Key Concepts

Before diving into the tutorials, it helps to understand the core building blocks of Exaplay 3. This page introduces the terms and ideas you will encounter throughout the documentation.

Screens & Outputs

The STAGE tab is where a show meets the hardware, and it holds two kinds of things:

• A Screen is a picture your show composes — a wall, a dome, an LED strip — with its own canvas at its content resolution. Add one with the + after the last screen card on the Stage. Content plays on a screen, never on a projector.
• An Output is a real exit for pixels: a monitor, a projector, an LED processor input — on this machine or on a client machine — or an NDI stream. An output shows the screen assigned to it, and nothing else.

You can have as many screens as your GPU supports, and a screen can exist before any output is assigned to it — so you can pre-program a show on a single laptop. See The Stage and Output Setup.

Where an area of a screen needs content of its own — a logo in a corner, a picture-in-picture — add an additional field to it (+ Add field on the screen's card). Most shows need none. See Additional fields.

Compositions & Layers

A Composition is the visual scene you actually edit — built from layers stacked on top of each other, similar to layers in Photoshop or After Effects. Compositions are independent documents, listed as tabs in the composition strip above the Timeline/Playlist panel — a screen does not automatically get its own composition.

To make a composition's content appear on a specific screen, select the composition (or one of its tracks) and, in the Inspector, set its Plays on property to that screen. A new composition plays on the first screen.

The shortcut goes the other way round: on the STAGE tab, drag a file from the content browser onto a screen card. Exaplay asks for the playlist or timeline (and track) it goes into — or creates one — puts it on that screen and plays it. See Content onto a screen.

• The bottom track might be a background video loop.
• The track above it could be a title graphic with transparency, faded in over the background.
• The top track might be a live NDI camera feed.

The top track in the Timeline's list is drawn in front; each track below it is drawn behind the one above.

Each layer can hold video, images, live input (NDI / Spout / camera / capture), a web page, text, or a generator. You control each clip's position, scale, rotation and opacity independently — as fixed values or animated with keyframes. Layers composite with straight alpha-over blending in tree order; there is no per-layer blend mode.

Timeline

The Timeline is where you arrange media clips in time. Each layer appears as a horizontal track, and you drag media clips onto these tracks to set when they appear, how long they play, and how they transition.

Key timeline concepts:

• Playhead — The vertical line that shows the current playback position.
• Clips — Coloured blocks on a track representing a media file or input.
• In/Out points — The start and end of each clip on the timeline.
• Fades — A clip can fade to black or crossfade. You set the fade type and its length on the clip itself (or as a track / composition default); overlapping two clips does not create one on its own.
• Loop — A clip or the entire timeline can loop indefinitely.

Playlist

A Playlist is a composition that plays a list of clips one after another; the operator starts a row and steps on with Next / Previous in the Transport or the Control View. See Playlist. Playlists are essential for live shows where an operator controls the pacing.

Timed actions — cues — sit on a Timeline's cue line and fire on demand: by button, F-key hotkey or external command. A cue's Action type is one of Play, Pause, Stop, Jump to time, Jump to Cue, Calibration, Custom (a script), Restart Force or Shutdown Force.

Note: In earlier versions of Exaplay this composition type was called the Cue List. The behaviour is the same — the label has been simplified to Playlist in the UI.

Transport Controls

The Transport bar sits above the Timeline / Playlist and controls playback:

Control	Shortcut	Description
▶ Play	Space	Start playback from the current position
⏸ Pause	Space	Pause at the current frame
⏹ Stop	—	Stop and return to the beginning
⏮ Previous	—	Jump to previous cue or clip boundary
⏭ Next	—	Jump to next cue or clip boundary

Inspector Panel

The Inspector is the properties panel on the right side of the editor. When you select a clip or a layer, the Inspector shows all of its editable properties — position, scale, opacity, loop settings, transitions, effects, and more.

The Inspector changes contextually: select a clip and it shows clip properties; on the STAGE tab, select a screen, field or output and it shows that one's settings.

File Browser

The File Browser is the Media & Live panel at the bottom of the editor (below the active Timeline or Playlist). Point it at a folder on your computer, and it displays thumbnails for all supported media files. Drag files from the browser onto the Timeline or directly onto a screen to add them to your composition.

Supported formats include:

• Video: MOV, MP4, AVI — including HAP, HAP Q, HAP Alpha, NotchLC and ProRes inside them
• Image: PNG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, WebP
• Audio: WAV, MP3

Show Mode

Show mode decides whether the outputs show anything at all. With it off every output is dark; with it on the outputs show the show. It is the switch labelled SHOW ON / SHOW OFF in the header, and Shift+Escape on the Exaplay machine's keyboard toggles it too.

There is no separate edit mode: the editor stays fully usable while the show is on the wall, so be deliberate about what you change during a performance. On a multi-machine rig, show mode on the master switches every client — see Multi-Client Setup.

Projects (.vpp Files)

All your work is saved as a .vpp project file. A project stores:

• Screen definitions and output assignments
• Compositions with all layers, clips, and timelines
• Playlists and cue definitions
• Inspector settings (transitions, effects, keyframes)
• The show's own control mappings (e.g. Art-Net input mappings, Inputs rules)

Machine settings — audio interface, ports, startup — are stored per machine in Documents\Exaplay3\config\, not in the project.

Media files are referenced by absolute path, not embedded. To move a show, use ☰ → Export Project, or keep the media inside the project folder and switch on Settings → System → Portable media paths.

What's Next?

Now that you know the vocabulary, continue with the tutorials:

• Quick Start Tutorial — Play your first video in 5 minutes
• Your First Project — Build a multi-screen show with cues