UTV Release 2026.2

OpenUTV 2026.2

Initial Release Community Callout

• Community Issue Tracking: Added a prominent callout to the community to stress-test UTV and report broken codecs, visual glitches, performance bottlenecks, unexpected behaviors, and feature requests via GitHub Issues.

Hardware Decoding & Video Playback

• Expanded VideoToolbox Hardware Acceleration: Accelerated decoding via Apple Silicon VideoToolbox now supports H.264, HEVC (H.265), Apple ProRes, VP9, and AV1 out of the box.
• ProRes 422 Green Screen Fix: Resolved a 10-bit VideoToolbox decoding bug where ProRes 422 files (P210LE semi-planar) decoded with a solid green tint due to an unshifted 6-bit shift offset and incorrect plane line-stride calculations.
• Runtime Silicon Capability Detection: Integrated dynamic VTIsHardwareDecodeSupported() queries per codec so unsupported hardware formats seamlessly fall back to CPU software decoding.
• Zero-Crash Software Fallback: Automatically and gracefully falls back to multi-threaded CPU software decoding if hardware decoding encounters stream limits or decoder allocation errors.
• Hardware Decoding Preferences & Controls:
  • Added a new Hardware Video Decoding preference under Preferences -> Caching (Auto (All Supported Codecs), ProRes Only, Disabled (Software CPU)).
  • Added pipeline environment variable control via OPENUTV_HWACCEL / UTV_HWACCEL (all, prores, none).

Intelligent Caching & Memory Architecture

• Auto Smart Media Caching: Introduced an intelligent auto-caching engine (Auto (Smart Media Detection)) in Preferences and CLI (-ac):
  • Fast Intra-Frame Video (Apple ProRes, ProRes RAW, Avid DNxHR/DNxHD, JPEG 2000, Motion JPEG): Automatically routes to No Caching (NeverCache) for instant real-time playback without RAM saturation.
  • Image Sequences (EXR, DPX, TIFF, etc.) & Inter-Frame Video (MPEG-1/2, H.264, HEVC, AV1, VP9): Automatically engages Look-Ahead Cache (BufferCache) to ensure smooth playback and prevent audio clock drops.
  • Emits informative console logs identifying the media format and the selected caching strategy.
• Zero-Wait Buffer Overrun (0.0s): Set default Look-Ahead wait time to 0.0s across preferences and CLI options, allowing playback to decode on-the-fly when cache buffers are overrun rather than pausing.
• Hardware Memory Protection: Query physical RAM on Apple Silicon dynamically using sysctl HW_MEMSIZE and clamp cache allocations to a safe ceiling of 85% of physical memory to prevent system freezes.
• Playback Stall Notifications: Added rate-limited console notices with actionable troubleshooting tips if buffer starvation ever interrupts playback.
• Intra-Frame Seek Optimization: Cleaned FFmpeg slow random access classifications, ensuring NLE codecs are recognized as fast random access and eliminating erroneous slow access flags.

Application Versioning & Metadata Alignment

• Dynamic Release Version Resolution: Replaced the legacy hardcoded 2026.9.10 placeholder in CMakeLists.txt with dynamic Git tag resolution matching semantic releases (e.g. 2026.2).
• Clean Version Display: Updated the About dialog, CLI tools (-version), and macOS bundle metadata (CFBundleShortVersionString, CFBundleVersion) to cleanly display 2026.2 without appending redundant patch numbers when the patch level is 0.

Bundled Python Runtime & Packaging

• Self-Contained Site-Packages: Bundled all runtime Python dependencies (opentimelineio, six, numpy, PyOpenGL, requests, certifi, pydantic, etc.) directly into UTV.app/Contents/lib/python3.14/site-packages/.
• Standalone Execution: Launching UTV.app from Finder or standalone archives functions out of the box with full plugin support without requiring local pip installs or virtual environments.
• Clean Release Packaging: Excluded macOS extended metadata / AppleDouble ._* dot-files from release archives to ensure clean extraction and reliable plugin discovery.
• Path Discovery: Hardened rv_commands_setup.py, DarwinBundle.mm, and QTBundle.cpp to discover and prioritize bundled site-packages with fallbacks for Homebrew and developer virtualenvs.
• Python 3 Modernization: Converted source_setup.py, retimeExportHook.py, and otio_writer.py to use standard library urllib.parse and math.isclose.

Branding, Copyright & Metadata

• Downstream License Compliance: Updated macOS bundle metadata (Info.plist) with explicit OpenUTV ownership while honoring historical attribution: Copyright © 2026 OpenUTV Contributors. Portions Copyright 2022-2023 Autodesk, Inc., and 2001-2022 Tweak Software.
• Bundle Identifiers: Modernized bundle identifiers across all targets from com.autodesk to com.OpenUTV.

Code Signing & Apple Notarization

• Apple Notarization & Stapled Tickets: Fully signed with Developer ID Application certificate and notarized by Apple with stapled tickets.
• Hardened Runtime: Built and codesigned with macOS Hardened Runtime, valid entitlements, and verified signature seals. Eliminates Gatekeeper warnings.

macOS Launcher & Dependency Validation

• Native Objective-C Launcher (UTVLauncher.mm): Replaced direct bundle executable entry with a native launcher linking only to system Cocoa frameworks to prevent dyld termination on missing dylibs.
• Dependency Validation: Verifies required Homebrew packages (qt, python@3.14, ffmpeg-full, opencolorio, openexr, imath, etc.) prior to binary execution, providing a native macOS dialog to install missing components.

Display & Color Pipeline

• 10-Bit Color Pipeline: Native 10-bit Metal presentation pipeline, extended sRGB color space, and EDR calibration for Apple Liquid Retina XDR and HDR displays (plus 10-bit Vulkan surfaces on Linux and Windows).
• 10-Bit Diagnostics: Added depth verification tool and test pattern generator (tools/diagnostics/10bit/).
• Metal Viewport Hardening: Fixed checkerboard flicker during mouse tracking and cursor motion in QtMetalVideoDevice.

Media Codecs & Playback

• Native PDF Document Support: Added multi-page reader powered by macOS CoreGraphics with automatic page cropping.
• Apple ProRes RAW: Added 16-bit half-float (64RGBAHalf) decoding via AVFoundation and FFmpeg.
• MPEG & Inter-Frame Playback: Resolved stutter and repetitive header error logging in MovieFFMpeg.
• JPEG 2000 & HTJ2K: Support via OpenJPEG and FFmpeg.

Qt 6.11 Compatibility & Upstream Ports

• Qt 6.11 Stability: Resolved Session Manager reentrancy crashes during model updates.
• Ported OpenRV PR 1350: Resolved EXR + WAV audio/video playback synchronization stutter.
• Ported OpenRV PR 1321: Hardened display screen selection against invalid monitor indices.
• Ported OpenRV PR 1393: Bound missing QAction / QToolButton APIs and modernized SignalSpy for Qt 6.11.

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Installation

macOS (Homebrew Cask)

brew tap OpenUTV/utv https://github.com/OpenUTV/utv
brew install --cask utv

macOS (Standalone Archive)

Download UTV-2026.2-macOS-arm64.zip below, extract UTV.app, and move it to /Applications.