Where your files live

This page says where everything is on disk. Useful for backing up, for putting things on a share, and for the day somebody asks where last year’s service went.

Your own work

The program makes its own folders on the first start:

DocumentsUltimate Playout
  Lists      <- your rundowns (.playout)
  Exports    <- what you export: groups, bundles, selections
  Songs      <- songs you write yourself

These are ordinary folders. Back them up, put them on a network share, copy them to another machine.

Open and Save start in Lists, and exports go to Exports, so in daily use you never have to navigate anywhere.

The Songs folder is created regardless, but only fills up if you have a song module. Without one, nothing writes to it.

Your media

Wherever you keep it. The program does not manage your video and audio; a cue holds a path to a file and that is all.

That is worth a decision rather than an accident. Two arrangements work well:

Everything on one server, with every machine on the same drive letter or the same UNC path. Lists travel between machines and just play.

Everything local per machine, and shows travel as bundles.

The arrangement that hurts is the third one: some material on a server, some on a desktop, some in a Downloads folder. That is where missing files come from.

The program itself

C:Program FilesUltimate Playout
  UltimatePlayout.exe        <- the launcher
  Modules                   <- the modules, and modules.ini
  engine
    bin obs-plugins data  <- the engine and the program
    config                  <- your settings, scenes and logs

engineconfig holds your settings — outputs, playouts, colours, templates, scenes — and it is shared by everyone who logs in on that machine.

The logs are there too, and they are what you send when something needs explaining: see sending logs.

What to back up

Back up	Why
DocumentsUltimate Playout	Your rundowns and exports — irreplaceable
Your media folder	Same
engineconfig	Settings, scenes and designs; saves an afternoon of setting up again

The program itself does not need backing up: it reinstalls from the setup, and the engine comes down with it.

A note about two machines

Settings live with the machine, not with your rundowns. So a second machine needs its own outputs, its own colours and its own templates set up once — copying engineconfig across is the quick way, and it is exactly what the uninstaller leaves behind if you ever reinstall.