xSTUDIO

Developed by DNEG to support all our internal review workflows, xSTUDIO provides high-performance playback and powerful inspection tools for production-quality media, whether you’re reviewing on a laptop, in a screening room, or across a studio-wide review ecosystem.

DNEG is a proud contributor to the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) and a founding partner of the Open Review Initiative. The code base for xSTUDIO was open-sourced in January 2023, and the platform has already been adopted by a growing list of world-class VFX studios.

“Our aim is to promote simpler collaboration between teams by offering a single, flexible toolset across all our review scenarios. Open sourcing the xSTUDIO codebase has allowed our industry partners to contribute towards and benefit from this common goal.”

– Chas Jarrett, Creative Director, DNEG

xSTUDIO’s rapidly evolving features include:

• Wide file-format support including EXR, ProRes, DNxHD and PDF
• OCIO v2.0 colour management
• Multi-track non-linear timeline (based on OTIO)
• Annotations, Notes, Dodge & Burn, and SOP Colour Correction
• Playlists, Contact Sheets, Dynamic Compare Modes (A/B, Wipe, and many more)
• Masking, Field Charts, Audio Waveform, Pixel Data and Metadata HUD Overlays
• SDI and multi-display output
• Customisable user interface layouts
• Extensive C++ and Python APIs and a flexible plugin framework
• Linux, Mac and Windows compatibility

At the core of xSTUDIO is a high-performance playback engine optimized to import and handle massive media collections rapidly.

• Specialized Format Support: Load heavy industry-standard image formats without playback lag.
• Accurate Color Management: Trust what you see with professional-grade color pipeline integration.
• Pixel-Perfect Inspection: Zoom in close, inspect pixels, and perform frame-by-frame comparisons across multiple media sources instantaneously.

xSTUDIO enables review sessions to generate clear, actionable directions. You can turn feedback into action without leaving the player.

• Playlists, Contact Sheets & Subsets: Quickly load, organize, and group media on the fly.
• Dynamic Review Tools: Loop media, sketch on-screen annotations, add captions, colour-corrections and add feedback notes to share with your team.

xSTUDIO is completely company and pipeline agnostic. Whether you are looking for a robust standalone player for your personal workstation or a fully integrated studio review ecosystem, xSTUDIO can be adapted to your workflow logic.

The codebase is under constant development to support DNEG’s diverse production requirements, with regular updates to the open source repo.

xSTUDIO is available on the GitHub repo. A readme file is present to provide comprehensive instructions for building the application from the source code.

If you would like to explore integrating xSTUDIO at your studio, please contact xstudio-info@dneg.com for information.

You can also talk directly with the community of xSTUDIO developers and users on ‘Slack’ by joining the ASWF Slack group and subscribing to the ‘ori-xstudio-discussion’ channel here.