The ones that actually get asked before a show.
Deckboy v0.99.420 adds sequences on DASH buttons, with timed waits and manual GO, plus TAKE ALL to take the selected cue on every playlist at once. Five example shows build from a picture on screen to a one-button show, with real footage. There is also the haze theme and a master fader that settles on exactly 100%.
See the release highlights · Watch the current demos
For most shows, H.264 in an .mp4. Every current computer decodes it on the graphics chip — Direct3D 11 on Windows, VideoToolbox on macOS, VA-API on Linux — so it costs the processor very little and the files stay small. HEVC is just as good on any machine whose GPU decodes it, and on Windows 10-bit HEVC stays 10-bit.
When several videos play at the same time — layers, a multiview, one clip per output — use HAP. It skips the decoder entirely and every frame is a keyframe, so cueing into the middle of a clip lands straight on the frame. The price is disk space: about four times the size of the same clip in H.264. Make HAP files with any encoder that supports it.
ProRes and DNxHR play, but they decode on the processor rather than the graphics chip, so they cost more CPU than H.264 or HAP. They are the formats to record in if the footage is going on to an edit.
Video: .mp4, .mov, .mkv, .avi, .webm, .m4v, .mpg, .mpeg, .wmv, .flv, .ogv, .ts, .m2ts and .mxf. Stills: .png, .jpg, .webp, .bmp, .gif, .tif, .avif, .heic and .heif. Audio: .mp3, .wav, .flac, .aac, .ogg, .m4a, .opus, .wma and .aiff. Slides: PDF, one cue per page, and PowerPoint, Keynote and OpenDocument decks, converted by PowerPoint, Keynote or LibreOffice on the machine. FFmpeg comes with every download.
Yes — the programme records as it plays, while it also goes to every other output. In H.264 or HEVC (.mp4) for sharing, or ProRes Proxy, LT, 422, HQ and 4444 and DNxHR LB, SQ, HQ and HQX (.mov) for an edit, at any size and frame rate, stamped with timecode and split into files by length or size.
Yes. On Windows, PQ or HLG files and live stream cues can feed an HDR output, with SDR graphics layered at 203 nits by default. Send HDR over ST 2110, SRT or enhanced RTMP, or record it in PQ or HLG. Enhanced RTMP needs an HEVC-capable server and receiver. HDR input on macOS and Linux currently converts to SDR; HDR window output there is unverified. NDI and Web Monitor stay SDR, and DeckLink HDR output still needs testing on a physical card. See the HDR specifications for the measured setup and requirements.
Yes. In Settings > Network > PHONE & TABLET, scan the pairing QR code or connect with the passphrase. TAKE, transport, fader, cues, editable DASH, tracker and show controls share one page. BLACKOUT and REC require a hold. With Tailscale installed on both devices, use the From anywhere pairing address to connect from outside the local network. The separate Web Monitor carries programme picture and sound.
No. There is no account, no licence server and no activation, so nothing can refuse to start because the venue's network is down. Deckboy only uses the network for the things you switch on — NDI, streams, OSC, NMOS — and for an update check that stays off unless you turn it on.
Windows 64-bit; macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon and Intel; and Linux x86-64, as an AppImage for Ubuntu 22.04 and anything newer, a tarball or a Flatpak. One show file opens on all three. The full list of formats and outputs is on the specifications page.
Through a Dante Virtual Soundcard, yes. Each deck can open an audio device with up to 128 channels, and each cue can be routed onto any of them with a crosspoint matrix — programme to the PA, click to the monitors, stems to wherever they are wanted.
Deckboy sends and receives NDI on Windows, macOS and Linux, at no cost. An NDI source can be added as a cue and played like any other clip, and any output can send NDI while also sending SRT, RTMP, Blackmagic SDI or SMPTE ST 2110 — simultaneously, not instead of each other.
Yes — Deckboy hosts VST3 effects and instruments inside a cue's audio chain, alongside its own effects and in whatever order you put them. Add a Plugin effect and pick from what is installed on the machine. Instruments are played from the computer keyboard, a MIDI keyboard, or a controller over the network — the same three ways Deckboy plays its own chip synth.
Four of the plugin's parameters appear on Deckboy's own rows beneath it, under the
plugin's names for them, and everything else the plugin was set to is saved with the
show. There is no plugin editor window — the controls are Deckboy's rows,
not the plugin's interface. Plugins are opened when a cue is prepared rather than
between two buffers, and one that cannot keep up with its block is removed from the
chain and reported instead of clicking through the PA. A show opened on a machine that
does not have one keeps the slot and its settings and names the missing plugin. Run
--plugins to see what a machine has and where it looked.
Neither. NDI is in every download. What a machine needs is the free NDI Tools runtime from the people who make NDI — Deckboy loads it if it is there and says NDI is unavailable if it is not, rather than failing quietly mid-show. Nothing is bundled that is not ours to give, and nothing is charged for.
Add a window cue and pick the window. The application arrives at its own full resolution whatever your display scaling is set to, scaled to fit the frame, follows the window as it moves and resizes, and is not interrupted by anything in front of it — so the operator can keep working on the same machine without it going to air. Rehearsal tools, score bugs, timers and the spreadsheet somebody insists on all become cues with the same fades and effects as a clip.
How to put a window on the big screen · Manual: Cue Types
Yes. A browser cue renders the page inside the programme, not in a browser window on your desktop, so there is no window to keep on top and nothing to reveal by accident. It fades, takes effects and goes out over every output at once — screen, NDI, SRT, SDI — like any other cue.
Import the clip, set the cue to loop, and send the deck to a fullscreen output on the
display you want. When a cue ends Deckboy holds the last frame rather than revealing a
desktop, which is the failure everybody has seen in a foyer. There is also a soak mode
(--soak) that logs memory and stalls, so a machine can be proven before it is
left unattended for a week.
For a screen that only ever plays, Deckboy Mini does the same job from one
command, with no desk on screen: deckboy-mini clip.mp4 --loop (in Windows PowerShell,
.\deckboy-mini clip.mp4 --loop from its folder). It ships
beside Deckboy and starts happily from a login script.
Manual: Playlists, Loop, Shuffle & Cue Endings · Manual: Deckboy Mini
Yes — there is a Stream Deck plugin and a Bitfocus Companion module. Both poll Deckboy's status, so a key carries tally, transport state, output health and a countdown: the button knows whether the cue it fired actually went live, rather than just hoping. OSC, MIDI, Art-Net and LTC timecode work too.
Yes. Deckboy answers MIDI Show Control, which is how theatres keep lighting,
sound and video on one GO. An ETC Eos, a grandMA or any desk that sends MSC fires GO with
a cue number, and Deckboy takes the cue with that number. MSC cue numbers are text, so
12.4.1 works as well as 12. STOP, RESUME, LOAD, ALL_OFF and
RESET are honoured, and so is MIDI Machine Control. The device ID match is exact, so
Deckboy ignores a message meant for another device in the rig. MIDI, and so MSC, is in
the Windows and Linux downloads; the current macOS download does not include it.
Yes, and this is the thing Deckboy does that the other cue players do not do at all. A PDF, PowerPoint or Keynote deck imports as one cue per slide, sitting in the playlist next to the video and the audio, fired by the same keys, the same Stream Deck, the same timecode.
Every page is rendered once on the way in, by the platform’s own engine —
Edge’s on Windows, Preview’s on macOS, pdftoppm on Linux — so
during the show a slide is just a picture. Nothing depends on a document program still being
open, still being on the right slide, or still being in the foreground.
Speaker notes come in with the deck. Presenter view is an output type of its own, so it takes its own display: live slide, the one before, the one after, the notes and a clock. So is a mirrored prompter that scrolls at a pace you set. The alternative most rooms are still using is a second laptop and a long cable.
PowerPoint's own export flattens builds and drops transitions — that is the export, not the deck. So a presentation that genuinely has to animate runs in PowerPoint and goes to air as a window cue: you keep every build, and it still fires from the cue list with the same fades as everything else.
Convert it in place, without leaving the application, with GPU encoding where the machine has it. Importing any file also reports codec, raster, frame rate, channel count and duration, so you can see what you were actually sent. If a clip was mastered too quietly it can be normalised to a chosen −16, −23 (EBU R128) or −24 LUFS target before playout.
That is most of the reason Deckboy exists. Mitti, PlaybackPro Plus, QLab and Millumin are all macOS only, and vMix is Windows only, so the first question on a show is usually whether the software runs on the machine you brought at all. Deckboy runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux from the same show file.
Deckboy combines media cues, slide decks, live sources, show control, projection mapping and multiple output destinations in one application. There is a feature and platform comparison here, and a page for anyone coming from QLab.
At startup Deckboy checks that interface labels actually reach the screen and
automatically tries another rendering path if they do not. The result is written
to deckboy-render.log.
To select software rendering on a Mac, launch from Terminal with
DECKBOY_RENDERER=software /Applications/Deckboy.app/Contents/MacOS/Deckboy.
The same environment variable is available on Windows and Linux.
Free, GPL-3.0, no paid tier and no plan for one. No account, no licence server, no telemetry, nothing that phones home — which is a reliability argument as much as a principle, because a licence check is one more thing that can refuse to start a show at 19:55.
First run: because the builds are not code-signed, Windows and macOS show an unknown-developer notice once. It takes one click to get past, and the README has the steps.
Yes. Outputs are per-display, with display-native or fixed raster modes, and each output has its own area of interest, edge feathering and warp / keystone correction. Inside an output, each layer can be pinned onto its own surface by dragging its four corners on the programme monitor, in perspective so a flat board stays flat — enough to map several flats or boxes from one projector, though it is not a full projection-mapping suite with meshes and masks.