The Device Manager

The device manager contains all controls to setup devices and slots, and represents the core configuration dialog for attached and controlled hardware devices.

You can open the device manager either by clicking on the “Devices…” button in the slot bar, or by choosing “Manage Devices…” in the “Slots” menu.

The device setup is saved and restored on every application restart. So once the devices are configured, they will show up in the same way after the computer, the devices, or just the application performed a restart.

Device Manager (click to enlarge)

List of Slots:

The device manager shows the same list of slots as the slot bar in the main window.

You can add a slot by clicking the “Add Slot” button on the bottom of the window. You can delete a slot by clicking the “Delete Slot…” button in the slot.

Slot character:

When creating a slot the next available letter (A-Z) is being used as slot character. The slot character also appears in the slot user interface in the main window.

Custom slot character: You can also use a custom slot character by clicking into the “Char” field and typing in a letter (A-Z) that is still available.

Slot label:

In addition to the slot character each slot can also have a descriptive name (slot label). Type into the “Label” text field to edit the slot label. The slot label also appears in the slot user interface in the main window.

If you prefer to use multi-digit slot names instead of one slot character, you can enable the “Show Slot Label Only” option, which hides the slot character from the UI and indicates slots consistently using your custom slot label text within

  • the slot interface,
  • all slot-based menu items,
  • and the device manager.

Furthermore, slot-based menu items and the device manager interface display a slot index number for quick referencing associated controller actions, (e.g., for Stream Deck controller actions).

Device manager with “Show Slot Label Only” enabled

Note: If “Show Slot Label Only” is enabled the automatic camera value is set up to use the slot label value automatically.

Tip: Consider updating your wildcards and Stream Deck layout when using this option, e.g., set the clip identifier naming scheme “D4” (Slot Label – Reel – Clip).

List of devices in a slot:

Each slot contains a list of devices. Each device is represented by a device row with an icon. You can move devices from one slot to another by dragging and dropping the device rows.

Some devices also can act as an image source, such as LUT boxes that support framegrabs. For these devices an additional row is added that represents the image source.

Each device shows information about the identity or the connection of the device, such as a device name or IP address.

Capture devices also show up as devices of a slot. You can enable and disable auto-record behavior of each capture device in the device manager.

Manage devices in a slot:

You can add devices by clicking the “Add Device…” button, and choose the device type from the shown menu.

You can delete a selected device by clicking the “Delete…” button.

Configure a device:

Devices can have different configuration options.

  • LUT boxes can be identified with the “Blink” button, a cycle of primary colors will be displayed on the output image of the LUT box to identify the right physical device.
  • With the “Config…” button you can configure connection options of the specific device.
  • Some devices offer the possibility to set video range options and color management options.

Slot and device configurations:

You can save and restore entire configurations of slots and devices with the “Save and Restore” button. The list of slots and devices with their configurations can be stored in an external file, and restored from such a file at a later time.

This can be used either to transfer your hardware setup to another computer (e.g. when replacing a computer), or to switch between different hardware setups with the same computer (e.g. when switching between an advanced setup in a DIT cart and a smaller, more mobile setup).

Refresh controls:

“Reload Devices” re-initializes the connections to all devices.

“Refresh ICC Profiles” reloads the list of ICC profiles for color management settings.

Link slots:

You can link slots to interact with multiple slots simultaneously. This can be used e.g. for parallel processing of signals, for parallel SDR and HDR viewing of the same signal, or for interacting with multiple camera signals at the same time.

 

Stages:

Livegrade Studio lets you group slots into stages for handling independent scenes (e.g., from multiple units) within one project.

You can configure stages in the device manager. You can set a custom name for your stages, e.g., “Main Unit” and “Splinter Unit”. Slots are automatically assigned to the first configured stage. You can change the assignment individually for each slot in the device manager. See detailed article Grouping Slots into Stages.

Configuring stages within the device manager