This page is the signpost. One line per module: what it adds to the program, and where to read about it.
Everything else about them — their windows, their designers, their settings — is in their own part of this manual.
What each one adds
In the order of the Modules screen, by category.
| Category | Module | Adds | Its documentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media | BCC Media | Videos from that service as a cue, with the player it needs. | BCC Media |
| Media | YouTube | A YouTube video as a cue, full screen and without the controls. | YouTube |
| Presentation | A PDF as a group of slides, one cue per page, without Office. | ||
| Presentation | PowerPoint (listed as PowerPoint (Microsoft)) | A presentation as a group of slides, with a cue per click. | PowerPoint |
| Text & overlay | Background | A moving backdrop as a source in a scene, with its own designs. | Background |
| Text & overlay | Logo | A logo in a corner of the picture that stays until a cue changes it; chosen per cue. | Logo |
| Text & overlay | Name plates (listed as Persons) | Lower thirds: a cue with a name, a title and an organisation. | Name plates |
| Text & overlay | Playout.Studio | Songs and people from a publisher, with the design that publisher intended. | Playout.Studio |
| Text & overlay | Songs | Song cues: a group with a cue per verse, its own song page and its own design. | Songs |
| Text & overlay | Subtitles | Subtitles over the picture, with their own design. | Subtitles |
| Control room | Automation | Rules that make one playout follow another. | Automation |
| Control room | ATEM (Blackmagic) | The vision mixer decides when a playout may run. | ATEM |
Which of these your installation has depends on what was installed — see your licence key. A part of the documentation you do not have is a module you do not have.
Engines and sources
Two of these words mean different things, and it is worth knowing which is which before you go looking for a switch.
An engine owns a kind of material: Songs owns songs, Name plates owns people. Without the engine that kind does not exist at all.
A source supplies material on top of an engine — Playout.Studio does, for songs and for people. It has no window of its own; it appears as an extra Source inside the window the engine already provides. With its engine switched off there is no such window, so the source simply does not appear.
What they change in this documentation
Three things in the base program only become useful with a module:
- The Overlay column in the cue list: filled in by modules; empty in a base installation.
- The overlay output: the playout carries only the layer that is laid over the picture, which is empty unless a module supplies graphics.
- Templates and the designer: the mechanism is the program’s, and which designers you see depends on your modules.
Everything else in the base program works with no modules installed at all.
The quick answer to “why do I not have that button”
Because that module is not installed, or not switched on. It is never a setting hidden somewhere else — see Settings → Modules.