Files and storage

That depends on where the file is going.

• Where work is looked at (a review round, a card on a canvas, a shot version), Kadrenta takes what a browser can put on screen: jpg, png, webp, avif, gif, mp4, mov, webm, glb, gltf, usdz and pdf.
• A project's files, the studio's shared folders and a transfer take anything: EXR sequences, TIFFs, MKV, FBX, OBJ, Alembic caches, fonts, project files from other software, and .zip archives.

When a screen turns a file away, it says so the moment you drop it, and points you to a place that does take it. Two kinds of file never preview in the browser: camera raw files and 16-bit TIFFs. They still travel fine through project files and transfers.

A .mov can hold H.264, which every browser plays, or ProRes, which none of them do, and the file name does not say which. The first time a video turns out to be unplayable in the browser, Kadrenta makes a viewing copy and the screen says it is on its way. It appears by itself a minute or two later. The same goes for .mkv, and for an .mp4 with an unusual codec inside.

Your original is never touched. A download always gives back exactly what you uploaded. The viewing copy goes up to 1080p, so for a 4K frame check, download the master. If a viewing copy cannot be made (the clip is too long, too short, or unreadable), the screen says why, and the file itself stays available.

Pictures get a thumbnail, made by the browser that uploaded them. Formats a browser cannot draw, like EXR, show a file icon instead of a broken preview.

A video gets a poster frame from a moment slightly into the clip rather than the very first frame, because a render often starts on black. If your browser could not draw a frame, the next colleague who opens the video fills it in automatically.

On the Pro plan, Files in the top bar opens one place for "Shared studio folders and your project files, together."

• Studio holds shared folders for things that belong to no single job: brand kits, templates, stock. Make one with New shared folder. An owner or admin decides who sees each one: Studio-wide access, or Choose access per folder with No access, Can view or Can edit per person. Can edit also includes uploading, renaming and moving to Trash.
• Projects lists every project's own files, each opening in place. Projects that are archived fold into one Archived row.

Inside a folder you can Upload (whole folders too), make a New folder, Rename, Move to…, Download and Move to Trash. Selecting several files or a whole folder downloads them as one zip.

A project's files also sit on the project page itself, in the Project files panel, for work files that are not shots or review rounds: source scenes, references, the client's brief. Files there show who added them; a file dropped in by a render job shows no name, because nobody pressed anything. A lead can hide the panel from individual team members.

On the free plan, these pages show what they would hold and a See plans button. If a studio moves back from Pro, its shared folders and project files become unavailable, but changing plans never deletes their files.

On the free plan, room is counted in files rather than bytes: up to 150 light files (images, PDFs, audio) and 20 heavy files (video, 3D). You see both counts as you approach them, and pressing upload at the limit offers the way to more room. Per file, light files can be up to 16 MiB, videos 128 MiB, and 3D models 64 MiB.

On a paid plan, room is pooled across the studio: 250 GiB per seat, or 500 GiB per seat on Pro. Anybody on the team can use all of it, so the one desk doing the rendering never runs out first. Per file, up to 20 GB inside a project, a review or a canvas, and up to 50 GB in a transfer. More room can be added as its own line on the subscription (see Studio).

Admin Console → Storage shows where the space goes: projects, canvases, transfers and project files, project by project, so you can see where to tidy up first.

Deleting a file, a card, a shot version or a review round never destroys the file at once. For five days it waits in the trash, and only then is the space freed.

• Files and folders from the Files page go to its Trash, where Restore puts them back.
• Everything else (versions, cards, review rounds, project files) waits in the studio's trash on Admin Console → Storage, where an admin presses Put back. Each row shows how many days are left.

After five days the bytes are gone for good.

A transfer that has run out works a little differently: files that only lived in that transfer are cleared about five days after its end date. Until then, giving the transfer more time brings them back (see Transfers).

A download link is signed and expires on its own: after half an hour for a signed-in colleague, and after a short window behind a share link, renewed automatically while the tab stays open. If playback on a tab that has been open for hours ever stalls, that renewal is why, and Kadrenta asks for a fresh link by itself.