No subscription. No cloud.No seats. No uploads. Ever.
Host your own video reviews. Precise, timecoded feedback on every cut, kept fully on your machine and streamed to anyone.
Free and open source. For macOS, Windows in development.
- PPriya Nair00:00:12:04
Push in on the bowl of refried beans. Where the squiggly line points to.
- MMarco Vidal00:00:32:11
Let's see if we can't find a better angle. I wanna see the daughter's reaction to eating the sopes.
- JJordan Reyes00:00:57:00
- $0
- forever
- ∞
- storage
- 100%
- local
- 0
- uploads
- OSS
- open source
Built by post-production veterans who live this work every day.
Works with
Your new monthly software bill
$0
Frame.io and Vimeo can run a small team $100–200 every month. FC Review is nothing. So what will you do with the difference?
- 01A new prime lens
- 02A tank of diesel for the location van
- 03A color pass for the short
- 04A round for the crew
- 05Actual profit
Inside the app
The actual desktop app, screen by screen.
Home
Every project, one click away.
Your projects browser is home base: open any job, see what has fresh notes, jump back in. Everything lives on your machine.
No upload. No wait.
Projects
Manage all projects and scan for assets
Projects
12
Total Assets
184
Users
9
Northbound — S2
Aurora — 30s Spot
Season Finale — Cut 4
Coastline Aerial Reel
Newsroom Rebrand
Vows — Highlight
Encore — Tour Doc
Táche — Brand Film
Matchday — Ep. 3
SS27 Editorial
Nightrunner — Spec
Raptors — Ep. 1
Inside a project
Every clip, fully described.
Resolution, codec, duration, size, and live proxy / stream / thumbnail status at a glance. You drop in ProRes; First Cut builds the ladder.
No manual logging. Ever.
Coastline Aerial Reel
9 assets · /Volumes/edit-drive/coastline
reel_01.mov
- RES
- 3840×2160
- CODEC
- ProRes 422 HQ
- SIZE
- 48.2 GB
reel_02.mov
- RES
- 3840×2160
- CODEC
- ProRes 422 HQ
- SIZE
- 31.6 GB
reel_03.mov
- RES
- 1920×1080
- CODEC
- H.264
- SIZE
- 9.4 GB
reel_04.mov
- RES
- 3840×2160
- CODEC
- ProRes 422 HQ
- SIZE
- 39.1 GB
Open a clip
See every note, drawn on the frame.
Pen, arrow, circle, or voice. Every mark is pinned to the exact frame, in the reviewer's own color, at exact SMPTE timecode.
Feedback on the cut.
- PPriya Nair00:00:12:04
Push in on the bowl of refried beans. Where the squiggly line points to.
- MMarco Vidal00:00:32:11
Let's see if we can't find a better angle. I wanna see the daughter's reaction to eating the sopes.
- JJordan Reyes00:00:57:00
Connectors
Notes go straight to your timeline.
Export every marker back to Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Resolve as native markers, keeping the exact timecode and reviewer color.
Straight to your timeline.
Export Timeline Markers
Send every note back to your NLE as native markers, on the frame.
Final Cut Pro
FCPXML · timeline markers
Premiere Pro
XML · sequence markers
DaVinci Resolve
EDL · marker list
ⓘMarkers keep their exact timecode and the reviewer's color.
Your team
One thread, everyone in their color.
Reviewers reply in a single frame-anchored thread. No email chains, no version confusion, no screenshots pasted into chat.
Everyone on the same frame.
Love this open. Can we hold the wide two seconds longer before the cut to the interior?
Audio dips here for a beat. Bump the music bed under the VO and it's locked.
Access
You decide who sees what.
Admins and clients, active and inactive, all from your own user list. No seat licenses, no per-viewer fees, ever.
Your drive. Your rules.
Users & Access
Manage who can view and download
Total
9
Active
8
Inactive
1
Admins
2
Clients
7
The engine
Watch it encode.
Probe, proxy, HLS, and thumbnails run as a live queue on your own hardware. You deliver one master; First Cut builds the whole ladder.
No cloud queue. No waiting your turn.
Job Queue Monitor
Background processing queue status
Pending
3
Processing
2
Completed
41
Failed
0
PROBE
PROXY
HLS
THUMBNAIL
Delivery
Masters out, no egress bill.
Every download tracked with speed, size, and success, served straight off your drive at full LAN speed, with nothing metered.
Full speed. Zero egress.
Download Analytics
Delivery activity over the last 30 days
Total Downloads
326
Success Rate
99.4%
Avg Speed
212 Mbps
Total Time
14h
Downloads per day
The record
Every login, on the record.
A full access log of who signed in, from where, on what device, all kept on your own box. Nothing leaves your network.
Nothing leaves your network.
Access History
Every login and download, on the record
Logins
128
Failed
3
Users
9
Countries
4
Controls
Your paths, your retention.
Point First Cut at your volumes, set proxy retention, flip auto-cleanup. Sensible defaults, nothing assumed about where your media lives.
Configured to your drive.
Settings
Configure storage, processing, and access
Storage Configuration
ⓘAll paths point to volumes you own. First Cut never copies media off this machine.
Under the hood
What makes it different.
Local-first by design
Your masters never leave your machine. No cloud middleman, no upload tax, no monthly storage bill. Review runs against the original files on your own disk.
Adaptive streaming, encoded for you
Export ProRes 422 HQ. First Cut builds a full proxy ladder and streams adaptive HLS, auto-switching resolution to each viewer's bandwidth.
Private access, no open ports
Reach your server from anywhere over an encrypted WireGuard mesh (we recommend Tailscale). Nothing is exposed to the public internet.
Open protocols, all the way down
HLS for playback, WebRTC for real-time, resumable transfers, WireGuard for transport. Standards, not lock-in.
Resumable, checksummed delivery
Chunked transfers that survive a dropped connection and verify every byte on arrival. Bad hotel Wi-Fi doesn't cost you the whole download.
Auto · matches bandwidth
Deliver one master. First Cut generates the whole ladder and steps each viewer up or down so playback never stalls.
Questions
Questions, answered.
- Does my footage upload anywhere?
- No. Your masters stay on your own disk. Clients stream proxies directly from your machine. Nothing is copied to a third-party cloud, ever.
- Do my clients have to install anything?
- No. They open a link and review right in the browser. FC Review is a desktop app for you, the host. macOS today, Windows in development.
- Does my machine need to stay on?
- Gently, yes: as the host, your machine serves the review. It idles quietly in the background and only needs to be reachable when someone's watching. Many people park an old Mac mini as an always-on box.
- How do people reach my machine from another network?
- Over an encrypted WireGuard mesh. We recommend Tailscale: no port-forwarding, no public exposure, so only the devices you authorize can connect.
- What do I feed it, and what comes back out?
- Export ProRes 422 HQ. First Cut builds the streaming proxies automatically, and sends notes back to Resolve, Premiere, or Final Cut as timeline markers at exact SMPTE timecode.
- Is it really free?
- Yes. Free and open source. No seats, no subscription, no upsell. We built it because we use it every day.
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