Using Marquee Source Layout Controller

This is an interface designed using Medialon Marquee, with the purpose of providing an easy-to-use touch-screen interface to interact with windows on a Compere canvas, easily adding standardised matrix groups of windows, saving preset arrangements to be recalled from a list. Effectively it offers a simple way of laying out a canvas and sending external control messages to Compere, without having to know how.

The working space of the controller contains the canvas of the connected Compere project group, and any active canvas windows. The central block is the canvas and any background NDI feeds (in this example, there are four). Into this space, dynamic media windows are added, positioned and scaled, on or off the canvas. Any part of a window that is on the canvas will be seen on the actual display.

The controller only interacts with Compere windows that are connected with Marquee in Manager.

The first row of light grey buttons represent grid arrangements for groups of windows. Up to 8 of these ‘window groups’ can be defined in the project folder \Plugins\JugglerPlugin\JugglerPlugin.xml (see window cluster arrangements).

The next rows show the available (connected) window resources that can be added to the canvas. Like the background, they too will show thumbnails of their NDI feeds, coming through the Juggler system.

‘NDI’ shows when an NDI feed name has not yet been added to the variables in Medialon Manager. Once named, the actual media will be seen.

Interface Modes

The Layout Controller operates in either Preview or Live mode. In Preview mode, changes that are made are not communicated to the Juggler system straight away. Arrangements can be made, presets created and saved, and only when switched into live mode is the arrangement sent to the Juggler system.

The first function button, top left, toggles between the two (Live On/Off):

Button Tooltips

To see the function tooltips, press the [T] tooltip button on the left toolbar. This creates an overlay describing the functions (as below). Press again to turn them off. They do not disable any functionality.

Toolbar Buttons

	Select multiple windows. Use this to move or resize several windows at once.
	Remove the selected window from the canvas. This removes the window, but does not delete anything.
	Clear canvas. This removes all windows from the canvas.
	Move canvas. Use this to move the whole canvas within the viewing area without changing any window positions.
	View window 1:1 ratio. (full scale, instead of as a thumbnail at a zoom ratio).
	View all windows. A zoom setting that brings all windows into view.
	Reset window to native size (resolution). Set windows to resolutions as defined in the Manager variables.
	Fit window to canvas. Use this to bring all windows into complete view on the display.
	Lock/Unlock windows. Prevents selected windows being dragged around
	Zoom in. Scales the view.
	Zoom out. Scales the view.
	Touch mode. Brings up an onscreen keyboard when required for input.
	Tooltip on/off. View all tooltips as an overlay.

Window Toolbar

Position
Windows can be dragged around, or you can specify their x and y coordinates here.

Size
Windows can be dragged to size, or you can specify their size here. When scaling, the aspect ratio can be unlocked by clicking the padlock icon (it is orange when locked). Other buttons down the left hand size are also available to reset, fit, and to bring windows into view when zooming. Windows have native resolutions and media will be scaled to the window size, so keeping aspect ratio matters.

Align
Select multiple windows and click to align.

Layer
Select a window to send it to back, front, or to increment the layer level.

Presets menu

Presets are window arrangements that you can create and reuse. As presets are created they are added to the list on the right. Only one can be live at a time, it replaces what is on the Marquee canvas, and any one can be selected. Creating Presets is covered below.