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Gridman rests on a single chain: project → sequence → shot → version → comment. A project is a film, a commercial or a series. A sequence is a scene inside it. A shot is a single plate somebody owns and that has a due date. A version is the actual file brought in for review. A comment is a note pinned to a frame of that version.

Sequences are optional: a small project lives without them and keeps its shots directly in the project. Everything else — statuses, stages, artists, links, watermarks — are not separate modules but properties of those five entities. Which is why it reads best top-down: first Projects and sequences, then Shots, then Versions and stages.

A second, shorter branch grows out of the project — master versions: the edit, the colour pass, the mix, that is, the reels that cover the whole film at once. They live beside the shots rather than inside them, and they are simpler: Project master versions.

Every project has a short code — 2 to 8 latin letters or digits, say HLS. Everything else is built from it:

• HLS_010 — a sequence;
• HLS_010_020 — a shot inside it;
• HLS_010_020_comp_v003 — the third comp version of that shot.

Numbers step by 10, so there is always room to slip 015 between 010 and 020 without renaming half the project. The app fills in the next free number for you, and you can override it.

Version numbers count per stage: comp has its own run, anim has another. The first comp version of a shot is comp_v001 even if three animation versions came before it.

A project starts with a name, a code and its dates. From then on it lives as sections in the left column: Overview, Master cuts, Sequences, Shots, and below them, under “Materials”, Files, Reports and Board. The team roster lives in Management instead — one page for every project.

Sequences are scenes. They earn their keep once you pass a couple of dozen shots: lists filter by them and Gridman Tools lays out folders from them. A shot can move to another sequence at any point.

A finished project goes to the Archive — it leaves the list but stays reachable and is not deleted. The project-wide chat is switched on and off in the project settings.

A shot carries a due date, one or more artists, a status and a brief. All of it shows on the card in the list, together with a preview of the latest version.

The brief lives on the Spec tab next to the comments: that is where you write down what has to be done and attach references. The artist reads it in the same place they watch the version — no hunting through email.

If a plate is dropped, the shot is omitted: it stays in the project with a mark, but no longer skews the statistics or waits for versions.

A shot can be given its timing: the first frame of the cut, the length, and the spare frames before and after — the handles. The layout follows the industry convention, so numbers coming out of an edit drop in without recalculation.

• First frame — the number in the project’s own numbering, 1001 by default;
• Length — how many frames go into the cut, handles excluded;
• Handles — the spare before and after: the working range is wider than the cut by that much on both sides.

First frame and length live as a pair: set one and the other is required. Clearing the length clears the timing altogether.

Once timing is set, the The player and frame-accurate navigation counts frames from the first working frame. Until then the count starts at the project’s first frame — a value you change in the project settings.

Gridman checks an uploaded version’s length against the timing and, when they disagree, says so on the version tile and on the shot card. The case where a version arrives without handles is called out separately. None of this blocks the upload: it is a warning, not a veto — the person decides.

For a whole project at once, timing comes in by importing the cut — the button on the Shots tab. EDL (CMX 3600) and CSV are accepted. You first see the breakdown: what will be set, what will change, what stays as it is, and what the project has no shot for at all. What gets written is exactly what you saw in the preview.

A version is an uploaded video or still. The upload asks for a stage: comp, anim, cleanup, ref — the list belongs to your account, and both codes and titles are edited under “Management”.

Once uploaded, the video is processed: a proxy is built for smooth playback and a thumbnail is grabbed. The version is marked while that runs and opens in the player as soon as it is ready. The original is kept if your plan allows it and the project asks for it.

A version also carries a verdict — approved, changes requested or pending. A verdict can move the shot status on its own, see Statuses, verdicts and auto-statuses.

A shot is one plate. But a project also holds reels that belong to the whole film at once: the edit assembly, a colour pass, the sound mix. They have no artist, no stage and no due date — there is nothing to hang them on inside a shot. They get their own section, “Master cuts”, right after “Overview”. The item in the left column does not take you off the page: it opens the list of masters inside the column, and you stay where you were looking.

A project keeps as many masters as it needs. Each gets a name and a short code, and the code goes into version names: under the master “Edit” with the code EDIT versions are called HLS_EDIT_v001, HLS_EDIT_v002. Inside a master there is its own versions table, an “Upload version” button on the card, and the same discussion in the player as a shot has: a note on a specific frame, a drawing over the picture, replies in a thread.

What sets a master version apart from a shot version is what it does not have: a stage (comp, anim), a tag and a verdict. Those describe the production of a single plate and do not apply to a cut. It does carry a status of its own, from the same list you keep. That status does not roll up to the master itself: “Edit” is never “in progress” — a particular assembly is.

If your reference reels travel a different road than shots do, the list can be split: “Management” → “Statuses” has a “Separate statuses for master versions” switch. Turn it back off and nothing is deleted — master versions simply go back to the shared set. More in Statuses, verdicts and auto-statuses.

Access to the section is a right of its own, and this is the only place in Gridman where “can look” is granted separately. The reason is plain: a master is a reel for the entire project, and there is usually no need to show it to everyone who was given a couple of shots. The scale has three positions:

• None — for that person the section does not exist: no item in the column, and the project page keeps its ordinary cover.
• View — sees the masters and writes notes on them.
• Upload and edit — creates masters, uploads versions, sets statuses.

In every other respect a master version behaves like a normal one: the same processing queue, the same download and watermark rules (see Watermarks and downloads), and the same kind of outside link — the “Share” button in the section header. A status change notifies the people who can see the section.

The report opens from Reports in the project’s left column, under “Materials”; on a phone it is in the same row of sections. Seven sections: state, deadlines, iterations and review, feedback, sequences, team, and activity by week.

Nothing has to be kept up by hand: it is all counted from shots, versions, comments and the project log. Each section says which time it speaks about — “now” is a snapshot taken as you open it (statuses, deadlines, open notes), “for the period” is what happened over the range you picked.

• Delivered — a shot currently sitting in a status that means “done”; move it off done and it stops counting as delivered;
• Overdue — the shot’s own deadline, or the end of the project when it has none; nothing burns in a closed project;
• Pace — delivered over four rolling weeks; “at the current pace” divides what is left by it, without promising a date.

Every chart has a table view, and the whole report exports as a single CSV file.

The field in the header searches the page you have open: the shot list by shots, master cuts by versions. Search across the whole account is Ctrl + K (⌘ + K on a Mac), the “Across all of Gridman” button inside the field, or Shift + Enter with the query you already typed. It looks through projects, sequences, shots, versions, master versions and the text of comments; results come in groups, and each says whether there are more.

Matches are ranked: exact name first, then the beginning of a name, then anything containing it. A comment shows the text around the match, and following it opens the right version and the right note straight away.

Under the frame sit the timecode and the frame number — the thing notes are actually argued about. Left and right arrows (or J / L) move exactly one frame, space pauses, F goes full screen.

Frames are numbered the way the pipeline numbers them, not from one: the count starts at the project’s first frame, 1001 by default. If the shot has timing set, it starts at the first working frame, handles included. The number on screen therefore matches what you see in Nuke, and you can say it out loud.

A fresh version opens on the fast proxy: it encodes several times quicker than the final one, so there is nothing to wait for. Full quality is finished in the background — the player says how long is left and switches over on the next pause or seek, so the track never changes mid-viewing. You can pick the quality by hand in the player menu; the original is there too, when it is kept.

• + and − zoom into the frame, 0 or a double click return to 100%;
• markers on the timeline show where comments sit — click one to jump there;
• the snapshot button copies the current frame with the drawings on top.

A comment belongs to one frame: it remembers the timecode and the frame number. You can draw over that frame — an arrow, a box, a line or freehand. The drawing shows on its own frame only, so it never covers the rest of the shot.

• You can reply to a comment — that makes a thread instead of a second entry in the feed;
• an @mention hands the note to a person: they get a notification, see Notifications;
• resolved notes get a tick and drop to the bottom;
• there is also a general comment — on the version as a whole rather than a frame.

Files can be attached to a comment — a reference, a screenshot, a crop from another package. When the notes pile up, take them out as a list or have them summarised: Exporting notes.

Shot statuses are set up for your studio: name, colour and icon. Each one can be given a stage meaning — “in progress”, “ready to start” or “done”. That meaning decides whether an artist’s stages count as closed, and whether they keep getting notifications.

Separately from the shot status, every version carries a verdict: approved, changes requested or pending. Whoever watches sets it — the owner, a reviewer or a client on a review.

Auto-statuses tie the two together: “version approved — move the shot to Approved”, “client asked for changes — send it back to In progress”. Configured under “Management”, separately for the team and for clients.

A dictionary can also belong to one project alone — when a particular job runs on a different order of things. Turn it on under “Management” by choosing whose dictionary you are looking at: the set is copied from the shared one and the links inside that project are re-pointed at the copies. The rule is simple: once a project has its own, the shared one is no longer visible there. It replaces rather than adds, otherwise the list would hold two “Comp in progress” entries in different colours. Switching it back off restores everything by name and deletes nothing.

By default the same list also serves Project master versions. If your reference reels follow a different road, switch on “Separate statuses for master versions” in the same “Statuses” screen. The set then splits in two: “Shots and versions” and “Master versions”. Switching it back off deletes nothing — those statuses simply stop showing up on masters.

Comparison is switched on from a button in the player’s control row: one version on the left, another on the right, playback shared. Scrubbing moves both, so the frames never drift apart. The second mode is a wipe: the versions lie on top of each other and you drag the boundary between them.

A comment written in comparison remembers which mode it came from: open it later and you land on the same pair of versions.

Sync playback is the live one. A host drives the player and everyone else sees the same frame in their own browser: scrubbing, pausing and switching versions are repeated for all.

A review session is the opposite — not live. You put a list of versions together in advance, and the reviewer walks it one by one leaving a verdict: approve, request changes, or omit the shot. A summary builds up at the bottom and can be copied out in one piece.

A session is either internal or client-facing. A client session is assigned to the client’s mini-account: they see only the versions you put in it and nothing else in the project. A separate switch decides whether they also see the team’s earlier comments.

Notes on a version come out two ways: as a table (frame, timecode, author, text, resolved) that Excel or Google Sheets opens, and as EDL markers that DaVinci Resolve and Premiere understand — the comments land straight on the timeline.

The export takes the notes of the version you have open: each version keeps its own list, so old remarks never bleed into the new ones.

The player has a colour panel: exposure, gamma and LUTs. Presets for common camera gammas are generated on the spot and can be switched on by any account.

Your own .cube files upload on the Pro and Studio plans. Each LUT separately decides whether a guest on a Links for the client sees it — a client usually needs one working look, not your whole shelf.

Artists are a list of names you hang on shots. An artist can be just a name in the list or a live person — a Mini-accounts and permissions or a studio member: they then see their own shots and get notified about them.

An artist can be given stages they own — say comp only. “My shots” and “my stages are done” are then counted against those, not against the whole project.

A studio member is someone who already has a Gridman account of their own. Their login, password, two-factor protection and language are theirs; the studio controls only what they can see and do inside it. That is what sets them apart from a Mini-accounts and permissions, which you create for someone who has no account at all.

You invite them once to the studio, not to every project. A member has one set of permissions and one list of projects — either named one by one or “all”. You can give them an expiry date, narrow them down to the shots assigned to them, and switch them off for a while without deleting anything.

Both are kept in one place: account menu → Management → Team. It covers every project — the project for the members list is picked right there. A project has no Team tab of its own on purpose: two doors would mean two different sets of controls.

A member can leave someone else’s studio themselves — Settings → Studio memberships. The named artist stays behind, and shot assignments are not broken.

A mini-account is a lightweight login inside your own account: a name like person@your-login and a password. The person needs no registration and no email address.

They come in two kinds:

• Internal — for the team. Permissions are fine-grained: comment, give verdicts, create shots and versions, manage sequences, links, reviews, the board, the dictionaries.
• Client — for the customer. Sees only the versions assigned to them in a review session and nothing else — see Watching together: sync playback and review sessions.

There are quick roles — viewer, reviewer, artist, manager, full access — and, separately, which projects the account is allowed into at all. An account can be disabled or given an expiry date, after which the login stops working.

Two sections are granted on a three-position scale rather than a checkbox — the reference board and [[masters]]: “None”, “View”, “Upload and edit”. Editing always includes viewing. On masters this is the only case in the app where the right to look is granted on its own: without it a person sees neither the item in the column nor the frame from an assembly on the project page.

A person often has an account of their own plus mini-accounts at several studios at once. They can all live in one browser and be switched from the account menu — no signing out and back in.

Switching reloads the page completely, so nothing is left over from the previous account. Other tabs notice the change by themselves — if the page they are on is not available to the new account, they move to the project list and say so.

The set holds up to six accounts. It was deliberately not made a paid feature: charging for it would have ended with mini-account passwords being passed around by hand.

The “Share” button on a shot page makes a link. It opens a player with comments — the guest can go to the frame in question and write, signing with a name.

Each link has its own settings: lifetime, whether the team’s comments are visible, whether the watermark is on. A link is either pinned to a version or always shows the latest ready one.

One link can carry several shots at once: the client opens a single address and switches between them without creating an account. Such a set is put together in the Links section — the shots come from one project, and each carries its own version, either pinned or the latest ready one.

On the Studio and Enterprise plans the guest page comes out under your own brand: the studio’s logo and name stand in the header and in the messenger link card instead of the Gridman mark. Both fields are required — a name without a mark, or a mark without a name, is not shown at all.

A master version goes out the same way — the “Share” button in the header of the Project master versions section. The guest then sees the whole cut rather than a single plate.

The showcase is a public portfolio: a studio page and work pages, open to anyone without signing in. A work is published straight from the project it was made in, yet it does not depend on that project: the media is copied separately, so the project can later be archived or deleted and the showcase will not notice.

The Studio section in the account menu has two tabs. Profile: name, logo, cover, description, contacts. Work: the publications themselves. A profile is either a studio or an artist — different addresses and wording, everything else the same.

The video comes from one of three places: a version from a project, a file of your own, or a YouTube or Vimeo link. Stills are added as a gallery. Title and description can be given in two languages — the button under the description opens the second field; leave it empty and we show whatever there is.

Everyone in the credits is given a role. A name is published only with that person’s own consent: they get an email, confirm taking part, and choose the name they appear under. Until they do, the role is visible and the name is not. A refusal, or a later withdrawal, takes effect at once and for good, without asking the studio.

A published work can be made the showreel piece — it then leads the studio page as the first, large tile. There is only one: naming a second one takes the first one down.

While watching, the mark is drawn over the video in the browser and carries the viewer’s identity and the time. The file itself is served untouched and nothing is re-encoded. Three independent switches turn it on: a master one on the owner, one per mini-account, and one per link.

On download the mark is a different beast: it is burned into the pixels, and such a file is prepared on request. Anyone entitled to a clean file — the owner and accounts with the matching permission — gets it without the wait.

Next door lives the access log: who opened a shot, when, and whether they grabbed frames. It answers “where did it leak from” when material travels further than planned.

Events land in the bell inside the app and, when the tab is closed, as a system notification from the browser — if you allowed them on that device.

• Status changes on shots and versions, verdicts and auto-statuses included;
• replies to your comments and @mentions — those always arrive;
• status changes on master versions — but only for the people who can see the Project master versions section;
• a choice between “all shots” and “mine only”, meaning the ones you are assigned to.

Settings → Security. Two-factor sign-in is switched on in two steps: the authenticator app shows a code, you type it in and confirm. From then on every sign-in asks for a code.

Active sessions show a row per device signed in: when it started and what it was opened with. The cross ends one, the button beside it ends all but the current one. A plain “Sign out” closes only the current one: signing out on a phone no longer signs you out of the workstation.

An ended session stops renewing at once, but access already handed out lives out its few minutes. If a key has leaked, count on that.

The owner sees and ends Mini-accounts and permissions sessions from the account card. It is the “sign them out everywhere” lever, without switching the account off.

A version is uploaded from the shot page — by button or by dropping the file. Everything that could refuse it (permissions, the per-file limit, free space) is checked before the first byte leaves, not after the gigabytes have landed.

Files from 16 MB up use a resumable upload that goes straight into storage, past our server. If the connection drops, the parts wait for it to come back and finish themselves — as long as the page is open there is nothing to do. An unfinished upload can be picked up within 24 hours.

A version can also be a frame sequence — png, jpg, tif, dpx or exr: pick the whole pack and Gridman assembles a clip from it. You set the frame rate yourself and can change it later — comments then move with their frames rather than staying on the old seconds. Linear exr is brought to a viewing gamma, so the frame looks the way it does in the pipeline instead of washed out.

Master versions (Project master versions) are uploaded exactly the same way, only from the “+ Version” tile in their own master’s strip, and the upload asks for a description.

• Free — 200 MB, up to 200 MB per file, originals are not kept.
• Pro — 200 GB, up to 5 GB per file, originals kept and viewable in original quality, more mini-accounts.
• Studio — 1 TB, an unlimited team, public links under the studio brand.
• Enterprise — everything in Studio plus your own S3: the files live with you and our limit does not apply. Activated in person only.

Space in use is shown in the profile menu. When a paid plan runs out the files do not vanish on the spot: there is a grace period, and the warnings come well in advance.

The Board is the project’s shared mood board: images, links and captions on an endless canvas, with every edit visible to the others at once. A board can be shared by public link. Board images count towards the same storage quota, and their number depends on the plan.

Files is a separate project screen: the tree of places on the left, the contents of one of them on the right. It opens from Files in the project’s left column, under “Materials”, and from the “Files” card in the Overview summary. From the start the tree mirrors how the project is built: sequences with their shots; no sequences — shots right in the root. Master versions, the board and LUTs stand apart as service nodes.

A source is material for work: a plate, a Nuke or AE project file, an archive, a reference. It goes into the project, a sequence, a shot, a master or your own folder — with the “Upload” button or by dropping it onto the list. A dropped folder is reproduced as folders here. Large files use resumable upload: a dropped connection costs one part, not the whole transfer.

• Your own folders can be created anywhere — in the root, inside another folder, in a sequence, in a master and inside a shot. A sequence, a shot and the “Master versions” node can be dragged into your folder; the masters themselves stay put — they have their own order in the project.
• The “Source for the team” mark at version upload gives its original to everyone with access to the shot. Where it lands is set once in the project settings by folder name — the folder is created in the right shot by itself.
• Several files can be taken as a bundle: tick the rows or press “Download all”. The archive is built on the server, the download starts by itself, and a ready one lives for a day — “My bundles” at the bottom of the tree hand it over again without rebuilding.

The frame and the row name open a full-screen view: images and ordinary video the browser shows itself, everything else gets a preview frame and the caption “take the full file with the button”. Download buttons say honestly why they are dimmed: “the original was not stored”, “a permission is needed”, “still processing”.

Tools is a separate Windows program that works with folders on disk; the basic tools need no account at all.

• Sequence renamer — brings a frame pack in line with the convention: numbering, padding, separator. With a preview, a journal and an undo.
• Project structure — lays out folders from the studio template, including from the real shots in Gridman.
• Project check — gaps in numbering, zero-length and half-downloaded frames, version mismatches, shot codes from another project.
• Delivery packaging — the latest versions from the exports folders across all shots, copied to the delivery folder together with a manifest.csv.

Signing into Tools with your account is worth it for the link to your projects: folder structures then come from real shots instead of invented names. Signing in issues the program a key, see API keys.

Plugins are installed and removed from Gridman Tools, the “DCC plugins” screen. Tools writes the access key itself — there is nothing to type into the package.

• Nuke — a panel listing shots, sending a render straight from a Write node, and a “Frames from Gridman” button that sets first and last frame from the shot’s working range;
• Blender 4.2 and newer — a panel in the viewport sidebar and sending a render from the output properties;
• DaVinci Resolve — a Workspace → Scripts → Gridman menu item: it watches the render queue and hands the finished file to Tools.

A key acts exactly as whoever issued it: for a mini-account, with that account’s permissions, re-read on every request. Disable the account and the key dies with it immediately.

Mini-account keys are created by their sign-in to Gridman Tools and are visible to the owner in the same section: only the owner can revoke any of them.