Since the Frame IO v4 API only is available for enterprise customers, I am looking for an alternative.
We are a small team, on a pretty tight budget.
We don’t need a lot of fancy functions and features, just client review,comments and such.
Anyone here got something they’re happy with?
same boat here.
We use aquarium interally for shot review and task management etc.
However their client review is not yet on the same level as frameIO.
Thanks Finn,
Looks cool, but a bit too expensive for us. 349 euro vs. 83 euro for our current Frame IO plan.
they are going opensource soon, so I guess you could self-host it - soon for “free”
Kitsu is another free option.
biggest thing with frameIO for me is frameIO transfer as we also send masters through it also.
how do you get the media into Aquarium… There doesn’t seem to be any DCC publishing connections.
Take a look at Louper.
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FTrack Review
they have a super easy and well documented API.
I scan my published openclips every X seconds and if there is a change it encodes the daily (oiiotool+ffmpeg) and then uploads it to aquarium. its just a simple python script that I run as a service on my dailies-encoder VM.
happy to show you its super simple, the API is eaaaasy.
We use gosimian.com for client reviews and love it!
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Is there anything you can do to improve the download speeds from it? It’s like sub 5MBs a sec in my experience.
Try Syncsketch. The basic plan is free and it’s fine for small teams on small jobs. I’ve used it a few times and not felt the need to upgrade.
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A slightly contrarian opinion.
The last few months have seen a number of topics like this - LucidLink vs ???, Synology vs ???, FrameIO vs ???, and logically Flame vs ???
They all have one thing in common - the primary answer isn’t a perfect fit, is expensive, and as of late seems to moving to favorite enterprise accounts instead of boutique shops and freelancers at a time when when big shops implode and more people go freelance or start new small shops.
So naturally we all start looking for alternatives that seem to fit our budget better, seem to listen to our needs a bit more, and are the best things since sliced bread ideally.
But I also feel like a lot of these efforts take up a lot of time, we endure a lot of friction in the migrations only to learn that the grass wasn’t greener after all, or not more than the first season. The plot became stale in season 3.
I don’t know if there’s a good answer really. There may not be.
But I do think it’s good to step back and question whether finding an alternative and putting up with the taxes that are part is truly worth it?
In some cases, it may be wiser to:
a) stick it out with the less than perfect current option and live with the disappointments
b) determine if we really need this solution at our scope, or if we can do without it
c) look at our business model and see if we need to transition to fewer but more expensive tools, rather than many mid-market solutions that have limited horizons
The big picture trend has been that money isn’t cheap anymore (since '23-'24). Profitability and top line counts more than anything. And vendors are re-focusing on big accounts with deep pockets. The days of free and freemium software/cloud apps, and affordable tiers are over. They want your hard money now. As a result a result many of us are no longer a target segment for these companies, and it’s not worth spending tears on.
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HI Jan,
While I mostly agree with you and would like to stick with Frame IO, as I generally like it and have been a user for many years, removing API access is just a dealbreaker. I won’t be updating our spreadsheets by hand.
I did a bit of digging, and I think the ‘enterprise only’ limitation may be a misunderstanding.
There’s no such indiication in their feature/price breakdown or in the existing documentation.
There’s a recent mention of this by a FrameIO rep in a forum that describes it as a temporary limitation while the API is finalized and rolled-out, which is a totally reasonable thing to do in software development. But I can’t find anything that says the V4 API won’t be available to general user base at some point, and presumbly before V3 is deprecated and everyone is forced to migrate.
I don’t have a fish in this contest, but I think it may be premature to abandon FrameIO and look at likely less feature rich alternatives. Based on feature set, pricing, degrading performance or whatever maybe, but not V4 API access fears.
You can also reach out to FrameIO reps and make it clear that you cannot migrate from V3 legacy without API access. Which I’m sure you’re not the only one by far, and it would be stupid move by Adobe (not that this is beyond them).
It never hurts to talk to a vendor for a direct answer and register your concern, and not relying just on online sources which aren’t always based on facts.
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AFAIK They even removed the V2 API endpoints.
so even if you are still on V3 you cant use the API anymore.
it was the last straw for us, we started writing scripts and automations and then boom, gone , no more API for you.
Did they remove V2 or V3 endpoints?
there never was a v3 API i think.
so it was V2 API that was used with frameIO V3 and then they just kinda turned it off overnight.
We are on V3 still and none of our sutomation scripts work anymore…
I think you’re right, API v2 served both app version v2 & v3.
Did you reach out and ask why the endpoints stopped working?
The only reports out there of automation breaking is folks that somehow ended up on V4 and are told to go back to V3.
the answere we got from support is that its now enterprise only and v2 endpoints have been disabled.
Idk if its region specific or anything but all i get is error now when trying anything with the v2 endpoint…
Hmm
The enshitification continues…
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