mrv2 v1.3.9 vulkan

This beta release of v1.3.9 corresponds to: 29 of July of 2025 at 14:00:49 Buenos Aires, Argentina (-0300 UTC/GMT).

It does not support NDI® on any platform.

It works on Windows 8.1+ (without USD support), Ubuntu 22.04 LTS+, macOS 13 (amd64 also without USD support) and macOS M1/M2/M3 (arm64).

It may contain bugs, new untested features and more.

You can extract it to compile yourself with:

   git clone https://github.com/ggarra13/mrv2.git
   cd mrv2
   git checkout 4a074cec8b58d0dcf04362e52e1ad099f4db16a1
   ./runme.sh  -vk clean

Enjoy!

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v1.3.9 Notes

• v1.3.8 had broken the short name of the buttons (F/O in the pixel bar) and T/S/F in the timecode selection button.
• Fixed Wayland's monitor names.
• Fixed opening of Secondary Window on Vulkan mrv2.
• Made all icons inlined in the C++ code. This improves loading performance and avoids issues with Remote Desktop Connection.
• Made movies without a valid audio codec still play the video.
• Fixed HDR movies that specify a transfer/color primaries function but no valid HDR metadata.
• Achieved consistently 60 FPS with 4K HDR movies on Vulkan build.
• Achieved consistently 40 FPS with 8K YUV420P_U8 movies.
• Fixed printing version information of GNOME in Ubuntu 25.04 LTS.
• Fixed installing of icons on Linux's Vulkan .deb/.rpm installers.
• Made Float on Top's default hotkey be <Meta>+w instead of <Ctrl>+w to avoid issues with standard Emacs hotkey.
• Added support for DTS (DCA) audio decoder.
• Dramatically improved the performance of movies decoding.
• Made the Vulkan backend not hide the pixel toolbar as, unlike OpenGL, does not make playback slower. Hiding it also made the playback drop some frames.
• Fixed markers in timeline.
• Added Undo for Annotations->Clear All and Annotations->Clear current frame.
• Fixed BGRA animated gifs crashing.
• Fixed color corrections resetting when there was a change like flipping the image.
• Fixed incorrect use of hdrData even when the clip did not have any HDR info. This would make clips brighter when the playback was stopped.
• Added support for RGB_U10 in Vulkan builds.
• Fixed hiding of pixel bar when starting the playback from the command-line.
• Fixed compareDemo.py to work reliably.
• Fixed Python's cmd.setDisplayOptions() not updating the UI's top bar.
• Added default hotkeys for (you need to Reset the hotkeys for them):
  • Playback/Annotation/Toggle Visible
  • Playback/Annotation/Clear
  • Playback/Annotation/Clear All
• Added an Alert message when using "Playback/Annotation/Clear All".
• Improved even more memory and decoding performance. Now we can decode 8K YUV_420P videos with no popups at 60FPS, albeit audio may stutter or not play, specially on Vulkan when using HDR data.

Notes on installation

• On macOS you install it by opening the .dmg file, and dragging the mrv2 icon to the Applications directory. If there's already an mrv2 version, we recommend you overwrite it. The macOS application is currently not notarized, so when you launch it you will not be able to run it as macOS will warn you that the file is not secure as it was downloaded from internet. To avoid that, you need to open the Apple Logo->Settings->Privacy and Security and go to Security and allow "Opening Anyway". Alternatively, you can do it from the Terminal, by:

  sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/mrv2.app/

• Windows and Chrome, like macOS, also protect you from installing files from the Internet. When you first download it with Chrome it may warn you that it is not an usual archive to be downloaded. Make sure to click on the right up arrow menu to Save it anyway. You cannot open the .exe from Chrome directly. You will need to open Windows Explorer and go to the Downloads directory. You should then run it from there. Then Windows will popup a Blue box telling you Windows SmartScreen prevented the start of an unknown application and that you can place your PC at risk. Click on the More Information text and a Button that says Run anyway or similar should appear. Click on it and follow the standard instructions to any Windows installer. One note about the Windows install. When asked if you want to add mrv2 to your PATH, it is recommended to answer No to it, as it avoids DLLs conflicts with other applications that use common libraries like FFmpeg or OpenUSD.

• On Linux, in order to install the .rpm or .deb packages requires your user to have sudo permissions.

On Debian (Ubuntu, etc) systems, you would install with:

  sudo dpkg -i mrv2-${branch}-Linux-amd64.deb

On Fedora, you would install it with:

  sudo rpm -i mrv2-${branch}-Linux-amd64.rpm

Once you install it, you can run mrv2 by just typing mrv2 in the shell, as a symlink to the executable is placed in /usr/bin. The installers will also associate file extensions and install an icon for easy starting up in the Desktop icon of the user that installed it. For running mrv2 with the icon, you need to select it and use the right mouse button to open the menu and choose Allow Launch.

If you lack sudo permissions in your organization, you should download the .tar.gz file and you can uncompress it with:

  tar -xf mrv2-${branch}-Linux-amd64.tar.gz

That will create a folder in the directory you uncompress it from. You can then run mrv2 by using the mrv2.sh shell script in the bin/ subdirectory.

The Vulkan releases in the vulkan/ directory are demo versions for you to evaluate mrv2 before a purchase and report bugs or performance issues. Currently, the demo versions don't have:

   - Annotations
   - A/B Comparisons
   - OpenEXR Layer switching
   - NDI support

Notes about Vulkan on Windows

In order to get HDR, you currently need to have Windows 10+ (11 is ideal) and an HDR monitor.

Notes about Vulkan on NVidia Linux

In order to get HDR, you currently need to have the KWin6 or GNOME48 compositors and an HDR monitor.

It will likely work with any NVidia RTX 3080+ or similar AMD board, but it will require you to choose and test your hardware carefully.

The preferred NVidia driver tested for best performance is nvidia-driver-570 (default on Ubuntu 25.04 with GNOME48).

For best performance with the NVidia driver, you can modify:

    sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Modify line 11 to from:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia_drm.fbdev=1"

To this content:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia_drm.fbdev=1 nvidia.NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0"

   sudo update-grub
   sudo reboot

Notes about Vulkan on macOS Intel

• Only up to Vulkan 1.3 is currently supported.
• HDR on macOS needs a MacBook Pro. MacBook Pro Intel will give you up to 1000 Nits of HDR depending on model.
• MacBook Pro Silicon should work with any M1 device up to HDR+.