Output Setup

Everything about where a show's pictures go is set up on the STAGE tab. This page explains the model and walks through setting it up: screens and fields, outputs, assigning and arranging them, several machines, NDI and the per-output settings. For a tour of the tab itself — what every part of it is and how to move around — see The Stage.

Walkthrough

☰ menu → Walkthroughs → Outputs & projection → Assigning outputs to screens shows the flow on a two-machine rig, recorded from the real Stage.

How a show reaches the wall

Four words, used the same way everywhere in Exaplay:

Word	What it is
Screen	A picture your show composes — a wall, a dome, an LED strip, a monitor. It has a canvas at its content resolution.
Field	An additional area on a screen with content of its own — a logo in a corner, a picture-in-picture, a ticker. Most shows need none: content put on a screen fills the screen.
Output	A real exit for pixels: a monitor, a projector or an LED processor input on this machine or on a client machine — or an NDI stream.
Show canvas	Where the outputs are laid out side by side. Each output renders the slice of its screen that it sits under.

The chain is always the same:

content → screen → output(s)

• A clip plays on a screen (the track's or composition's Plays on property in Produce & Play, see Inspector — or drag the content straight onto the screen card on the Stage, see Content onto a screen). Where an area of a screen needs content of its own, an additional field narrows it to that area — see Additional fields.
• A screen is shown by the outputs assigned to it. An output shows its assigned screen and nothing else — an output with no screen stays dark.
• One screen can be shown by many outputs: side by side they form one panorama, each output rendering its own slice; placed at the same position they show the same picture.

So a two-projector wall is one screen shown by two outputs; a stage with a backdrop and two side screens is three screens; and an output never needs to know which clip is playing.

The order to set it up

1. Screens — what the show composes (the screen cards on the Stage). An additional field only where an area of a screen shows content of its own.
2. Outputs — what the rig has (open a screen on the Stage: its PCs and their outputs appear under it).
3. Assign each output to a screen.
4. Arrange the outputs on the Stage if the wall is hung differently than Windows has them — what you arrange is what the wall shows.
5. Correct the projection — warp, blend, calibration — see Projection Mapping.
6. Check on the wall with Identify and Outlines.

Screens

On the Stage, the + after the last screen card adds a screen. Content dropped on its card plays on it. Rename it in the inspector's head row; the colour square at the end of the head row gives the screen its colour on the Stage and in Outlines on the wall.

The screen's inspector:

Card	What it holds
Canvas	Content resolution — the size the screen's picture is composed at. By default it follows the outputs assigned to the screen — the fields are empty and a grey placeholder shows the current size; adding or removing an output changes it. Type a size yourself and it stays fixed, e.g. a 7680×1080 wall whose content has a size of its own. Empty both fields to go back to following the outputs. A typed size that is not the size of the outputs' layout is fitted onto the outputs: the whole canvas is scaled onto them, and distorted where the aspect ratios differ — a 4096×4096 dome master on one 2880×1800 output shows the whole square, squeezed. The screen's card then carries a small mark with the outputs' size (2880×1800; hover it for the details, click it for this card); empty both fields to set the size back to the outputs'. Resolve it or keep the distortion: that is your choice. Only a gap between outputs arranged apart (Rearrange) is on no output — hatched on the screen's card. A screen with a VIOSO calibration or an LED map is never fitted: the calibration maps the whole content space itself, whatever its size. How the outputs are arranged is the Alignment, on the screen (Output Assignment) or on any of its outputs (Assignment) — see Arranging.
Content on this screen	How content sits on the screen. Content: Fit (inside, aspect kept), Fill (crop) (covers the screen, aspect kept), Stretch (exactly the screen's size), Keep resolution (the clip's own pixel size); Overflow for Fill and Keep resolution: Cropped at the screen or Spills over the screen; Align for Keep resolution: where the picture sits on the screen. Mirror / Rotate: H / V mirror the screen's content, the two arrows turn it by 90° — rear projection, a ceiling mount, a display on its side; a clip with its own size and position turns with it (on a quarter turn it is laid out on the screen turned to portrait, as on a rotated display). A clip that has its own size or offset keeps its own fit; reset its size and offset in its own inspector to let it follow the screen again.
Fields	Always there, open: the screen's additional fields as layers (none at first), with + Add field — see below.
Output Assignment	Every output of the rig — click one to assign it to this screen or release it.
Content Mask	Hides parts of the screen: switch it on and follow Open mask editor… to draw rectangles, ellipses and polygons, with feather, corner radius and invert. The mask opens in its own window (Esc closes it).
Calibration	A VIOSO calibration for this screen.
Warping	Manual Warping — Exaplay's own warp, edge blend and black level per projector (the Projection Setup editor).

The last two are explained in Projection Mapping. The trashcan in the inspector's head row (Delete screen) removes the screen and its additional fields.

Additional fields — an area with content of its own

Most shows need no field: content dropped on a screen card fills the screen, and the screen's Content on this screen card decides how. A field is for an area of a screen with content of its own — a logo in a corner, a picture-in-picture, a ticker — drawn over the screen's content.

+ Add field at a screen card's top right (or in the screen's inspector) adds one: a centred half of the screen, on top, named after its screen and place (Field 1.2 is the second field of screen 1 — the screen's own content counts as 1.1). Select it on its screen card and drag it, resize it by its corners, rotate it by the handle above it — or set it exactly in its inspector card, Size, Position & Scaling:

Setting	What it does
Size, Position	In pixels or in percent of the screen — switch with px | % at the end of the Size row.
Placement	Parks the field in a corner, an edge, the middle, or over the whole screen.
Rotation, Mirror	Rotate — type any angle, or turn by 90° with the two arrows (they are grey while the angle is not a multiple of 90°); mirror horizontally (H) or vertically (V). A clip with its own size and position in the field turns and mirrors with it.
Content (under Scaling)	How a clip is fitted in: Fit (inside, aspect kept), Fill (crop) (covers the field, aspect kept), Stretch (exactly the field's size), Keep resolution (the clip's own pixel size).
Overflow	For Fill and Keep resolution: Cropped at the field or Spills over the field.
Align	For Keep resolution: where the picture sits in the field (Fit, Fill and Stretch cover the field and are centred). On the Stage the field's name sits at the same place.

A clip that has its own size or offset (set in its inspector or the Layout Designer) places itself and ignores the field's scaling. The moment it starts to place itself it keeps the scaling it had — a fitted clip stays fitted. To let such a clip follow the field again, reset its size and offset in its own inspector.

Several fields on one screen are layers: the screen's inspector lists them, and the one at the top renders on top — drag a row onto another to reorder. The screen's own content is always below them. Each row has an eye (hide the field on the output; its clips keep playing) and a lock (no changes to its position, size, rotation or warp) — the same lock as in the field's own inspector, at the end of its head row. + Add field on the screen card or under the list adds one on top. See The Stage.

A field can also carry its own warp grid — see Field warp. The screen's own content has none: warp the screen.

In Produce & Play a screen's own content reads as the screen's name (Plays on Main Wall), an additional field with it (Main Wall › Logo).

A show from an earlier version: a screen whose one field covers it untouched reads as the screen, without a field; a field that is resized, rotated, warped or hidden — and every field on a screen whose lowest field is such a one — stays an additional field, exactly as it plays.

Outputs

Detected outputs

Exaplay finds the machine's connected monitors itself, named after the monitor Windows reports, with their resolution and desktop position. You do not add these by hand. On the Stage, open a screen (the arrow under its card): every PC of the rig — this machine and each client — sits at the bottom of the tree, with its outputs above it. With nothing selected, the inspector's Overview lists every output, the unassigned ones under Free outputs.

Set the monitors up in Windows first: every projector connected, Extend these displays (not mirrored), the native resolution.

Adding an output by hand

For a monitor that is not connected yet, a custom size, or a network stream:

1. On the Stage, open a screen and click the + beside this machine's outputs (Add an output).
2. The Add output dialog asks for Type (NDI or Placeholder), Name, NDI name (NDI only) and Render resolution; a placeholder also takes its Desktop position and Primary. The size starts at 1920×1080.
3. Click Add output. It is saved at once and placed beside the existing outputs.

The + beside a client PC's outputs adds an NDI send to that machine only — its monitors are the ones it detects itself.

Output settings

Select an output (its box on the Stage, or its pill in the overview). Its inspector is a head row and up to five cards, top to bottom:

Card	Setting	What it does
(head row)	Name	Shown on its box and in on-wall labels. A client's monitor is renamed on that machine.
	In show	On by default. Off takes the output out of the show; on again brings back the screens it showed — see Keeping an output dark.
Assignment	Columns × Rows	One graphics output feeding several projectors through a splitter — see Split outputs. Not on an NDI send.
	Assigned screen	The screen this output shows; the × beside it releases it. Unassigned = the output stays dark. A split output has Assigned screens instead — one picker per cell, plus All cells.
	NDI name	(NDI only) The stream name on the network, with a Status line — see NDI sends.
	Alignment	Under the assigned screen(s): As in Windows (default), Rearrange (drag & drop on the Stage) or VIOSO Calibration (the screen has a VIOSO calibration, which places the outputs; the VIOSO and domeprojection marks show under the dropdown) — see Arranging the outputs.
Hardware	Type, Render resolution, Desktop position	What the machine reports; a client's output also names its Host.
Overlap & Blend	Overlap, Edge blend	Only when the output touches or overlaps another output of its screen — see Arranging the outputs. Off while the screen has a VIOSO calibration, which blends it itself.
Calibration	Calibration, Status, ProjectionTools channel	Under the VIOSO and domeprojection marks, as on a screen. On this machine's outputs it holds the calibration of the screen the output shows, with the screen card's rows: Calibration (Load…, or the loaded file as a pill — its name picks another file, ⟳ reads it again, × removes it after asking; a .vwf dropped on the row loads too) and Status (Edit… opens the calibration's dialog — its Channels and Black level tabs; Assign again, the wand, puts the channels on the outputs again). Then, with Settings → Debug mode on, the domeprojection ProjectionTools channel (the PatternGenerator channel). A split output whose cells show several screens has one set of rows per screen, labelled with the screen's name.
Color correction	Red, Green, Blue, Master	The projector's own trim at the end of the chain (every cell of a split output). Not on an NDI send.

Which channel of the screen's VIOSO calibration an output draws is normally decided by the calibration itself, or put on the outputs automatically when they leave only one answer. To change it, open the calibration's dialog, Calibration · ‹screen› — Edit… in the output's (or the screen's) Calibration card. Needs assigning › in a Calibration card assigns automatically where it can and opens the dialog otherwise — see Projection Mapping.

The trashcan in the inspector's head row (Delete output) removes an output from the list. A monitor Windows reports is not gone for good: Refresh on its PC's Outputs card (click the PC on the Stage) re-reads that PC's monitors and brings it back. Refresh only re-reads the physical monitors and lays them out as Windows has them; NDI sends, placeholders and virtual outputs stay, and every output keeps its screen, its settings and its name as long as its monitor is found again — by its position, by the connector it is on, by a size only it has, or by its number in Windows.

Assigning outputs to screens

Open the screen on the Stage (the arrow under its card). Then, all doing the same thing:

• Drag the output onto the screen — the open screen or one of the small ones beside it (Drop to show …). A split monitor: drag one cell to assign that cell, the monitor's edge to assign every cell. Or draw a link: from the port (a small ring) on the screen's bottom edge to the output, or from the ring on the output's top edge to the screen.
• Drag the screen onto the output — carry the screen card down onto an output of the open tree (Drop to play on …).
• Assigned screen in the output's inspector.
• From the screen's side: Output Assignment in the screen's inspector. Click outputs to assign or release them.

To release an output, hover the line between it and its screen and click its ×, or the × beside Assigned screen in the output's inspector, or the × on its pill in the Stage's Overview. If an output already shows another screen, Change the assignment? asks before it is changed (Change assignment / Cancel).

The assignment is saved immediately — there is no Apply button. If a change was a mistake, Undo output change in the header puts the previous output list back. See The Stage.

Arranging the outputs

By default the outputs are read 1:1 from Windows — an output's Alignment (under its Assigned screen) says As in Windows: the outputs of one machine by their desktop position, several machines left to right (the master first, then the clients). Two projectors side by side in Windows therefore show the left and right halves of their screen without any arranging. On the Stage all monitors of such a machine — also the ones on another screen — keep their Windows order and sit in a thin dashed frame. A monitor you drag on its own goes back to its place when you let go — unless you drop it on a screen, which puts it on that screen. To move the machine's monitors together, drag the small grip at the frame's top-left corner; that only arranges the picture on the Stage, e.g. to match where the machine stands in the room; the wall does not change.

Rearrange is the advanced setup. Select an output and set its Alignment to Rearrange (or select the screen and set it at the top of its Output Assignment) — it switches every output of that output's screen. Then you drag the output boxes inside their PC (edges snap; an output dropped mostly over another swaps places with it; the monitors of a PC always stay edge to edge, while placeholders snap to nothing and keep a small gap to them — see Arranging the outputs). What you arrange is what the wall shows: each output shows the slice of the screen it sits under on the Stage. Use it for a panorama in a different order than Windows has the monitors, a split output's cells re-hung as a strip, or overlapping projectors (the overlap is the blend zone — see Projection Mapping). A drag never overlaps two outputs; the overlap is typed in as a number, see below. VIOSO Calibration is what a screen with a VIOSO calibration is in: the calibration places its outputs where its channels sit, the VIOSO and domeprojection marks show under the dropdown, and As in Windows and Rearrange are not offered until the calibration is removed. Picked on a screen without a calibration, it opens the calibration's Load… dialog — see Projection Mapping.

A project saved before this switch moved to the outputs keeps what it had: one that already arranged outputs by hand stays on Rearrange.

Exaplay reads the Windows display arrangement when the engine starts and when a project loads — not while it runs. After rearranging displays in Windows, select the PC on the Stage and press Refresh on its Outputs card (or Refresh… on the machine's Display setup changed notice in the Network tab) to apply the new arrangement.

Moving a screen card on the Stage never changes the wall — it only tidies the view.

Making an overlap. Select an output: for every neighbour of its screen that it touches or overlaps, its inspector's Overlap & Blend card has the overlap as a number — Overlap 0 px while they sit edge to edge, 240 px once they overlap (hover the row for which neighbour it is). Type the overlap you want and this output moves over its neighbour by exactly that, on the show canvas. The number stays after both outputs blend, so the overlap read off the wall with the Vernier pattern can be typed straight in; 0 puts the two edge to edge again. The card's Edge blend switch blends both outputs of the seam — it is off until you click it, and typing an overlap never switches it on. Tidy up in the header puts the boxes of outputs arranged As in Windows back; a Rearrange layout stays until you set it back to As in Windows.

Two different positions

	Desktop position	Place on the show canvas
What	Where the window opens on a machine's own Windows desktop	Which slice of the screen the output renders
Set by	Windows (detected)	The Stage layout
Each machine	Starts at its own 0,0	One canvas for the whole rig

Arranging on the Stage changes only the place on the show canvas. A placeholder output takes its desktop position from the Add output dialog.

Split outputs

A splitter or mosaic processor feeds several projectors or LED panels from one graphics output. Set Assignment → Columns × Rows on the output; each cell is then its own output:

• NVIDIA Mosaic is recognised. A Mosaic set up in the NVIDIA Control Panel is one output to Windows. Exaplay reads its grid from the driver and names it in the Assignment card, above Columns and Rows ("NVIDIA Mosaic of 2 × 2 displays") with a Split 2 × 2 button. Nothing is split until you click it, and Columns × Rows stay yours: a Mosaic whose outputs feed splitters is cut finer than the driver knows. With an overlap or gap set in the NVIDIA Control Panel an even split would miss the seams, so Exaplay names the Mosaic and leaves the split to you. Other GPUs and external splitters are split by hand as before.
• Assigned screens — one picker per cell, plus All cells.
• A calibration channel per cell: each cell draws a channel of its screen's VIOSO calibration. A split in the calibration file (e.g. 2 × 2 channels of one 1920 × 1080 output) goes onto the screen's output of that size by itself after loading when that output is already split in the same grid and that is the only answer — a .vwf dropped on an output of that size splits it to match; otherwise set the channels in the calibration's dialog (Edit… in the output's Calibration card), where a split of the file is put on an output of its size in one drag.
• On the Stage, each cell is drawn in its screen's colour and can be dragged on its own: a 2×2 mosaic driving four panels in a row is laid out by dragging the bottom two cells beside the top two. Set the output's Alignment to Rearrange so it renders that way. Drag the monitor's edge to move it with all its cells.

This works for a client's split output too, set from the master.

Several machines

On a multi-client rig (see Multi-Client Setup) every client is a PC in the master's Stage tree, with its outputs above it. You assign, split and arrange them on the master — you never walk to the client. The client adopts it and keeps it across its own reboots. The + after the last PC pairs another machine of the network as a client (see The Stage).

• Offline machines — a machine that is not reachable stays in the project, marked offline, with all its outputs. You can still assign them; the client applies it when it comes back. Forget PC… in the PC's inspector removes it and its saved assignments from the project — only for a machine that is gone for good.
• On the client itself the Stage is read-only (Output configuration is managed by the master instance).
• A client monitor's name comes from that machine and is read-only here (a send added to a client is renamed here).

Cross-machine panorama

Assign outputs of the master and of one or more clients to the same screen and they form one continuous picture: on an automatic screen the machines are laid out left to right (the master first, then the clients), each machine's outputs by their desktop position. For a different order, arrange the boxes — see Arranging the outputs.

Keeping an output dark

An output with no screen renders nothing: leave it unassigned and it stays dark. It is drawn as a dark box hatched with diagonal stripes, with a bright dashed edge, and listed under Free outputs in the overview.

An output that must never show content — typically the operator's GUI monitor, or a client's control monitor — can also be taken out of the show: switch In show off — in the head row of the output's inspector. Its screen is released, it stays dark, and the Stage stops drawing it, so it cannot be assigned by mistake. Its PC node then says 1 not in show; select the PC and press Include under Not in show to bring it back (or In show / Include in show in the output's own inspector). Exaplay remembers what it showed: it comes back on the same screens (per cell for a split output), unless a screen was deleted or the output was split differently in the meantime. On an offline client the change is saved to the project and applied when it reconnects.

NDI sends

An NDI output is a video stream on the network instead of a monitor. Add one with the + beside a PC's outputs on the Stage (Type NDI); it appears beside that PC's monitors as an NDI box — a rectangle at its resolution, with rounded corners and a faint NDI behind its name. It never snaps to the monitors, because a stream has no place on a desktop. A send can be added to a client PC from here too.

• Click the box to edit the send; give it an Assigned screen — a send with no screen is grey and dashed and streams nothing.
• NDI name is the name receivers see (default NDI n). A name used twice is numbered automatically.
• The Status line (also in the box's tooltip) says what is going out — streaming 1920x1080 @50 fps — or why nothing is. A red edge on the box means it is not sending.
• What it carries: a screen with only NDI sends streams the whole screen. A screen with monitors and sends lays each send out as its own strip beside the monitors, and the send streams exactly that strip.
• Sends are video only and opaque. They carry the screen's picture as composed, but not a VIOSO calibration or the Projection Setup's warp and blend — those are applied to projectors. Each send costs an encode per frame.

See NDI Support.

Checking on the wall

Four switches in the Stage header:

• Identify labels every output on the real wall with its name, its machine, its resolution and its calibration channel — "which projector is this?" without unplugging anything.
• Outlines draws every screen's box and every field's box, named, on the real outputs — "which part of the picture is this?", and the quickest way to find a field that ended up off the screen.
• Preview draws the live picture into the screen cards on the Stage, so fields can be placed against the real content.
• Raw wall shows the outputs without their calibration — no VIOSO, warp, edge blend or black level — "is it the calibration, or is it the picture?". NDI and masks stay and nothing in the project changes. While it is on the button is amber and the top bar of every tab says Raw wall ON; click either to calibrate again. Switched on the master of a multi-client rig, every client shows its outputs raw too; loading a project or restarting the engine turns it off.

Identify and Outlines reach every machine of a multi-client rig, draw over live content (switch them off before going on air) and are never saved into the show. They can also be switched over OSC (/exaplay/global/identify and /exaplay/global/showguides, on|off|toggle) — see External Show Control.

Two header controls outside the Stage decide whether anything is on the wall at all: SHOW ON / SHOW OFF (show mode: off = every output window is dark) and the BLANK button with its fade menu (fades every output on every machine to black and back).

The output window

Each PC shows the show through one output window that covers all of its outputs. How that window behaves is set per PC, under Rendering mode at the foot of the PC's Outputs card on the Stage (see The Stage). It applies while show mode is on. It is stored on that machine, not in the project, and stays across restarts; on a multi-client rig each PC has its own, set from the master's Stage.

Window	What you get
Fullscreen Topmost	The default, and the setting for a show. Fullscreen over the outputs and on top of every other window — when another window covers it, Exaplay brings the output forward again. The mouse pointer is hidden over it.
Fullscreen Background	Fullscreen over the outputs, but behind every other window, so you can work in other programs on the same monitors while the output runs. The pointer stays.
Windowed	A framed window you can move and size — to check a show on one monitor. It opens at a quarter of the outputs' size, centred on them, and always shows the whole picture scaled to fit, with black bars where the shapes differ. Double-click it, or click its maximise button, to switch between the full output size and the quarter.

In Windowed the window's close button is greyed out and Alt+F4 does nothing: close Exaplay from its tray icon (Close Exaplay). The window costs some extra graphics memory and GPU time, and while you drag or size it the picture keeps playing but the engine's other work — acting on incoming timecode, for example — waits until you let go. Switch back to Fullscreen Topmost before the show.

The tray icon's Send Exaplay output to background moves the window back once; in Fullscreen Topmost it comes forward again as soon as another window covers it. To keep it behind, use Fullscreen Background.

When the monitors change

If Windows reports different monitors than the stored outputs (a projector swapped, a resolution changed), the affected boxes on the Stage carry a ⚠ with the new resolution (or moved), their PC in the tree is framed red with ⚠ Outputs outdated, and in the PC's inspector the Refresh button of the Outputs card turns red, with ⚠ The monitors on this PC changed — Exaplay's outputs are outdated under it. A click on the ⚠ opens that PC. Refresh shows the change as before → now — each changed monitor's old and new size, and both layouts drawn side by side at one scale — and re-reads what Windows reports when you confirm. Opening the PC re-reads it too, so a monitor set back in Windows clears the warning without a refresh. Assignments of monitors it recognises are kept.

Exaplay never rewrites the outputs on its own when a monitor flickers — a short signal loss does not cost you your setup.