Adding an overlay

An overlay is an HTML package: text, a logo, a ticker, whatever it is designed to show, with a small set of controls you edit without touching its design. InterDirector comes with 25, from lower thirds, logos and a QR code to a schedule, a standings table, a ticker and rolling credits. You can also bring your own.

Add one

Press Add Input… and choose Overlay, then press the Package button to open the gallery: a picture of every built-in overlay, under Lower thirds, Logos and badges, Text and quotes, Data and tables, Titles and full screen and Scrollers and credits. Type in Search overlays to find one by its name or by what it is for, and click a picture to choose it, or move with the arrow keys and press Return. Your Own Package…, the last tile, browses for a folder of your own, and shows the thumbnail.png in it if it has one.

Press Add and the overlay becomes a card, the same as any other input. A picture in the gallery shows the design with sample text; what yours says, you see in Preview.

Edit its text and settings

Each package exposes its own controls on its card (text, numbers, colours, choices, on and off, images), and editing them updates the overlay live, without touching what it looks like underneath. Any colour can be see-through: the colour picker has an opacity control, so a backdrop or a bar can let the picture show through.

To change the package itself later, its settings have the same Package button and gallery. The overlay switches as soon as you choose, with nothing to apply, and the settings stay open; if it is on air, you are asked first, since switching replaces what viewers see. Reload Package picks up changes you made to the files.

Take it to air

Load the overlay into Preview, then press the Overlay button under the transition controls, not Cut or Fade, which are for the picture. It reads Overlay On once it is on air, and pressing it again takes it down. It stays up across every switch of the picture behind it, so a lower third over a rotation of cameras runs unattended.

Layering more than one

If you are running more than one overlay at once, the Layer control beside the Overlay button (1 to 4) decides which sits on top when two overlap.

Next

Binding data to an overlay, so a package’s text updates itself from a spreadsheet instead of you typing it in. Building an overlay, to make a package of your own from a starter package.