Working With Streamer Windows

Streamers renders visual cues, such as streamers and punches, into transparent windows that sit on top of your sequencer's video window, or anywhere else you need them rendered. On first launch, Streamers creates one window, and displays a preview frame so that you can see where the window is.

Opening and Closing Windows

To create a new window, hit Cmd-N, or choose "New Streamer Window" from the Window menu.

To close the currently active window, choose "Close Window" from the Window menu, or hit Cmd-W. You can also close all windows by hitting Cmd-Ctrl-W, or choosing "Close All Windows".

Note: Streamers saves the display preferences—such as window position, free-time clock position and size, and letterbox setup—separately for each window. These preferences are stored even after the window is closed. So if you create a second window, position it, close it, and later choose "New Streamer Window", Streamers will in fact re-create the second window, with all the settings intact from its previous incarnation.

The Preview Frame

When a new window is created, it will appear as a translucent blue frame. This is to help position the window over your sequencer's video window. To hide or show preview frames, hit "P" or select "Show/Hide Preview Frames" from the Display menu. This will toggle the preview frames for all open windows.

Remember: Even when the preview frame is hidden, the streamer windows are still present; they're just invisible until Streamers receives a MIDI event, when each window will render the corresponding visual cue.

Positioning Windows

The fastest way to position the streamer window is to drag it with the mouse; to resize the window, drag the lower right-hand corner. To quickly resize the window to fill an entire screen, drag the window onto the desired screen and double-click in the preview frame. Note: Streamer windows can only be positioned with the mouse while the preview frame is visible.

To position the window with more precision, use the arrow keys to nudge it one pixel at a time. Holding Shift while using the arrow keys will nudge it in larger increments.

Likewise, the window can be resized one pixel at a time by holding down Option and using the arrow keys. With both Option and Shift held down, the arrow keys will resize the window in larger increments.

Letterboxing

Streamers can cover up the margins of a video with a letterbox effect, obscuring any unnecessary information such as timecode burns and video window title bars. To activate letterboxing, simply mouse over any edge of the preview frame. When a pink line appears at the edge, drag it into the frame to set the letterbox width for that edge. To remove letterboxing, just drag the edge of the letterbox area back out to the edge of the window.