StageFlow can get kind of abstract with its Looks, Focals and UV shifting magic. That’s why there is a helpful Preview to help you get a visual reference of what you’re doing.

Enabling the Preview

To get a Preview going, first enable Texture Sharing via Spout (or Syphon on a Mac) under Composition Output Sharing in Resolume’s Output menu. Then hit Preview > Windowed in StageFlow.

You will see a nice little preview of your content playing on your stage, using the layout of your slices as defined StageFlow. As long as your content is nicely formatted to your input map, the preview will show you exactly how your content will look on the stage.

The Preview always floats on top of other windows, including Resolume. So you can keep it open during show instead of Resolume’s own composition view.

Troubleshooting

If you see a grey/black transparency grid, it means you don’t have the Composition Spout or Syphon output enabled yet. To fix that, in Arena, select Output > Composition output sharing > Texture sharing (Spout / Syphon ).

If you see black, it either means you’re a noob and not playing any content yet, or more likely, that StageFlow has problems displaying the texture.

In that last case, you’re almost certainly on a PC with both a dedicated and integrated GPU. So the first thing you want to make sure is that StageFlow is running on the Nvidia GPU. Open Nvidia Control Panel and go to Manage 3D settings. In the Program Settings tab, select StageFlow from the list and set it to use the ‘High-Performance NVIDIA Processor’. Restart StageFlow and you should be all set.

If that’s still a no-go, you might have a deeper problem. At this point, you need to break out the big guns and download the Spout tools. Then, using Spout’s own Demo Receiver application, see if you can get Resolume’s composition output to show up. If you can’t, Spout is not working correctly on your computer and it’s best to get in touch with the kind folks at Spout. If you can see Resolume’s composition output in Demo Receiver, something is wrong with StageFlow and you can get in touch with me via the form below.