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

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.

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.

Your settings and the logs

C:Program FilesUltimate Playoutengineconfig

This folder holds your settings — outputs, playouts, colours, 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 and scenes; saves an afternoon of setting up again

The program itself does not need backing up: it reinstalls from the setup.

A note about two machines

Settings live with the machine, not with your rundowns. So a second machine needs its own outputs and its own colours set up once — copying engineconfig across is the quick way. That folder also survives a reinstall.