Putting media on a surface

Connect an image, a video, a live source or a cuelist to a surface to put it on the projectors.

How a surface gets its picture

Every surface has a Material node in the scene graph. The first one is labeled Main until you rename it. To put media on a surface, wire it to the Material: a still, a movie, a live source or a cuelist.

One source is live at a time: the item or cuelist you assigned most recently. Wiring is how a source goes on air. Once it's live, every surface shows it, on the projectors and in every view, whether or not that surface is wired to it. Assigning something new replaces what was playing.

A surface can also carry further Materials. A further Material wired to its own still, movie or live source shows that instead, and doesn't change what's live.

How a picture fills the surface

Every picture is fitted into the project's canvas, and the whole canvas is then laid over the surface. Give the canvas the same shape as the surface. A canvas of a different shape is stretched to fit the surface, whatever Fit you choose.

Until you set a canvas size, it follows the shape of your surfaces when they're all planes of one shape: a 14.4 × 4.5 m wall gets a 3456 × 1080 canvas. Otherwise it's 1920 × 1080. Set it on the Canvas card in Settings → Project → Video.

Each image, video and live source in the library has its own Fit. Select the item on the Assets tab and pick one of the six fits under its details. Each drawing shows how a 4:3 picture sits in a wide canvas. A change takes effect at once, including on air.

If a surface showing the item has a different shape from the canvas, the Fit field says so. Click Match the canvas to (surface name) to give the canvas that surface's shape.

Fit	What it does
Fill	Stretches the picture to the canvas. The default.
Fit Horizontal	Scales the picture, keeping its shape, until it's as wide as the canvas.
Fit Vertical	Scales the picture, keeping its shape, until it's as tall as the canvas.
Fit Best	Shows the whole picture as large as it fits, with black bars where the shapes differ. A 4:3 camera on a 16:9 canvas gets bars at the sides.
Fit Outside	Covers the whole canvas, cropping what overhangs.
Native Resolution	Pixel for pixel, centered, cropped if larger than the canvas.

A crossfade between two items of different sizes mixes them at the canvas size.

Open the scene graph

The scene graph is 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 and drag the background to pan. To fit everything back on screen, hover the graph and press F. A minimap sits in the bottom-left corner.

Every image, video, live source and cuelist in the project already has a node on the graph: cuelists in the Cuelists column, and assets in the Assets column, in their folders. You can drag a media or cuelist node anywhere, and it stays where you leave it; its position is saved with the project. See Everything is already on the graph.

For more on reading the graph, see The scene graph.

Assign an image, a video or a live source

There are four ways to do it, and they all create the same wire.

Right-click the node

1. Right-click the surface's Material node.
2. Choose Set Asset, then pick an item from the submenu. It lists the project's images, videos and live sources, with a bullet beside the one currently assigned.

A wire appears between the Material and the item's node, and the item shows on the surface at once.

Drag a file onto the node

Drag a file from the Asset Browser (the folder tree, the grid or the list) and drop it on the Material node. While the file is over the node, the node fills with indigo and gets a solid indigo outline, and a small label with the file's name follows the pointer. When you release, an image, video or live source is assigned and wired to its node. A model is ignored.

The graph panel is on every tab, so you can drag from both places that show the Asset Browser: the Assets tab and the Cue tab's sidebar.

Wire it from its node

The item's node is already on the graph, in its folder in the Assets column. Drag from its round handle to the Material node's handle, or the other way round. To find a node among many, right-click empty canvas, choose Show Asset and type part of its name. The view moves to the node and opens its folder if it's collapsed. You can also drag the node anywhere, next to the surface for example, and it stays there.

A wire can only connect a source node to a Material node; the graph refuses any other pairing. The larger, colored handles are the ones you can wire. When a wire you're dragging would connect, the Material lights up indigo.

Wire it to a cue

A cuelist's cues appear beside its node in the graph. Drag from the Material node's round handle, on its right, to the round handle on the left of a cue that plays something. The surface shows that cue's media, and the wire runs from the Material to the media's own node, like every link. A gap plays nothing and can't be wired. See Route media by wiring.

Models behave differently

Dropping a model on the graph canvas moves its node there, as it does for any file. Dropping one on a Material node does nothing, because a Material takes only images, videos, live sources and cuelists. To build a surface on a model, use Add ▸ and pick the model under From Assets. See Surfaces and models.

Assign a cuelist

Use any of the first three methods:

• Right-click the Material node and choose Set Cuelist.
• Drag a cuelist row from the sidebar on the Cue tab onto the node. If the cuelist is open in the timeline beside the scene graph, you can also drag its name from the top of the timeline.
• Wire it by hand from its node in the Cuelists column.

Assigning a cuelist starts it playing.

A cuelist needs a wire to play

A cuelist plays only when it's wired to a surface's Material. Once it's playing, it shows on every surface, like any live source. One cuelist runs at a time, so starting another replaces the one that was running.

• An unwired cuelist won't play. If you press play, skip to the next or previous item, or click an item to jump to it, you get this warning instead:

  "Show Reel" isn't linked to a material in the scene graph — it won't play back. Link it to a Material node first.

  Nothing starts and the output doesn't change. Wire the cuelist to a Material and try again.

• You can always pause.

• The same rule applies to the transport on the Cue tab and to the floating transport card.

Wiring is the play button

Assigning a cuelist starts it, so the fastest way to start a cuelist is to drag it onto a surface's Material node. You don't need to open the Cue tab first.

Reading what a surface is bound to

The second line on a Material node shows how its picture lies and what it shows, so you can check a whole show at a glance. It starts with the mapping (UV, Manual, or the name of the projector whose view it is). On a further Material, the part of the surface it's limited to comes next. Last is what's linked:

Second line	Meaning
UV · Nothing linked	Nothing is linked to this Material. The surface still shows what's live, like every surface.
UV · <item's name>	That image, video or live source is assigned.
UV · <cuelist's name>	That cuelist is assigned but isn't playing: another one is running, or it's paused.
Projector 1 · <cuelist's name> · playing	That cuelist is assigned and playing now, mapped to Projector 1's view.

For more than the name, select the node of whatever is wired in on the Scene tab. The Properties panel shows an item's full details, including its Fit, as the Assets tab does, or a cuelist's number of cues, whether it's playing and how it loops. Select the Material node itself to see what's linked (or Nothing linked), which surface it's on, and its mapping.

Changing and clearing

• Swapping: assigning something else replaces what was there, because a Material holds one source at a time. The wire moves to the new source's node, and the old one's node stays where it is, ready to wire back. Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z on a Mac) puts the old source back, however you assigned the new one.
• Clearing: right-click the Material node and choose Unlink. The Material is left with nothing linked, and the item or cuelist keeps its node, unwired, so it's still to hand. Undo wires it back.
• Tidying: choose Put Back on a node you've moved to return it to its folder, or to the Cuelists column. Every item and cuelist in the project keeps its node on the graph. To empty a Material, use Unlink. To delete an item, use the Assets tab.

To compare looks in the room, place the two or three candidates for a surface next to its Material and rewire between them.

What each node offers

Node	Right-click menu
Material	Set Asset, Set Cuelist, Unlink and Rename, plus Remove Material on any Material but the first
An image, video or live source	Open in Asset Library, and Put Back once you've moved it
A cuelist	Start Cuelist, Rename, Open in Cue, Put Back once you've moved it, and Delete, which deletes the cuelist itself after you confirm. Rename has no effect here in this version; rename cuelists on the Cue tab.

Set Asset appears only when the project has at least one image, video or live source, Set Cuelist only when it has a cuelist, and Unlink only when something is assigned. Delete isn't offered on the project's last cuelist.

Related

• Cuelists: building a cuelist, and dropping files or a whole folder into it
• Transitions: what happens between cues
• 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