Putting media on a surface¶

Connect an image, a video or a playlist to a surface so it appears on the projectors.

How a surface gets its picture¶

Every surface in the scene graph carries a Material node with a Texture node hanging off it. The Texture is the socket. Whatever you wire into it — a still, a movie file, or a playlist — is what that surface shows.

Until something is wired to a surface's Texture, that surface projects nothing.

One source is live at a time — the file or playlist you assigned most recently — and the wiring is what decides where it lands. Wire several surfaces to the same playlist and they all show it together. Assign something new and it takes over from what was playing before.

Open the scene graph¶

The graph lives in the panel along the bottom of the window, on every tab.

Click the Scene Graph pill in the status bar, or press G.
Drag the panel's top edge to make it taller.
Scroll to zoom, drag the background to pan, and hover the graph and press F to fit everything back on screen. There is a minimap in the bottom-left corner.

Nodes in the tree sit where the layout puts them. Source nodes you park on the canvas can be dragged anywhere, and stay where you leave them — their positions are saved with the project.

More on reading the graph: The scene graph.

Assign an image or a video¶

Three routes, all ending in the same wiring.

Right-click the node¶

Right-click the surface's Material or Texture node.
Choose Set Asset and pick a file from the submenu. A bullet marks the file currently assigned.

A node for that file appears beside the Texture, already wired, and the image or video lands on the surface straight away.

Drag a file onto the node¶

Drag a file out of the Asset Browser — from the folder tree, the grid or the list — and drop it onto the Material or Texture node. The node highlights while it will accept the drop. On release, the file is assigned and a node for it appears next to the Texture.

This works from any tab, since the graph panel is always along the bottom.

Park it, then wire it¶

Drop the file onto empty graph canvas instead and it becomes a loose node with nothing connected. Then drag from the round handle on one node to the handle on the other to make the connection.

Only a source node connected to a Material or Texture node is a valid wire; any other pairing is refused, and the handles that can be wired are the larger, colored ones.

Models behave differently

Dropping a model onto the graph canvas does not park a source node — it creates a new surface built on that model. Dropping one onto a Material or Texture node does nothing at all: those sockets take images, videos and playlists only. See Surfaces and models.

Assign a playlist¶

Exactly the same three routes:

Right-click the Material or Texture node and choose Set Playlist.
Drag a playlist row out of the sidebar on the Playback tab and drop it onto the node.
Drop it on empty canvas and wire it up by hand.

Assigning a playlist starts it playing.

The wiring decides where a playlist plays¶

This is the part that catches people out.

A playlist has no idea which surface it belongs to. The wire from the playlist's node to a surface's Texture is what routes it. One playlist runs at a time — starting another takes over from the one that was running.

So:

A playlist that is not wired to any Texture will not play. Pressing play, skipping to the next or previous item, or clicking an item to jump to it raises a warning instead:

"Show Reel" isn't connected to a texture in the node graph — it won't play back. Wire it to a Texture node first.

Nothing starts, and nothing changes on output. Wire the playlist to a Texture and try again.
Pausing is never blocked.
The guard applies to the transport on the Playback tab and to the floating transport card equally.

Wiring is the play button

Because assigning a playlist starts it, the fastest way to get a playlist running on a surface is to drag it straight onto that surface's Texture node. You do not need to visit the Playback tab first.

Reading what a surface is bound to¶

The second line on the Material node reports the current binding, so you can audit a whole show at a glance:

Second line	Meaning
`No source`	Nothing wired — this surface projects nothing
A file name	That image or video is assigned
`Playlist: <name>`	That playlist is assigned but is not the one currently running
`Playlist: <name> · playing`	That playlist is assigned and is the one currently running

Changing and clearing¶

Swapping — assigning something else replaces what was there. A surface holds one source at a time.
Clearing — right-click the Material or Texture node and choose Clear Texture. The surface goes empty.
Tidying — Remove from Graph on a source node, or selecting it and pressing Del or Backspace, takes the node off the canvas. It does not unassign the media. Use Clear Texture when you actually want the surface emptied.

Source nodes stay on the canvas after they are wired, on purpose: park the two or three candidates for a surface side by side and re-wire between them to compare looks in the room.

What each node offers¶

Right-click menus vary by node:

Node	Actions
Material or Texture	Set Asset, Set Playlist, Clear Texture
A parked image or video	Remove from Graph
A parked playlist	Open in Playback Panel, Remove from Graph
A file listed under a surface	Open in Asset Library

Set Asset only appears once the project contains at least one image or video, Set Playlist once at least one playlist exists, and Clear Texture only when something is currently assigned.

Playlists — building the playlist itself, and dropping files or a whole folder into it
Transitions — what happens between playlist items
The scene graph — the rest of the graph and what else it controls
Organizing media — replacing the file behind an asset without touching the wiring