This page covers using the picture of a playout as a source inside a scene. It lets one line show what another line is broadcasting: a picture-in-picture, a monitor wall, a corner inset.
Adding it
In the scene builder, add a source of the type Ultimate Playout, and choose Show which playout.
The source then shows that playout’s picture, live, wherever you place it in the scene.
The sound travels with it
The source draws the picture; the sound goes a different way. That is not a limitation — it is how it keeps working.
Put playout 1 in a scene and use that scene on playout 2, and the picture travels because it goes through the scene. The sound does not: it sits on playout 1’s audio track, and playout 2’s output carries a different track. So playout 2 would be broadcasting a video with no sound at all.
So the program does it on the track instead. While a scene showing another playout is on air, that playout’s sound is put on the watching playout’s track as well — and taken off again the moment that scene is no longer on air. The sound follows the picture, rather than a setting somebody forgets to put back.
Sound of that playout goes along is a checkbox on the source, on by default. Switch it off for a corner inset you deliberately want to see and not hear.
The source itself still mixes nothing. Mixing in the source would put a second audio timeline on the route of a video switch, next to the one the whole program already runs on.
The feedback guard
A source showing a playout, inside a scene that the very same playout is using as a cue, is a mirror pointed at a mirror. The picture would contain itself, endlessly, and the machine would spend all its time drawing it.
So it stays black in exactly that case. The source keeps working everywhere else; it only refuses the one arrangement that would feed back.
If you see an unexpected black rectangle where you expected a picture, this is almost always why: the scene it sits in is on air on the playout it is showing.
What to use it for
| Situation | How |
|---|---|
| A small inset of the stream on the hall screen | Scene on playout 2 with playout 1 as a source |
| A monitor wall of two lines side by side | One scene with two of these sources |
| A “coming up” corner during a break | A scene combining a still and a live line |
What not to use it for
Not to copy one line to two outputs. If two outputs need the same picture, that is one playout feeding two destinations, not a playout showing itself in a scene.
Not as a preview of another line. Each playout already has its own preview panel, and a source costs rendering that the preview does not.