This page covers the template mechanism: designs you save by name, apply to a whole list, and reuse next week. It is the one subject in this documentation that sits on the line between the program and its modules, so it is worth being precise about which half is which.
The two halves
The mechanism belongs to the program. Saving a design under a name, choosing a default for a list, applying one to everything at once, and the designer window itself — all of that is here, and what you make with it is yours.
The subjects belong to modules. Which designers exist — a song page, a name plate, subtitles — depends on which modules are installed, because the design of a thing belongs with the thing.
So the answer to “why does my colleague have a designer I do not” is always: a module, not a setting.
How templates work
A template is a saved set of design choices with a name.
| Level | What it means |
|---|---|
| A default for the list | Everything of that kind in this rundown uses it |
| A template on one item | That item overrides the default |
| Apply to the whole list | Push one template over everything at once |
The order is the useful part: set a default once, override the exceptions, and a rundown built from a hundred items needs one decision plus a handful.
Where designs come from
Two sources, and they behave differently:
Yours. Made in the designer, saved by name, stored with the program. You can change them whenever you like and they follow your house style.
A publisher’s. Content that arrives from an external source can bring its own design with it, so that it is drawn the way its publisher intended without anybody setting anything up. That arrives through the module that fetches the content.
Practical notes
Name templates after what they are for, not after what they look like: Sunday morning, not Blue large. Six months later the first one still means something.
One default well chosen beats twenty templates. Every extra template is another thing that can be applied by mistake.
Templates live with the program, not with the list. A rundown opened on another machine finds that machine’s templates. If a show has to travel, check that its designs travelled too.
Where to read further
Everything about what those designers contain — which fields, which effects, which options — is in the documentation of the module that supplies them.