Session Name

A name box for your session is listed above the options pane at right. You can click in this field to modify the default name (which is the current date) using the keyboard.

Session Settings

Video Settings

Designate your local video standard in the Video Settings group. Select NTSC or PAL video according to your locale. Then continue to choose between the following options:

• Choose traditional landscape, square or vertical Aspect for the session.

• Select a video format (such as 1080/59.94p) from the list below.
  

• Having made your selections, you would normally click the Start Session button at lower right to launch the Live Desktop. But first, let’s explore a few other features of the Home Page.

Eject

An Eject button at the top-right corner of the page allows you to safely disconnect external drives. (Drives can also be ejected from the Live Desktop.)

NDI KVM

KVM is an abbreviation for keyboard, video and mouse. There is an NDI KVM menu just left of the Eject button. This feature leverages the NDI® protocol to provide superb KVM functionality, giving you complete control your system from anywhere on the network where you can run the Windows version of NDI Studio Monitor.

To enable this feature, go to the Launch screen’s Home page, and use the titlebar NDI KVM menu to select which operating mode you wish to apply, choosing between Monitor Only or Full Control (which passes mouse and keyboard operations to the remote system).

Use the Security option in this menu to apply NDI Group control to limit who on your network can view the NDI KVM output from the host system. To view the output from the remote system and control it, select the machine’s NDI output in the Studio Monitor application supplied with the free NDI Tool pack, and enable the KVM button overlaid at upper-left when you move the mouse pointer over the screen.

You can select to view or control the User Interface or another Multiview, or both with multiple instances of Studio Monitor open on the receiving unit.

Note, too, that this feature gives you a great way to multiple your Multiviews around your studio or campus. You can even use these displays as video sources for another NDI-enabled system. System audio also passes to the receiver, and you can copy and paste text between the two systems. With the User Interface running full-screen in Studio Monitor on a receiving system, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that you’re actually controlling a remote system. Even touch is supported, meaning you can display the interface on a remote Microsoft Surface™ system or other touchscreen for portable control over your entire live production system.

Open (Session)‌

If there are existing sessions on the system, the main menu at left on the Home Page defaults to Open. Clicking Open causes the Sessions List to appear at right. This pane lists all sessions stored on currently mounted storage media.

Available sessions are grouped under the names of the storage volume. The listing shows the Session Name and Format for each session, on each drive. Let’s look at the Sessions List briefly before we open a session.

Auto-Launch Session

Normally, a few seconds after launch, Viz Vectar automatically reloads the last session you were in, allowing you to basically power up into the last session unattended. You can, of course, interrupt this process by selecting another session or pressing any key. Advanced users can modify this behavior, either by designating a specific session to auto-launch irrespective of the most recent manual selection, or by disabling the feature entirely.

To do this, add a new value named auto_launch_session to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VIZRT\XD\ADMIN SCREEN

If you set the value for this key to the name of an existing session that session automatically opens on launch (instead of the last open session). If the specified session does not exist, the auto-launch feature does not proceed, by setting auto_launch_session to “_Disabled” (or some other suitable string) rather than a real session name you can effectively disable auto-launch.

Context Menu

Right-click a session name to open a context menu with two items listed in it: Rename and Delete. Be aware that the Delete function should be used thoughtfully, as it cannot be undone.

All content stored in the named session’s folders are deleted, including imported clips, images and titles, any clips captured to the default session folders.

Restore Session Backup

In another section of the Launch Screen (Session Page>Manage) there is a feature that allows you to back up the current session to another storage volume.

The Restore Session Backup link at the bottom of the Session List (for each drive) is provided to compliment this feature. To restore a session you have previously archived, click Restore Backup Session, and use the file explorer provided to select a SessionBackup file.

Click Open, and a progress gauge tracks the restoration process. In due course, the newly restored session is added to the Session List for the specified drive.

Opening a Session

Click or tap a name in the Session List to launch that session and display the Sessions Screen.

Administrator Mode

Selecting Administrator Mode from the Shutdown menu on the Home Page icon ring exits the live production environment, and takes you to a new screen that offers various functions and settings having to do with system maintenance and management.

Defragment All Drives

Over the course of lengthy use, data on hard drives devoted to audio and video storage tends to become fragmented, which degrades playback performance. Defragmenting corrects this condition.

You could think of your hard drive as being like a shelf in your library. As time goes along, the shelf fills with books. Some are quite large, others smaller – just as media files may be larger or smaller. As time goes along, you decide to remove books you have finished using from the shelf, in order to make room for new additions. You remove a book here, another there, opening up gaps between the remaining books. This makes some shelf space available by creating gaps between the remaining books. Sadly, another large new book may be too big to fit in any one of the gaps.

A foolish librarian might tear the new book into smaller sections, just big enough to fit into the open spaces on the shelf. This would obviously be unwise. When you wish to refer to the book later, you will waste a lot of time locating and assembling its sections before you can access it. How much better it would be to slide the remaining books closer together, combining all the free space first. Unfortunately, computers are foolish librarians. They tend to want to fill in all the gaps in their storage areas, even if this requires literally shredding your book (in reality, large video files from your sessions) into tiny fragments.

Defragmenting the storage volume has the same effect as sliding the books together, resulting in one or more larger gaps. The result is that the system doesn’t have to frantically search in many different places to assemble the video streams from your recorded session.

• Backup or Restore System: Provides a complete set of Backup and Restore features are available to help in the event of an unforeseen problem. We strongly encourage you to protect against any unforeseen occurrence by using the Backup feature soon after registering.

• Set Live Panel Password: Configures the password for access to the web pages and network control features provided by the unit.

• Command Window: Opens a system command line window, allowing you (among other things) to use advanced commands to manage your system and network settings.

• Swap Primary Monitor: Shows the Live Destkop on the monitor designated as primary.