There are a few utilities out there that allow for realtime playback of image sequences  we use in vfx (DPX, EXR, etc), with probably the best commercial one being RV (which integrates well with Nuke and Shotgun), but there are some very capable free (or ‘donate if you like it’) software out there that is a great alternative (depending on your needs). I’ll touch on two of the better ones, Jefecheck and DJV Imaging.

Both these apps are very capable. Personally if you were considering using one, I’d download both to see which you prefer.

Jefecheck is a great playback app where you simply drag the clip you wish to play into the viewing screen. It can handle multiple video clips (image sequences), can have a split screen with different clips on each for comparing, can use luts, can expose up and down, apply translations and some fx (has some nice tech checking filters), runs on all 3 main operating systems, and pretty much every feature most user would like in a playback utility. The bonus with this one is that it also can be used for collaborative work (ala Cinesync). This means if you have a copy of a sequence on both your drive and a clients drive, you can start a session and link to them, then each of you can playback, stop, or draw on frames (nothing like drawing a circle to annotate something that needs fixing, and each party can see it update on their screen), while discussing what changes need doing. I’ve worked remotely in NZ for a Canadian facility and found cinesync an amazingly efficient way to work when not near a client, so if this works half as well as that, it would be a boon for low budget vfx projects that are farmed out to artists in various locations.

But enough of me blabbering on, click here to check it out video about it, and click on the image below to go to their website.

Lucasfilm software engineer Darby Johnston’s DJV Imaging utility may not have all the features of Jefecheck but if you want a straight forward, elegant, fast, player that does the job without screen clutter, this is worth a look. One bonus this software does have is it’s ability to be used to batch convert sequences from one format to another by way of command line. This means you could script it up to make lower res versions to send to clients, etc. Companies such as Zoic have used this in their pipelines, so it is production tested. It runs on all 3 OS platforms. Click on the below image to go to their homepage.

Here is a video review of DJV that someone has placed on youtube.