Installation

Windows

Download QCView from the Microsoft Store for automatic updates:

Requirements

Windows 10 version 1809 or later (10.0.17763.0), x64.
Vulkan-capable GPU with up-to-date drivers (FFmpeg software fallback when unavailable).
HDR-capable display + Windows HDR mode enabled for HDR10 output.

macOS

Download the latest release here.

Open the .dmg file.
Drag QCView to your Applications folder.
Launch from Applications or Spotlight.

Updates

Once installed in Applications, QCView keeps itself up to date — it checks once a day and offers to download and install new versions in place. You can also check any time from About → Check for Updates…, or turn automatic checks off in Settings → Updates. (In-place updates require running QCView from the Applications folder, not from the mounted disk image.)

Requirements

macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later.
Apple Silicon (arm64) — native Metal rendering, no Rosetta.
EDR-capable display recommended for HDR workflows.

Add-ons

See the QCViewBridge page for installation and usage guides for the Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Blender add-ons. They have their own separate installers.

Version History

What’s new in 2.5.1

Dual view: frame stepping — stepping with ←/→ (or Q/E) no longer re-decodes the whole GOP on the B-frame / long-GOP side on every press, and that side no longer flashes back to the keyframe while it catches up. Both sides land on the exact frame at once. Jumps hold the previous frame until the new one is ready instead of showing the run-up.
Project panel — the loaded item is a rounded blue chip with an outline, the same as the current clip in the Inspector’s playlist list; the left accent rule is gone.

What’s new in 2.5.0

Colour per clip — each clip now keeps its own Input, Look, Scene LUT and Highlight Knee (the Color panel’s Clip group). The Output, View and Display LUT (the View group) stay shared by everything on screen. In dual view, A and B each render through their own chain; pick a side with the A / B tabs. Clip chains are saved with the project, and clips that have one show a badge in the project panel and on the A/B source chips.
Color panel layout — three groups, left to right: Setup (presets and the OCIO config), Clip and View. It works the same in single and dual view. A preset sets both halves: its clip half on the selected clip, its view half on the View. ↺ on a clip column goes back to the default.
Bulk colour in the project panel — right-click selected clips for Input › (a searchable picker, with the inputs already used in the project on top), Use Clip Chain of “…” and Reset Clip Chain.
Scopes — GPU Vectorscope and Waveform sections in the right rail. The waveform reads in nits on HDR sources (with 203-nit reference white), shows a Frame · Max peak readout, and in dual view reads each side from its own file.
Highlight Knee — an optional chain step that compresses highlights above a chosen peak into the display’s range, with an amber KNEE pill in the viewport while it is active. The Inspector shows the file’s HDR metadata (MaxCLL / MaxFALL / mastering peak).
Viewer aids — Exposure (in stops), Gamma and Channel view (RGB / R / G / B / A / luma) for inspecting the source. They are never saved in presets or baked into exports.
ASC CDL — .cc, .ccc and .cdl files load in the Scene LUT slot, with a Correction ID field for collections.
Super-whites and sub-blacks kept — values outside the legal video range now reach OCIO on every decode path (hardware, software and dual view) instead of being clipped. A range chart reads 109 % everywhere; before, software-decoded video and Windows dual view read 100 %.
Untagged video is BT.709 on every path — untagged SD clips no longer decode as BT.601 on some paths and BT.709 on others.
Windows: 10-bit video levels — 10- and 12-bit video no longer leans slightly green (the fix 2.4.1 made on macOS).
Windows: dual view — full frame rate at 4K with far less CPU, and a fix for an intermittent 10–17 second freeze when entering dual view. Dual-view screenshots now capture the dual picture.
Menus take typing — text typed in pop-up menus and pickers no longer triggers app shortcuts (Backspace and Delete could delete the selected project items).

What’s new in 2.4.1

PQ P3-D65 masters — a new ST2084-P3-D65 input in the Blender 5.2 OCIO config for HDR deliverables mastered in P3-D65 with the PQ curve (e.g. Resolve’s “P3-D65 ST2084”). Previously these could only be read as Rec.2100-PQ, which treats the P3 values as BT.2020 and oversaturates the greens. The ACES 2.0 config already carries it as ST2084-P3-D65 - Display.
ST2084-P3 presets — five new Blender 5.2 presets for PQ P3-D65 masters: sRGB and Rec.1886 (SDR), EDR sRGB (macOS EDR and Windows scRGB), EDR P3 (macOS) and Rec.2100-PQ (Windows HDR10). They convert colorimetrically with no tonemap, so the master is shown as graded; the SDR presets clip above 100 nits.
Screenshots and note images in HDR modes — screenshots, note thumbnails and exported reports taken while the viewport is in an EDR, scRGB or HDR10 mode are now saved as correct SDR sRGB images, using the SDR version of the active view (e.g. ACES 2.0 HDR 1000 nits → ACES 2.0 SDR). Before, they came out dark and clipped (EDR/scRGB) or flat and washed out (HDR10). Notes captured in an HDR mode before 2.4.1 keep their old images.
10-bit video levels (macOS) — hardware-decoded 10-bit video now removes the video-range levels at 10-bit precision. Before, neutrals leaned slightly green, most visibly in HDR shadows.

What’s new in 2.4.0

Live sources from After Effects and Premiere Pro over Mercury Transmit with the QCViewBridgeAE add-on (separate download).
The QCViewBridge for Blender add-on has been upgraded with system tray apps and auto launching Blender on the server systems. (separate download. See the link for more details.)
Live sources in dual view — an SRT stream or an Adobe host can be either side, or both.
Dual view with empty sides — refinement to dual view behavior so that it’s not longer dependent on having a single media-item loaded first. Dual View can be toggled when empty.
Drag the viewport to move the window ( Can be disabled in Settings → “Drag viewport to move window”).
Drag into viewport for Dual Views - Added support to drag media from file browsers or the project bins into either side of the viewport when in Dual View modes.
Drag into timelines - Added drop zones in the timeline tracks to drop media from file browsers or project bins.
Review speed — can speed up or slow down playback.
Streaming File Sync Enhancements — video items trigger a lightweight read-ahead to force streaming services, like LucidLink, to download frames ahead of the playhead.
Dual view fixes — fixed playback after seeking for b-frame media when in a Dual View.
App Size — Builds on macOS and Windows were pruned and file sizes are a bit smaller.

What’s new in 2.3.3

Fixed a regression bug in software decoding of intra-frame media.

What’s new in 2.3.2

Viewport background now shows the bounds of transparent media: the area outside the picture is tinted grey to create a letterbox/pillarbox shape around the media.

What’s new in 2.3.0

Upgraded from FFmpeg 8.1.2 to 9.0.1 on both platforms
Added ProRes RAW support
Added animated WebP support
Upgraded display path for higher-than-8-bit video sources.
Improved software decoding of intra-frame Codecs.
Improved software decoding in Dual View setups.
Added Vulkan ProRes support in Dual View on Windows (huge performance boost for Windows)

What’s new in 2.2.7

Avid DNx 4:4:4 levels — untagged DNxHD/DNxHR 4:4:4 (RGB included) is now read as video-level (legal range) by default, matching how Avid and After Effects interpret it, so Avid RGB exports come up with true black without touching the Range pill. Explicit container tags still win, and the Inspector’s Range-tag row now shows the container’s tag separately from what the decoder reported.

What’s new in 2.2.6

Container & codec detail in the Inspector — the File card now names the container (QuickTime, MP4, MXF…) and, for MXF, the operational pattern (OP1a vs OP-Atom), plus the authoring tool recorded in the file.
Avid DNx flavors — DNxHD/DNxHR clips show their real bandwidth name (DNxHD 36 / 115 / 145 / 175 / 220, the x 10-bit variants, DNxHD 444, DNxHR LB / SQ / HQ / HQX / 444) instead of a generic “DNXHD”.
Bitrate row — video-stream bitrate (or DNxHD’s fixed nominal) with the whole-file average alongside, for every container.
Existing projects pick the new fields up automatically on open via a quick header re-probe — no re-import needed.
Avid DNxHR 444 fix (macOS) — DNxHR 444 12/10-bit files written by the Avid codec (After Effects / Media Composer) with the adaptive colour transform enabled decoded with green/magenta macroblock speckle. QCView’s FFmpeg now decodes them correctly.
Range pill for RGB sources — Auto now tells you what it resolved to (tag, or the assumed convention: YCbCr → limited, RGB → full/as stored), the Color card shows the container’s range tag, and Limited expands video-level RGB (16–235) for RGB codecs such as DNxHR 444 RGB. MXF RGB essence now reads its range from the descriptor.

What’s new in 2.2.5

Pointer tool for annotations — select any stroke to move it, scale it from the corner handles, or delete it. Full undo support. Opening the Notes panel now arms the freehand pen automatically.
Go to frame / timecode — click the frame or timecode readout above the transport bar, type a target, and jump straight there. Accepts drop-frame timecode and bare digits (1000 → 00:00:10:00).
Window memory — QCView now remembers its window size and position across launches, with safe recovery when displays change. View ▸ Default Size & Position resets it.
Oval annotations can now be erased anywhere on their outline, not just near two spots.
Reopening a video from the bin returns it to the top of Open Recent.
The timeline toolbar divider no longer cuts across the side margins.

What’s new in 2.2.4

SRT streaming improvements
Upgraded the Blender OCIO profile to 5.2 (Includes EDR improvements and several camera profiles to bring it closer to parity with ACES studio packages)

What’s new in 2.2.3

Added framework to support SRT streaming

What’s new in 2.2.2

Added a setting to disable audio when scrubbing
Added a metadata field in the Inspector to show codec specifics such as “ProRes 422 LT”
Margin tweaks on a few panels
Added left/right arrow as ALT keyboard shortcuts for previous/next frame

What’s new in 2.2.1

Automatically rotates mobile videos with portrait orientation metadata
Added a new option in the inspector panel to manually rotate videos

What’s new in 2.2.0

added a thumbnail contact sheet to the EXR layer picker in the Inspector panel
fixed a few bugs around EXR loading and playback
added a waveform audio visual to the timeline and a setting to toggle it

What’s new in 2.1.10

UI tweaks and bug fixes

What’s new in 2.1.9

Improved audio scrubbing. It still pitch-shifts when slower than 1x speed, but no longer pitch-shifts when faster than 1x
Minimized latency when scrubbing
Fixed a bug when loading a solitary EXR image.

What’s new in 2.1.8

Improved audio sync and added pitch-shifting audio for scrubbing + FF/RW

What’s new in 2.1.5

tighted up the UI in the timeline, tracks and other elements are less tall
sidebar rails now fully close
there is a new setting to always load the app in minimal mode
a new tooltip and modal system is added, and more tooltips are included

What’s new in 2.1.4

fixed an issue with odd-width videos with the software scrubbing path on Windows
added triangle markers on the timeline for notes

What’s new in 2.1.3

Moved screenshot exporting to its own thread.
Added options for screenshot exports in settings: PNG, TIFF, and JPEG
Added messaging on the bottom toolbar for screenshot progress

What’s new in 2.1.1/2.10

Improved scrubbing for MP4s and other B-frame media
This release is v2.1.1 on MacOS and v2.1.0 for Windows. Windows didn’t need the last-minute regression fix. We will get back in sync for the next release.

What’s new in 2.0.9

Added track identifiers to the left of the timeline; this is mainly to keep the playhead and grab handles of the zoom/pan tool away from the app’s edges.
Fixed persistence on image sequence FPS when switching to other media and back.
Added a dual-view panel for saving dual-view sessions and moved dual-views out of the media panel
Made the entire surface of collapsed sidebars a trigger to open the rails.
Removed the max size from the media bin—-eliminating dual scroller contention
Fixed a glitch where the minimal mode menu option hid the frame counter row
Added detection for ARRI RAW mxfs and a message to guide users to Resolve or other apps
Added video range overrides to the scrub decoders (single and dual media flows)
Added a dark background behind the MacOS icon for light-mode users.

What’s new in 2.08

Editing in dual-view and playlist modes has better viewport feedback with slips and trims.
Added a difference mode option for dual-views
MacOS now checks for and optionally installs updates

What’s new in 2.06

UI tweaks for better panel and selection legibility
UI tweaks to the playhead in dual-view and playlist edit modes
Better scrubbing in dual-view modes with video sources
Added grab handles to the timeline’s zoom/pan tool
Fixed an edge-case crash in playlist mode with thumbnails
Added a height limit to the thumbnails so vertical videos don’t occupy so much viewport space
Added a loading spinner–especially helpful for large projects that take a moment to load

What’s new in 2.04

Slight UI change to playhead when a timeline track is in edit mode.
Fixed a bug where thumbnails didn’t respect clip edits in dual-view mode.

What’s new in 2.03

Fixed issues in dual view mode when two clips with different FPS were compared.
Fixed issues with dual view when two ProRes clips were loaded in systems with NVIDIA gpus.

What’s new in 2.02

fixed glitches with windows resizing.
fixed glitches with the playhead flickering on seek operations.

What’s new in 2.01

new UI and backend - a complete rewrite of the frontend.
stereo audio mixing for 5.1 SMTPE broadcast master video review.
added extended linear sRGB as an HDR option for Windows.
OCIO default presets are now based on app display mode.
vulkan HW accelerated decoding for ProRes in Windows.
new dual view and playlist flows. new edit modes for both.