Clapshot vs FreeFrame
Clapshot
github.com
FreeFrame
freeframe.ioSide by side
| Figure | Clapshot | FreeFrame |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Video Review Software | 8.9 (#4) | 8.9 (#5) |
| Collaboration | Users can share remote viewing sessions with synchronized playback, seeking, and annotations, and generate shareable review links. | Comments support threads, mentions, reactions, and attachments, and approval workflows track each reviewer's status. |
| Purpose | Clapshot is an open-source, self-hosted tool for collaborative video and media review and annotation, aimed mainly at organizations that cannot or will not put media in commercial cloud services. | FreeFrame is an open-source media review platform for video, image, and audio assets, with timecoded comments, annotations, approvals, and share links. |
| Review tools | The browser client includes frame stepping, loop controls, time-coded threaded comments, timeline pins, and drawing annotations with a seven-color palette. | Video review includes HLS adaptive streaming and frame-accurate comments, while image and audio review includes annotations and waveform visualization. |
| Security | The project recommends HTTPS through a reverse proxy for internet-facing deployments and warns that monitored-folder file ownership must match the intended access model. | The privacy policy says data is encrypted in transit with TLS/HTTPS and describes JWT authentication, bcrypt password hashing, strict access controls, and time-limited presigned URLs for files. |
Plans
In their own words
Clapshot
Clapshot is a self-hosted tool for teams reviewing video, audio, and image files, including subtitle tracks. It is aimed at organizations that want to keep media outside commercial cloud services. Reviewers can watch together with synchronized playback and seeking, share review links, and discuss time-coded comments in threads. The browser player includes frame-by-frame navigation, loop controls, editable SMPTE timecode fields, waveform visualization for audio, timeline pins, and drawing annotations with seven colors.
Media can be uploaded through the web interface or read from a monitored folder, which can assign users based on file ownership or folder names. FFmpeg handles transcoding, thumbnails, and metadata extraction; custom scripts and hardware acceleration are supported. Authentication can connect through a reverse proxy to OAuth, LDAP, Kerberos, or SAML, and notification hooks can connect to email, Slack, or other systems. Deployment options include Docker Compose and a Debian package for Debian 12 or 13. The server and client are GPLv2 licensed. Clapshot is free at free. Mobile browser support is limited, and desktop Chrome or Chromium is recommended.