After a long private beta-testing period, Frame.io has officially launched its new cloud-based review, collaboration and sharing platform aimed at creative teams working together on video projects.

The collaboration system was developed over the last few years by post-production professionals at New York's Katabatic Digital who had become frustrated by the messy business of using multiple web-based services — Dropbox, Vimeo, Wiredrive, etc. — along with basic technology like FTP and email for file sharing and review. "We wanted to solve our own problems of working with multiple clients and vendors," Katabatic founder Wells, the co-founder and CEO of Frame.io, told StudioDaily. "We started building it with the intention of making it our own, in-house tool. But it became clear to us that it wasn't just us experiencing these problems." And so Frame.io was born as a separate venture.

The system had been in development for a couple of years before going into a private beta last summer. That gave around 600 users at more than 150 companies a chance to kick the tires, Wells said. Facebook, IFC, CNN, and NBC were among the companies who signed up. Wells became confident that Frame.io was scratching an itch in the creative community when he found that more than 50 percent of users were spending more than two hours a day in Frame.io's browser interface. This week, Frame.io goes public.

Users upload their source files—"hundreds" of formats are supported, Wells said, including professional codecs like Apple ProRes—and Frame.io immediately creates proxies that are available for preview over the web. (The originals remain available for download.) The Frame.io interface is a drag-and-drop environment with slick features like hover scrubbing on thumbnails of clips. A side-by-side comparison view makes it easy to check a clip's progress across different versions. Time-based commenting and graphical on-screen annotations drive the review process. 

Pricing is set via a tiered monthly subscription model, Wells explained. A "starter plan" at $15/month supports up to three different projects. The professional plan, at $25/month, supports unlimited projects. Those plans are "solo" plans that allow you to invite collaborators but not team members from your own facility. Boutique studios and larger facilities will need a "team account" that starts at $50/month for unlimited projects and access by up to five team members. For $150/month, that expands to 15 team members.

Any restrictions on the quantity of video uploads have yet to be put in place. "Each plan will have storage limitations, and there may be limitations in how much video you can upload," Wells said. "We haven't put any restrictions on video minutes yet, becuase we want to get more data on how people are using the system and what our costs are going to be."