End User
License Agreement

0. Parties and how this agreement applies

This End User License Agreement ("Agreement") is between you (the individual or entity installing or using the software) and Vladyslav Zhminko, trading as VLStudio, an autonomo (Spanish sole trader / self-employed individual), registered address Carrer de Valencia 191, 6.1, 08011, Barcelona, Spain ("VLStudio", "we", "us", "our", "the Licensor"). Vladyslav Zhminko is the licensor named on this Agreement, and this name is intended to match the publisher name shown by Microsoft Azure Trusted Signing on the Windows build of the software.

This Agreement governs your installation and use of VLStudio Desktop, a video editing application for Windows, macOS, and Linux built on Electron, React, and a bundled native FFmpeg binary ("the Software"). It does not govern VLStudio Web, which is covered by a separate Terms of Service.

By installing, copying, or using the Software, you agree to be bound by this Agreement. If you do not agree, do not install or use the Software.

1. License grant

Subject to your compliance with this Agreement, VLStudio grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the Software, in object-code form only, on devices you own or control, for your own internal creative, personal, or business video-editing purposes.

This is a license to use the Software, not a sale. VLStudio and its licensors retain all right, title, and interest in and to the Software, including all intellectual property rights in it, except for the rights expressly granted to you in this Agreement.

2. Restrictions

You must not, and must not permit anyone else to:

• Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code of the Software, except to the limited extent applicable law expressly permits despite this restriction.
• Redistribute, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, or otherwise make the Software available to any third party, other than the FFmpeg component under its own license terms as described in Section 8 and the FFmpeg GPL Compliance Package.
• Remove, obscure, or alter any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notice included in or on the Software.
• Use the Software to build a competing product by extracting or repackaging its bundled components.
• Circumvent or disable the auto-update, licensing, or entitlement mechanisms described in this Agreement.

Nothing in this section restricts your rights over your own project files, exported video files, or content you create using the Software.

3. Auto-update mechanism and your advance consent

Read this section before you install. The Software includes an automatic update mechanism. Please read the following description carefully, because it is a plain description of what the mechanism does, not a simplified summary.

Integrity check. The downloaded replacement code is verified against a SHA-512 manifest over a TLS connection at download time. This confirms the downloaded file matches the expected hash published by VLStudio at the time of the check. It does not mean the replacement code is independently re-signed at install time on macOS or Linux; see Section 12 for what that does and does not guarantee.

Your consent. By installing and continuing to use the Software, you expressly consent in advance to this auto-update mechanism, including the download and installation of new application code without a separate per-update confirmation step, for as long as you use the Software. If you do not want the Software to update itself automatically, you must disconnect the device from the network before each use, or uninstall the Software, since no in-app setting to disable auto-updates exists in the current build. We may add such a setting in a future version; this Agreement will be updated to describe it if we do.

An update mechanism that replaces its own application code should be described plainly and accurately, so that your consent is informed. This section supersedes any earlier or informal description of the update process as a standard, user-confirmed update.

4. Codec royalties and patent-pool disclaimer

The Software includes the ability to encode and decode video and audio in several formats that are covered by third-party patent pools, including H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AAC, and MPEG-2 (the latter used for MXF export in delivery packages). These technologies are licensed through patent pools including Via LA, Access Advance, and Velos Media, among others.

What this section does and does not do

• This section discloses that these codecs are patent-pooled technologies and that royalty obligations may attach to their use, distribution, or sale in commercial products.
• This disclosure, by itself, does not remove or satisfy any royalty obligation VLStudio may have as a distributor of encode/decode capability for these formats in a paid product. VLStudio's own patent-pool licensing position for these codecs is an open item, tracked internally, and is not resolved by this Agreement.
• Your use of the Software to encode or decode these formats for your own personal or business video projects is licensed to you under the scope of Section 1. This Agreement does not purport to grant you, and cannot grant you, any patent-pool license that might separately apply to your own downstream distribution of encoded output at a scale or in a manner that implicates those patent pools directly.

Whether VLStudio pursues a business decision to obtain formal patent-pool licensing for these codecs, or instead restricts certain paid-tier output to royalty-free formats (such as VP9, AV1, Opus, or WebM), is a separate, still-open item. This section is drafted to remain accurate regardless of how that business decision resolves.

5. Trademark non-affiliation: Apple ProRes, Avid DNxHR, Adobe After Effects

Apple ProRes. The Software includes an encoder that produces output labeled "Apple ProRes" using a clean-room implementation (prores_ks, invoked with a vendor tag identifying it as such). This encoder is not licensed, certified, or affiliated with Apple Inc. "Apple" and "ProRes" are trademarks of Apple Inc. VLStudio is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apple Inc.

Avid DNxHR. The Software includes an encoder that produces output labeled "Avid DNxHR" using a clean-room implementation (dnxhd). This encoder is not licensed, certified, or affiliated with Avid Technology, Inc. "Avid" and "DNxHR" are trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. VLStudio is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Avid Technology, Inc.

Whether VLStudio pursues formal licensing or certification of ProRes-branded or DNxHR-branded output, or instead relabels this output using neutral, non-trademarked terms, is an open business decision (tracked internally as [[PRORES_DNXHR_LICENSING]]). This section is drafted to be accurate either way: today, these are clean-room encoders producing trademark-labeled output without vendor licensing, and this Agreement discloses that plainly rather than implying certification that does not exist.

Adobe After Effects. The Software can invoke Adobe After Effects' aerender command-line renderer on your own device, if you have your own installation of Adobe After Effects, to extend certain workflows. The Software does not bundle, include, or distribute any part of Adobe After Effects. You are solely responsible for holding a valid, in-force Adobe license that permits your use of aerender in this way. VLStudio is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Adobe Inc. "Adobe" and "After Effects" are trademarks of Adobe Inc.

6. Delivery packages (DCP / IMF / MXF): best-effort, not certified

The Software can export Digital Cinema Package (DCP), Interoperable Master Format (IMF), and Material Exchange Format (MXF) delivery packages. These exports are provided on a best-effort basis to approximate the relevant technical structure. They are not certified or validated against the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) specification or SMPTE standards, and VLStudio makes no representation that any exported package will be accepted by any specific cinema, distributor, festival, or delivery pipeline. If you require a certified deliverable, you are responsible for independent validation and, if needed, remastering through a certified post-production facility before delivery.

7. Your content: ownership and IP warranty

You retain all ownership rights in the footage, audio, images, custom fonts, and other content you import into or embed into exports from the Software ("Your Content"). VLStudio claims no ownership over Your Content.

You represent and warrant that:

• You own Your Content, or you hold all rights, licenses, and consents necessary to use, edit, and export Your Content as you intend, including any required rights from people appearing or speaking in footage you import.
• Any custom fonts you import and embed into exported video files are used in accordance with that font's own license terms, and you are responsible for confirming that the font's license permits embedding in the way the Software performs it.
• Your use of Your Content through the Software does not infringe any third party's copyright, trademark, right of publicity, or other right.

You are solely responsible for Your Content and for the consequences of importing, editing, and exporting it. For content licensed to you by third-party in-app libraries (such as Jamendo or Pixabay music, or AI-generated music), see the separate In-Editor Content Licensing Notice bundled with the app, which this Agreement incorporates by reference for that specific content.

8. Third-party and open-source components

The Software includes third-party and open-source software components, including a bundled FFmpeg build, bundled fonts, and numerous open-source libraries. These components are licensed to you under their own license terms, not under this Agreement, to the extent those terms apply. See the Open-Source and Third-Party Notices document for open-source attribution, and the FFmpeg GPL Compliance Package for the FFmpeg GPLv3 compliance package, including the license text and source-code offer for the bundled FFmpeg build. Both are surfaced in-app via About > Licenses and included with the installer.

9. No warranty

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Software is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or non-infringement. VLStudio does not warrant that the Software will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components, or that any export, format, or delivery package will be fit for a particular distribution pipeline.

This section does not limit any statutory warranty or consumer guarantee that applicable law does not permit to be excluded, including mandatory consumer-protection rights available to consumers in the EU and UK, which are preserved as described in Section 11.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, VLStudio's total liability to you arising out of or relating to this Agreement or the Software, whether in contract, tort, or otherwise, is limited to [[LIABILITY_CAP_EUR]] or the amount you paid VLStudio for the Software in the twelve months before the claim arose, whichever is greater. VLStudio is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or business interruption, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

Nothing in this Agreement limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation, or, for EU/UK consumers, any liability that mandatory consumer-protection law does not permit to be limited.

11. Governing law, venue, and consumer rights

This Agreement is governed by the law of Spain, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles. Subject to the paragraph below, any dispute arising out of or relating to this Agreement is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Barcelona, Spain.

12. Code-signing and platform integrity (macOS/Linux)

Windows builds of the Software are signed using Microsoft Azure Trusted Signing under the publisher name matching the entity named in Section 0. macOS and Linux builds of the Software may currently be unsigned. See the macOS/Linux Code-Signing and Auto-Update Integrity Disclosure bundled with the app for the full, plain-language disclosure of what this means in practice, including the Gatekeeper and equivalent Linux distribution warnings you may see, and what the auto-updater's SHA-512 manifest check does and does not guarantee on an unsigned install. That document is an addendum to this Agreement and is incorporated by reference.

13. General provisions

Entire agreement. This Agreement, together with the documents it incorporates by reference (the Open-Source and Third-Party Notices, the FFmpeg GPL Compliance Package, the In-Editor Content Licensing Notice, and the Code-Signing and Auto-Update Integrity Disclosure), is the entire agreement between you and VLStudio regarding the Software, and supersedes any prior agreements regarding the Software.

Severability. If any provision of this Agreement is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force, and the unenforceable provision is replaced with an enforceable provision that most closely reflects its intent.

Assignment. VLStudio may assign this Agreement in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of its assets relating to the Software. You may not assign this Agreement without VLStudio's prior written consent.

Changes to this Agreement. VLStudio may update this Agreement from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in a new "Last updated" date and, where practical, described in release notes. Continued use of the Software after a change takes effect is your acceptance of the updated Agreement, except where law requires fresh consent.

14. Contact

Questions about this Agreement can be sent to [[CONTACT_EMAIL]] (interim address: vlstudiopartners@hotmail.com, marked here as temporary pending a dedicated mailbox), or by post to Vladyslav Zhminko, Carrer de Valencia 191, 6.1, 08011, Barcelona, Spain.