished. OpenColorIO v2 runs on the GPU with an ACES 2.0 config, CDLs, and 3D LUTs. The repository includes 10-bit test patterns for checking your display chain.
Yes on macOS. Set Preferences > Rendering > macOS Presentation to EDR, HDR PQ, or HDR HLG, and UTV turns on a matching OCIO display for HDR PQ and HLG. HDR presentation on Linux and Windows is planned.
Yes. On a Wayland desktop OpenUTV runs as a native Wayland application, including with fractional scaling. Set QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb to run it through XWayland instead.
Yes. OpenUTV is licensed under the permissive Apache License 2.0. There is no telemetry, no node-locked licensing servers, no paid tiers, and zero cloud lock-in. It is 100% community-driven and can be deployed freely across personal machines or entire studio facilities.