Framing a source

Every picture input has its own framing (size, position, crop and rotation), independent of the source itself and of every other input. Open an input’s settings and go to its Picture tab.

Scaling

When a picture is not the canvas’s shape (a portrait phone, a 4:3 camera, a square logo), Scaling decides how the two meet. Fit shows all of it, with bars at the sides or top and bottom. Fill covers the whole canvas and crops what spills over. Stretch makes it the canvas’s shape, distorting it. Show setting follows the choice in Show Settings, which is Fit unless you change it. The choice applies at once, on Program too, and Media and Image inputs also have it in the Media panel. Size, position and crop below then work on the picture as scaled.

Move and resize

Drag the blue frame on the canvas to move the picture, or a corner to resize it. The frame outlines the picture itself: a square picture under Fit has a square frame, however wide the canvas. Every setting is in the column beside the preview (below it in a Composite layer’s window), in sections that each have their own reset button. Every value also has a slider and a field, for typing an exact number. Width and Height run from 5% to 200% of the canvas; a lock between the two keeps the picture’s proportions as you resize, on by default. X and Y position the picture’s centre, and Rotation turns it up to 180° either way. The reset button beside Position and size puts the picture back to fill the canvas.

The canvas is drawn a little smaller than the editor’s drawing area, which grows when a picture reaches further, so its whole frame and all four resize handles stay in view however large or far off the canvas it is. During a drag it holds still, and fits again when you let go.

Each section of settings opens and closes from its title, and the editor remembers which you keep closed. A closed section says what it is set to, such as “Rounded 20 %, border 4 px”, so nothing in use is hidden.

Crop

Top, Left, Right and Bottom trim the source’s own edges before it is sized, positioned and rotated. It is useful for cutting down a letterboxed source, or removing a camera’s own on-screen display.

Corner rounding and border

Corner rounding rounds the picture’s corners, from square at 0% to fully round ends at 100%, a pill shape; a square picture at 100% is a circle, so crop a picture square to make a round one. Border draws a line inside the picture’s edge, following its corners, up to 54 pixels thick on a 1080-line canvas; its Border colour can be see-through. Both apply to the picture as it is shown, in Program, the preview and the multiview, and to a Composite’s layers the same way. Neither moves with an animation: a looping picture keeps its corners and border as you set them.

When it takes effect

Colour correction applies live, as fast as you move a slider. Framing does not: the editor’s own preview follows your drag as you make it, but if that input is on Program, the change only reaches air the moment you let go of the slider or the drag. Typing a number into a field commits immediately.

Looping between two framings

Turn on Animate, in the Loop section, and the picture eases back and forth between a start framing and an end framing, forever, while it plays. Set Duration for one leg of the loop, from a tenth of a second to ten minutes. Move the picture to where you want one end and press Set Start; move it again and press Set End. Each stays lit once set, however far the picture moves afterward. A trash icon appears once a loop is configured, to remove it.

A source’s own loop only plays while two things are both on: its own Animate switch, and a show-wide Animations button beside AutoDirector, the one place that stops every source’s loop at once, without hunting each one down. That button lights up once any source’s loop is both configured and switched on; click it to turn all of them off in one press. Starting or stopping one source’s loop, or every loop at once, can also go on a hotkey or Stream Deck button.

Composite layers are framed the same way, from their own Size & Position… button, but do not loop: the loop belongs to an input itself, not to how it is placed inside a Composite.

Framing presets

A framing preset keeps a whole framing (position, size, crop, rotation, corners and border) to put back later, on the same source or any other, or on any Composite layer. Frame a picture as you want it, then press Save as Preset… at the top of its settings and give it a name. Presets belong to the Show, one list for all of them, in Show Settings under Framing Presets. Apply Preset, beside it, frames the picture you are editing with one, at once.

Recall one from a hotkey or a rule with the Recall framing preset action, a Stream Deck Framing Preset key, or Bitfocus Companion. Each says which source or layer to frame, which preset, and the glide: how long the picture takes to move there, easing in and out; at 0 it jumps. A recall copies the preset, so changing the preset later changes the next recall, not a picture framed with it already. A hotkey or key is lit while its source is framed exactly as its preset, so the one recalled last shows. A source that loops keeps looping: the loop goes on deciding its position and size, and the preset’s crop, rotation, corners and border show at once.

In Framing Presets, rename a preset, drag one up or down the list, Update from any source’s or layer’s framing as it is now, or delete one. A preset’s number is its place in the list, and Companion and the control API can recall one by it; moving a preset renumbers it, but a hotkey or key keeps the preset it was given. Deleting one a hotkey or rule still uses asks first, and those then do nothing until given another.

Next

Colour correction and grading, the other half of what an input’s card opens, and Composite inputs for framing several sources into one.