Tools

Table of Content

Overlays

Lay the current cue, a countdown or the running time over your video

An overlay is information laid over your video: the current cue, a countdown, the running timecode, a clock, a logo. It is what turns a video feed into something a stage manager or a performer can work from.

You build overlays in the Overlay Editor, under Settings. This page is about where they appear, how to switch them on, and how to make one readable.

Turning An Overlay On

Right-click the video area to show the overlay, hide it, or jump straight to the editor.

Hiding an overlay does not change it. Everything you built is still there when you turn it back on.

Where Overlays Appear

One overlay, several destinations. Each decides for itself whether it carries the overlay.

On screen in CuePoints

Over the media in the main window, and in the media popout window.

The standalone Overlay Window

A window showing only the overlay, on a black background. Put it on a second screen, or capture it, when you want the information without the picture behind it.

Over the network

The NDI pane has Broadcast media with overlay. Turn it on for a monitor feed that people read from; leave it off when the picture is going to a projector or into a mix.

In recordings

The Overlay setting on the Recording pane has three choices:

None: a clean recording.
Current: whatever overlay is on screen at the time.
A saved preset: the recording gets its own overlay layout, whatever the live output is doing.

That last one is the useful one. The live feed stays clean while the archive recording carries cue names, timecode and the date burnt in. The overlay's timecode clock runs correctly on recordings, so a recorded overlay shows the real time as it was.

In exported video

You can bake a chosen overlay preset into exported video, so the file you hand over already has the information on it. See Importing & Exporting.

Making An Overlay Readable

Text over a moving picture is the hard part. Three things do most of the work, all of them controls under Settings:

Give it a background. A dark panel behind the text at around 25% opacity keeps words legible whatever is happening behind them.
Check it against the real picture.Show the camera behind the preview puts your live video under the preview, which is the only honest way to check. Text that looks perfect on black can vanish over a bright stage.
Leave a margin. Use the padding controls so nothing is jammed against the frame edge, where a screen or a projector may cut it off.

Settings

CuePoints > Settings… > Overlay Editor

The pane has three areas: OVERLAY ITEMS on the left, the list of things on your overlay; the settings for whichever item you clicked in the middle; POSITION and PREVIEW on the right.

The Five Kinds Of Item

Click Add an overlay item and choose what to add. Up to 20 items, in any combination:

Text: words you type. A show name, a warning, anything fixed.
CuePoint: the cue that's happening now, or the one coming next.
Timecode: the running clock.
Timestamp: today's date and the time of day.
Image: a picture, usually a logo.

Choose carefully. An item's kind is set when you make it and cannot be changed afterwards. If you picked the wrong one, delete it and add a new one.

The buttons above the rail duplicate the selected item and remove the selected item. Removing takes it off every output; it does not change any of your other items.

The Position Grid

The grid on the right is nine squares: left, centre, right across, and top, middle, bottom down. Click a square and the item goes there.

Items sharing a position stack in this order, the order they appear in the rail. Two items both bottom-centre sit one above the other.

Move up puts an item closer to the edge of the screen.
Move down moves it further in.

H padding and V padding push an item away from the edge.

Text Style

Every item shares the same look controls, under TEXT STYLE:

Font and Font size: the size is relative to the video, so it scales with the picture.
Text colour and Opacity: white on a dark background reads best.
Bg colour and Bg opacity: a panel behind the text. Black at about 25% is the place to start; you can see through it, but the words never disappear.
Reduce to Fit: shrinks text that is too long for the space rather than letting it run off screen. Leave this on.

Kind By Kind

Text: type what you want in Content.

CuePoint shows cue information live:

Cue filter: which cue types this item watches. All Types watches everything; pick one type to show, say, Lighting cues only.
Shows: the cue that's happening now, or the one coming next.
Prefix and Suffix: words wrapped around the cue, so 12 can read CUE 12:.
CueID prefix and Joined by: how a cue number is written and what separates it from the name.
Timer: a live counter beside the cue. Countdown is time left; Countdown to Next is time until the next one; Time Since is time since the cue fired, and is offered on a current-cue item only, since a cue that hasn't happened has nothing to count from.
Dwell: how long the cue stays on screen after it fires.

Timecode:

Striped timecode: the timecode written onto the track itself.
Incoming timecode: timecode arriving from outside; see Timecode.
Playhead position: how far into the track you are.

If you're following someone else's clock, Incoming timecode is the honest one; it's what everyone else is looking at.

Timestamp, the real date and time, for a recording you'll watch back later:

Date format: DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY, YYYY-MM-DD or DD-Mon-YYYY.
Time format: 24h, 24h no sec, 12h or 12h no sec. Drop the seconds if the changing number distracts.
Show timezone: worth turning on if the recording will be watched elsewhere in the world.

Image: click Choose Image… and pick a file. Size sets how big it is as a percentage of the picture. A logo at about 25%, bottom-right, with background opacity at 0, is the usual look.

Save Overlay Preset stores what's on screen now.
Pick a saved name to load it back.
Delete appears only while a preset is selected.

OSC

Recording

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