Show canvases on screens
You decide when a canvas is shown. The connected displays decide whether it appears in a window or full screen on a display. See Canvases, surfaces and displays.
First, add the screen as an output. Then connect a canvas to it on Patch. See Add an output and Patch the show.
The Canvases pane does not connect outputs. Its Patched to card only lists the outputs that play the selected canvas in this venue, and Open Patch → takes you to Patch. See Create a canvas.
A screen output is something you create and name, separate from whatever screen happens to be connected. So you can describe a venue's screens in the office and arrive with the canvases already assigned.
Show or hide a canvas
Three controls do the same job and always agree with each other:
- The Outputs menu in the menu bar shows each canvas as an item with a check mark. The item for a disabled canvas is grey.
- The eye icon in the lower-right corner of each canvas tile in the outputs strip.
- Show Output in the tile's right-click menu. During a show this is the fastest, because the eye icon is small.
Hiding a canvas does not stop playback, and when you show it again the picture comes back immediately.
Hiding and disabling are different. A hidden canvas keeps playing and its preview stays live, while a disabled canvas stops completely. See Create a canvas.
Venue mode
When a canvas is shown and one of its assigned displays is connected, ArenaDirector shows the canvas full screen on that display, with nothing to drag or configure at event time. If you unplug the screen and plug it back in, the canvas returns to full screen on its own.
A hidden canvas stays hidden when its display is connected, because venue mode only works while the canvas is shown.
Each cable on Patch has a Connected switch. On plans above Free, every connected screen with a connected cable shows the canvas at the same time. To stop one screen and keep its cable, switch Connected off. See Patch the show.
Full screen or window
Select the screen on Patch. Under Show as, select Full screen or Window. Window opens the canvas in a window you can move, even when the screen is connected.
Floating window
A canvas opens in a floating window you can move when:
- You show the canvas, and its assigned display is not connected.
- You show the canvas, and it has no assigned display.
When the assigned display is connected later, the window closes and the canvas goes full screen.
Keep a floating window in front
When you prepare a show on a laptop, a floating window drops behind the main window as soon as you click the main window. To stop this:
- In the outputs strip, right-click the canvas tile.
- Select Always on Top.
The app remembers this setting for each canvas across restarts.
Always on Top applies only to floating windows. It is not available for a canvas that already fills its display in venue mode.
Read the outputs strip
The outputs strip is above the status bar. Select Outputs in the status bar to open or close it. While it is closed, the status bar shows a chip for each output that needs attention. Each canvas has a tile with a small live copy of its picture. The tile stays live even when the canvas is hidden or its display is not connected.
Each tile has the shape of its canvas: a wide canvas gets a wide tile and a tall canvas a narrow one. A perimeter board is split into rows stacked one above the other so you can read it. If the tiles do not fit, scroll the strip left and right.
When a sequence owns a canvas, the tile shows a label with the sequence name. When a hot button takes the canvas, the tile's border turns amber.
To get more space, select Outputs in the status bar to close the strip, and select it again to reopen it.