How Deckboy compares

Deckboy is a cue-based video playback deck: a playlist of clips, slides, pages, cameras and feeds that go to air when the operator says so, out to screens, NDI, SDI and streams, while it records. These are the eleven tools it sits beside on a show: first what they cost and where they run, then what they do.

Deckboy’s current release, v0.99.422, also includes a pattern tracker, sequences on one button, phone control, a fixture patch, live captions, picture scopes that follow the source’s frame rate, five example shows, and a warp monitor that follows the selected output. Its Windows HDR path carries PQ/HLG feeds with graphics to ST 2110, SRT/enhanced RTMP and recording. See Deckboy’s current specifications and platform limits.

Feature by feature

Sixteen things a show reaches for. Deckboy does every one of them, in the free download, on all three systems. Beside each is which of the other eleven list it on their own website or README.

One show file, across your machines

Deckboy runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Build a running order on your laptop, then carry the show file and its media to the machine at the venue. Clips, slides and live sources share one cue list, with the same transport and remote controls.

Then there is the second machine. Most of the others are licensed by the computer, so a bigger rig means more licences, and several are rented by the week or the month, or buy a year of updates and then ask again. Deckboy goes on the main machine, the backup and the laptop in the flight case for the same price: nothing. QLab has a free tier, but it only runs on a Mac, and the features a real show reaches for are licensed or rented by the day on top.

Deckboy is free. Not a trial, not a watermark, not a feature-limited tier with the useful half behind a licence server: the whole application, on all three operating systems, under the GPL. The spare machine in the flight case can run it too, and so can the one you are reading this on.

What most of them do not give you

Not "does it better" — mostly does not have. Every item here is in the free download, on all three platforms:

• Your own VST3 effects and instruments, inside a cue. The reverb you already own or the channel strip your mix is built around sits in that cue's chain beside Deckboy's own effects, with the plugin's controls on the rows beneath it and its settings saved in the show. A plugin that cannot keep up with its block is taken out and reported, rather than clicking through the PA.
• Any window on the machine, as a cue. A score bug, a timer, a rehearsal tool, the spreadsheet somebody insists on — at the window's own resolution whatever the display scaling is, following it as it moves, with anything in front of it kept out of shot, so the operator carries on working on the same box. How that works.
• A web page as a cue, rendered inside the programme rather than in a browser window you have to keep on top.
• Effects that are instruments rather than filters: schlieren imaging, Chladni figures, a real wave equation, crystal grain growth, retinal persistence, structure-tensor grain flow — and two that cross between picture and sound in both directions.
• A test-pattern generator and a screen-check tool in the same application that plays the show, so the wall can be proved before anyone arrives.
• It runs with no sound card at all — a rack PC feeding a video wall opens, plays and puts a picture out.
• One show file on Windows, macOS and Linux. Use the same running order across your show and backup machines.

Where Deckboy fits

• The job is playing video cues, reliably, on the night. A playlist of clips with trim, fades, loops and hold-last-frame, hardware-accelerated decode, and a cue that knows how long it has left, and seventeen cue-to-cue transition styles — cut, crossfade, dips, four pushes, four wipes, an iris and four procedural styles. If a client sends a file that will not play, it converts in place without leaving the application; if they send one mastered too quietly, it normalises to a chosen −16, −23 or −24 LUFS target. That is the day job, and everything below is what happens after it is handled.
• The show machine is a PC, or a mixture. "QLab for Windows" and "Mitti for Windows" are common searches for a reason. Deckboy runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux from the same show file.
• The signal has to leave in more than one shape. NDI, SRT, RTMP, Blackmagic SDI and SMPTE ST 2110 can run at once, so the playback machine often solves the conversion problem on the day as well.
• It has to be driven from a surface, or from the lighting desk. A Stream Deck plugin and a Bitfocus Companion module, plus OSC, MIDI, Art-Net and LTC timecode. MIDI Show Control lets an Eos or a grandMA fire cues by number, which is how a theatre keeps video on the same GO as the lights. MIDI is in every download.
• Slides are part of the show. PDF, PowerPoint and Keynote import as one cue per slide with speaker notes, and presenter and prompter views are output types of their own. Most cue players do not handle slides at all.
• Something on the machine has to go to air. A window on the show PC can be a cue — a score bug, a timer, a rehearsal tool, the spreadsheet somebody insists on — at the window’s own resolution whatever the display scaling is, following it as it moves, with anything in front of it kept out of shot, so the operator can carry on working on the same box. A web page can be a cue too, rendered inside the programme rather than in a browser window you have to keep on top. Most cue players send you to a capture card or a second machine for either.
• The sound needs to follow the picture. Five of the twenty-three per-cue audio effects read the frame they are playing under — its brightness, where it sits in the raster, how long it has left. A plug-in in a desk receives samples and nothing else, so it cannot. Two effects cross the other way as well: databend plays the picture through an audio chain and paints what comes back, and audioprint draws the sound the deck has just played through the picture.
• Budget is zero. GPL-3.0, and nothing phones home.