What is available
DECK lets you design your own screens. Program, cameras, lyrics, clock, timer and messages, placed and stacked your way. Any display can show it, and NDI Send can pick it as its source.
DECK is available on MAX and above, alongside the Output Matrix.
What changes
Until now, every screen in the Output Matrix picked from a set of built-in sources: the Stage Clone of the projector, the Stage Monitor for singers, a Live Camera Feed, the Multiverse wall, and the Pulpit-View.
Those cover most rooms. Most, not all.
A pulpit that wants the clock huge and the notes small. A stage monitor where the band wants the next line pinned at the bottom. A foyer screen showing the service, a welcome line and nothing else. A children's room showing the camera on the front and the lyrics beneath it.
Each of those was one request away from being built... and there will always be one more request. So instead of building every layout, I built the tool that builds layouts.
How it works
Open Settings › DECK. Start from a template. The templates are named after the Output Matrix sources you already know: Stage Clone, Stage Monitor, Live Camera Feed, Multiverse and Pulpit-View. Change what your room needs.
Place widgets on a canvas:
- The program, exactly as the projector shows it.
- Cameras, following the live one or pinned to a specific phone.
- Lyrics, the current line, the next line, or both.
- A clock, a timer and messages to the pulpit.
- Text, images and boxes for anything else.
Arrange them like a slide. Drag, resize, snap to edges and centres, align and distribute, lock layers, undo. Choose a 16:9, 16:10, 4:3 or portrait canvas.
Put it on a screen. In the Output Matrix, each saved design is listed by name. Pick it for any display, the same way you pick any other source.
Send it by NDI. NDI Send can pick a design as its source, so a streaming PC or a video call can receive a layout made for it.
Smart about what it shows
A widget can be set to show only when it matters: only when a song is up, only when a verse is up, only when you are live, only when a message is waiting. A pulpit screen can stay quiet until the preacher has something to read.
A display showing a design only connects to the cameras that design actually uses. A pulpit screen with no camera on it does not add load to your network.
Who benefits
Churches with a specific room problem. The one screen no preset ever fit.
Preachers and worship leaders. A pulpit and stage screen built around what they actually look at.
Anyone sending NDI to a stream PC. A layout made for the stream, not borrowed from the projector.
Being straight about it
It is a layout tool, not a graphics studio. No animation timelines, no motion templates. Dedicated graphics software still does far more if that is what you need.
It is MAX and above. It lives with the Output Matrix, which is where multiple displays come in.
A design is only as readable as you make it. Small text on a far screen is still small text. Test from where the person will stand.
Start from a template. A blank canvas is slower than changing the nearest template.
What I learned
The first Output Matrix picker listed "DECK" as a category, and the actual design names only appeared after choosing it. When I tested it myself, I read it as "my saved design is not here". If I read it that way, a volunteer will too. Each design is now its own entry, listed by name.
Small thing. It is always the small things.
Practical notes
Design at the screen's real shape. A portrait TV beside the stage wants a portrait canvas.
Name designs after where they go. "Pulpit", "Foyer", "Kids room". The Output Matrix lists them by name.
Walk to the screen and read it before the service, from where the person using it will be.
Leave the status dot on for screens nobody watches closely. An amber dot tells you a display has lost touch before a person does.
Available on MAX and above.