Project Export

The Project Export feature packages your entire Exaplay project — the .vpp file and all referenced media — into a single portable ZIP archive. Use it to:

• Transfer a show from a programming machine to a show machine
• Archive a finished show with all its media
• Share a project with a collaborator on another system

Exporting a Project

1. Click the burger menu (☰) in the top-left of the header.
2. Choose Export Project.
3. The dialog shows the export folder — a folder on the engine machine (default: the exports subfolder of the Exaplay work folder) — with the number of files, the size of the export and the free space in that folder. Type another path or click Browse… to pick a drive or folder; the free-space check runs again for the folder you chose.
4. Click Export Project. The ZIP is written straight into that folder, file by file, with a progress bar; Cancel export stops it and removes the partial archive.
5. When it finishes the dialog names the finished file, e.g. D:\Exports\my-show-export-20260904-1015.zip. Copy it to the destination machine.

The archive is never held in memory and is never downloaded through the browser, so the size of the show does not matter — only the free space in the export folder, which is checked before the first byte is written. Archives are written in ZIP64 form, so shows past 4 GB (or single files past 4 GB) extract correctly with every current unpacker.

What Gets Exported

Included	Not included
.vpp project file (with rewritten relative paths)	Live sources (NDI, Spout, capture card — configuration is preserved)
All video files referenced in the project	Files that no longer exist on disk
All image files referenced	Temporary cache files
All audio files referenced

Archive Structure

project-name-export.zip
├── project-name.vpp        ← project file with relative paths
└── media/
    ├── background_loop.mov
    ├── title_screen.png
    ├── ambient_music.wav
    ├── outro_1.mov         ← renamed automatically (collision avoidance)
    └── outro_2.mov

All media paths inside the .vpp file are rewritten to media/filename.ext — a path relative to the .vpp — so the project loads correctly wherever the ZIP is extracted. (A show whose clips already use portable $[project]/… paths exports the same way; the token is resolved to the real file when the archive is written.)

Filename Collision Handling

If two media files in different folders share the same filename (e.g. intro.mov in /Shows/A/ and /Shows/B/), they are automatically renamed to intro_1.mov and intro_2.mov in the archive to avoid overwrites.

Using the Exported Project on Another Machine

1. Extract the ZIP to any folder (e.g. C:\Shows\MyShow\).
2. Open Exaplay 3.
3. Use File → Open and navigate to the extracted .vpp file.
4. All media loads from the media/ subfolder automatically — no relinking required.

Limitations

• Large projects take as long as copying the media takes; the progress bar in the export dialog shows the file being written and the bytes done.
• Live sources (NDI, Spout, etc.) are not exported as files, only their configuration metadata.
• One export runs at a time.

Security

The export endpoint includes path-traversal protection — only files actually referenced in the project can be included. It is not possible to export arbitrary files from the server filesystem via this feature.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Some media files missing in ZIP	The dialog counts referenced files it could not find ("skipped"); check that they exist on disk. Live sources are intentionally excluded
Export fails immediately	Save the project first (Ctrl+S), then retry
"Not enough free space in the export folder"	The check runs before writing: pick a folder on a drive with room for the whole show
Very slow export	Normal for large media libraries; the archive is streamed from disk at copy speed