This page explains the split between the program and its modules, because it decides what you see on screen and where you find the documentation for it.
The division
The program plays and renders. A module knows how a subject should look and behave. Without the module, that subject does not exist.
The program has the cue list, the outputs, the windows and the timing: when something appears, what is on screen, the fading. It never asks a module to draw.
A module owns a subject completely — including its design. Songs, name plates, subtitles, presentation import, video services, switcher control: each is a component of its own, and each brings its own look with it.
What that means at the desk
You never see something you cannot use. No greyed-out button, no menu entry that turns out to need something else, no settings page for a feature that is not there.
Two installations can look genuinely different. A colleague’s screenshot may show a button you do not have, and that says nothing about who has the bigger licence — it says which components were installed.
A module you switch off takes its parts with it. Not disabled: gone. Switch it back on and everything returns as it was.
What runs where
A module runs in its own process, alongside the program rather than inside it. Practical consequences:
- A module that gets into trouble does not take the program down. The cue list, the outputs and the broadcast keep running; you lose what that module provided.
- Starting them takes a moment, which is the Loading modules… line on the loading screen.
- A module that hangs on something slow — a network drive, a service that does not answer — shows up as a start that takes longer than usual.
What stays yours
What you make yourself belongs to the program, not to the module: your own templates and the designer you make them in.
So a module can supply the design a publisher intended for its content, and you can still have your own house style — and switching modules does not cost you your own work.
Where each module is documented
With the module. This documentation covers the base program and stops exactly where a module begins; all modules is the list of where to go next.