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Utopian-Academy/Deckboy · source
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Free, open-source cue deck for theatre and live video: clips, slides, a live camera, a web page or any window on the machine on one cue list — out to a screen, NDI, SRT, Blackmagic SDI or SMPTE ST 2110 while it records. Fired from the lighting desk by MIDI Show Control, or by Stream Deck, Companion, OSC, MIDI and timecode. Windows, macOS, Linux.
README at capture
# Deckboy 🎬
<div align="center">
[](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases/latest)
[](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases)
[](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/stargazers)
[](https://discord.gg/AZzsE4AZWx)
[](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases/latest)
[](LICENSE)
[](https://libsdl.org)
[](https://github.com/florisporro/awesome-ndi)
[](https://github.com/RobLoach/awesome-sdl)
[](https://github.com/juancarlospaco/awesome-streaming-tools)
</div>
## Video playback and show control.
Deckboy puts videos, slides and live sources in a running order. Choose the next
cue on your desk and take it to the audience when you're ready. Send the programme
to screens, broadcast outputs or streams, and record it while it plays.
Free and open source, for Windows, macOS and Linux.
**[⬇ Download](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases/latest)** · **[▶ See Deckboy in action](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/trailer.html)** · **[♡ Community & help](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/community.html)**
<sub>What you press, and what the audience sees, from one run of v0.99.423. [Watch Deckboy with music by YMCK](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/trailer.html). Footage: [Tears of Steel](https://mango.blender.org/), Blender Foundation, [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).</sub>
**If Deckboy is useful to you, ⭐ star this repository** (top right): it is how the next
operator finds it, and how you find it again.
### New in 0.99.424
[Release notes and downloads](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases/tag/v0.99.424)
- **Smooth playback at any frame rate.** Every clip plays with the steadiest cadence its rate
allows on the screen it is on: 24 fps is a clean 3:2 on 60 Hz, 50 fps runs 1-1-1-1-2, a matched
rate moves one frame a refresh. A playlist of mixed rates gets it clip by clip.
- **Lock to the screen.** A clip a hair off the screen's rate (59.94 fps on 60 Hz, 23.976 on 24)
can play at the screen's own rate instead, every frame shown exactly once, its sound following
like a tape machine's.
- **Far fewer lost frames.** No tenth-of-a-second freeze each time a clip loops, and less work
per frame off Direct3D 11. On a Mac every output now keeps time with its screen: no refreshes
missed in a minute of 60 fps playback, measured on an M4 MacBook Air. On Windows the desk no
longer holds up the outputs while it draws.
- **Seamless loops.** A looping clip goes round with no held frame and no gap in the sound, and a
cue set to repeat plays that many times.
- **Recordings that keep up.** Recording at 4K no longer costs the outputs frames, a recording
keeps time by the sound card, and ProRes at 60 fps records.
- **Scopes on the graphics card (Windows).** Every picture of a 4K60 output is measured, bin for
bin the same as the processor's reading.
- **Missed frames are reported.** An output that cannot keep up with its screen now says so: the
OUTPUT badge, a warning, the test card and `STATUS`.
- **Stop every deck, from anywhere.** Ctrl+Shift+Space now works with any dialog open or an output
in focus, and nothing waiting in the wings starts a deck again afterwards.
- **Known issue (Windows):** an output on a screen at a different refresh rate from the main screen
(59.94 Hz beside 60) drops or repeats a frame about every 15 seconds. Deckboy warns you when it
happens; until it is fixed, run the screens at the same rate
([how](MANUAL.md#screens-at-different-refresh-rates)).
### A closer look
<table>
<tr>
<td width="50%"><b>Picture scopes</b><br><img src="docs/images/readme/light/picture-scopes.gif" width="420" alt="Deckboy 0.99.419 scopes analysing its moving test card, with the live output counter visible"><br>Waveform, vectorscope, parade and gamut measurements from the moving test card.</td>
<td width="50%"><b>Lights by name</b><br><img src="docs/images/readme/light/dmx-by-fixture.gif" width="300" alt="The DMX cue inspector changing the level and colour of named fixtures"><br>Fixture levels and colours in the cue list.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="50%"><b>Live input, cued</b><br><img src="docs/images/readme/light/mic-inspector.gif" width="320" alt="A Mic cue's gain and moving level meter, using Deckboy's built-in test signal"><br>A Mic cue's gain and meter, shown with the built-in test signal.</td>
<td width="50%"><b>The phone controller</b><br><a href="https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/#phone-demo"><img src="docs/images/readme/phone-controller-poster.png" width="195" alt="The current Deckboy phone controller with TAKE, transport, fader, cues and DASH"></a><br><a href="https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/#phone-demo">Watch it select and take cues.</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<details>
<summary><b>The current desk in three themes</b></summary>
**Gameboy**
**Dark**
**Virtual Boy**
</details>
[All screenshots, GIFs and clips](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/press.html#images)
are real app captures. Desk, crossfades, effects and scopes: published v0.99.419.
Other captures retain their original versions in the [media notes](docs/images/readme/README.md).
New to Deckboy? Choose **EXAMPLE SHOWS** on the startup screen, read the notes on each
cue and make the show your own.
### Everything is a cue
A clip. A still. A slide. A live camera. A window on the machine. A web page.
An NDI source, an SRT feed, an SDI input. A test card, a countdown, a lower
third, an audio file, a line-up tone. A line of code you type while it is on
the screen. In Deckboy every one of those is the same kind of object, sitting
on the same cue list, and it behaves the same way: same transport, same fades,
same seventeen transitions, same effect rack, same remote control, recorded the
same way on the way out.
So a show can run
```
VIDEO → SLIDE → LIVE CAMERA → WEB PAGE → SRT FEED → TEST CARD → VIDEO
```
with one operator, one spacebar and no alt-tab, because none of those is a
special case. The usual way to do that is a media player, a slide program, a
browser, a capture utility, a streaming tool and a pattern generator, each with
its own idea of what happens when you press play — and a projector that shows
the seams between them.
The other half of the same idea: every **destination** is the same kind of
object too. A screen, NDI, SRT, RTMP, Blackmagic SDI, SMPTE ST 2110 — several
at once, while it records, each with its own warp, feather and area of
interest. Driven from a Stream Deck, Bitfocus Companion, OSC, MIDI, MIDI Show Control
from the lighting desk, Art-Net or LTC timecode.
Anything that can make a picture or a sound becomes a cue. Anything that needs
to receive the show becomes an output.
It hosts **your own VST3 effects and instruments** in a cue's audio chain, and runs on a
machine with **no sound card at all** — a rack PC feeding a video wall still
opens, plays and puts a picture out.
Windows, macOS and Linux from one show file. No account, no licence server, no
telemetry, and no second licence for the spare machine in the flight case —
which is not true of most of what it gets compared to.
**[deckboy website](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/)** — what it does, and where to download it. · **[How it compares](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/compare.html)** to Mitti, PlaybackPro, QLab, Millumin, vMix, SimplePlay, PlayDeck, ProVideoPlayer, Resolume and Inkue. · **[Manual](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/manual.html)** — all of it, thirty chapters. · **[FAQ](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/faq.html)** · **[Where latency hides](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/latency.html)** — the four stages of a live chain, in frames and milliseconds
---
## Community & help
Questions, bugs, production stories, or ideas? [Visit the community page](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/community.html) or [read the support guide](SUPPORT.md), join [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/discussions), or [contribute](CONTRIBUTING.md). For security issues, please use [private reporting](SECURITY.md), not public issues.
Deckboy is free software. If it helps you run a show, share your experience, report a bug, improve the docs, or tell another operator about it. That's how the project grows.
---
## Download
**[Try the example shows](data/demos/starter-pack/README.md)** — five shows that
work up one step at a time: a picture on a screen, a running order, layers and
titles, looks and effects, and a 39-second show run from one button with original
music. Open the `.deckboy` files and follow the cue notes.
The features below describe the current source. Packaged builds and their
version-specific changes are listed on the [releases page](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases).
Every release ships an installer **and** a portable build for each platform.
Both bundle the application, FFmpeg and its runtime libraries for ordinary file
playback. NDI uses the separately installed NDI runtime; SDI uses compatible
Blackmagic hardware and Desktop Video. Office slide conversion uses PowerPoint,
Keynote or LibreOffice on the machine. [Full requirements](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/specs.html#system).
| Platform | Installer | Portable |
|---|---|---|
| **Windows** | `…-windows-x64-setup.exe` — Start Menu, uninstaller, `.deckboy` file association | `…-windows-x64.zip` |
| **macOS** (Apple Silicon) | `…-macos-arm64.dmg` — drag to Applications | `…-macos-arm64.zip` |
| **macOS** (Intel) | `…-macos-x86_64.dmg` | `…-macos-x86_64.zip` |
| **Linux** | `…-x86_64.AppImage` — one file, `chmod +x` and run; or `…-x86_64.flatpak` | `…-linux-x86_64.tar.gz` |
**Deckboy Mini** comes inside all of those, and on its own as a small download
of about 12 to 18 MB: `Deckboy-Mini-…-windows-x64.zip`, `…-macos-arm64.zip`,
`…-macos-x86_64.zip`, `…-linux-x86_64.tar.gz`, and `…-linux-arm64.tar.gz` for a
Raspberry Pi (64-bit) or any ARM64 Linux.
Both control surfaces ship with every release, so neither needs a build:
**Stream Deck** (`…streamDeckPlugin` — double-click it) and **Bitfocus
Companion** (`Deckboy-companion-module-….zip` — unzip it, then point
Companion's *developer modules path* at the folder containing it;
`INSTALL.txt` inside has the three steps). The Companion module requires
**Companion 5**.
→ **[Latest release](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases/latest)**
Or from a package manager, which follows each new release:
```powershell
# Windows (Scoop)
scoop bucket add deckboy https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/scoop-deckboy
scoop install deckboy/deckboy
```
```sh
# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install --cask utopian-academy/deckboy/deckboy
```
<details>
<summary><b>"Unknown developer" warnings — what to do</b></summary>
Deckboy's Windows builds are unsigned and macOS builds are ad-hoc signed.
Neither carries a verified publisher signature, so the OS may warn when you
first open a download.
- **macOS** — if it says the app is damaged, clear the quarantine flag once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Deckboy.app
Install from the `.dmg` into Applications rather than running from Downloads;
that is also what avoids Gatekeeper's App Translocation sandbox.
- **Windows** — SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC". Click
**More info → Run anyway**.
- **Linux** — the AppImage runs on **Ubuntu 22.04 and anything newer**, which
is what a lot of venue machines are still on. Graphics, display server, audio
and the C/C++ runtime deliberately come from the host: they have to match the
machine actually running, and a bundled libGL cannot load your GPU driver.
The build checks that floor on every run rather than trusting it.
</details>
Deckboy checks interface labels at startup and automatically tries another
rendering path when needed. The [FAQ](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/faq.html#interface-text)
explains the renderer log and how to select software rendering on a Mac.
---
## What it is
Deckboy is a native desktop application for video engineers, AV technicians and
live operators who need a reliable way to organise media, trigger cues, loop
content and send video to production displays.
That is the job it is built around, and it is built on a stubborn principle:
**Seize the means of playback ♡**
No subscription ♡ No account ♡ No telemetry ♡ Nothing phones home. And no licence
server that can refuse to start the show at 19:55 because it could not reach the
internet. The machine you carried into the venue is the machine that plays the
show.
### What can be a cue
| | |
|---|---|
| **Video** · **Image** · **Audio** | files, hardware-decoded, trimmed and faded |
| **Slides** | a PDF, PowerPoint or Keynote deck, one cue per slide, with the notes |
| **Browser** | a URL rendered into the programme, not a browser window on your desktop |
| **Window** · **Screen** · **Camera** | captured live, at the window's own full resolution |
| **NDI** · **SRT / RTMP / RTSP / UDP** · **DeckLink** · **Spout** | somebody else's signal, taken in as a cue |
| **Pattern** · **Test card** · **Tone** | generated on the spot, no file needed |
| **Timer** · **Lower Third** | a stage countdown, full screen or over the programme, and a Lower Third in 52 looks |
| **Video synth** · **Code** | an oscillator with feedback, or an expression you type live |
Every row takes the same fades, the same transitions, the same effect rack, the
same trigger from a Stream Deck, and is recorded the same way on the way out.
[Chapter 5 of the manual](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/manual.html#cue-types)
is the full table, source by source.
### Which makes it a very good video Swiss army knife
That is not a second feature list. It is what falls out of the first one. If a
camera is a cue and SDI is an output, the machine is a converter. If a stream
is a cue and NDI is an output, it is a bridge. If a test card is a cue, it is a
pattern generator that proves the real chain instead of a test box's.
The same box speaks NDI, SDI, SMPTE ST 2110, SRT, RTMP, Spout, LTC timecode,
OSC, Art-Net and NMOS — so the machine you brought for playout usually solves
the other five problems on the day as well.
- **Convert media** that will not play well, in place, without leaving the app
- **Inspect any file** — codec, raster, frame rate, channels, duration — by importing it
- **Generate test patterns** and a test card to prove a chain end to end
- **Capture** a camera, a window or a screen and treat it as a cue
- **Bridge formats** — bring a camera, capture card or stream in and send the
programme out as SDI, ST 2110 or a stream, and record it
- **Normalize loudness** to a chosen −16, −23 or −24 LUFS target before playout
- **Generate LTC timecode** on its own routable output
### Where it gets used
Live events • Corporate presentations • Churches • Schools & universities •
Museums & installations • Digital signage • Projection • LED walls • Streaming
And the jobs in between: bench-testing a screen before anyone arrives, proving a
cable or converter with a real test card, getting a camera or a stream onto
SDI, restreaming to SRT or RTMP, or making a client's unplayable file
playable on site, minutes before doors.
### Deckboy Mini
**For a screen nobody has to run:** a foyer loop, a backstage monitor, a kiosk that
starts with the computer. `deckboy-mini` ships beside Deckboy: point
it at clips or a folder and it plays them fullscreen through the same engine as
the desk, in name order, holding stills, looping if you ask. It answers the
desk's remote commands on the desk's port, so Companion drives it as deck 1,
and the whole show runs from the keyboard in its terminal, over SSH too:
reorder, rename and remove cues, save and open playlists (M3U8), pick the
display and the sound device, and the keys a media player has — frame step,
speed, A-B loop, mute, sound track and subtitles. It keeps a media player's
running-order habits too: find a cue by name, queue the one to play next, stop
after this cue, shuffle, a clock that counts down, and a crossfade between
cues. It opens `.pls` lists as well as M3U8. On a Raspberry Pi it plays
through the board's own video decoder; `tools/linux_build.sh --mini` builds it
there. Its own [miniature manual](https://utopian-academy.github.io/Deckboy/manual.html#deckboy-mini)
has every key and command. Mini comes inside every download, and on its own as
a small download for Windows, macOS, Linux and the Raspberry Pi (64-bit) on the
[releases page](https://github.com/Utopian-Academy/Deckboy/releases/latest).
```
deckboy-mini ~/Videos --display 2 --loop
```
In Windows PowerShell, start it as `.\deckboy-mini` from its folder; PowerShell does not
run a program from the current folder by its bare name. Or drop files onto `deckboy-mini.exe`.
---
## Features
The full list is long, because so much can be a cue. It lives on its own page: **[all features](FEATURES.md)**, in nine groups:
- Playback & cues
- Sources — everything that can be a cue
- Outputs — everywhere a cue can go
- Presenting from slides
- Broadcast / IP video
- Audio
- Show control
- Effects & mixing
- Interface
## Built for operators, not data harvesters
Deckboy collects nothing and sends nothing to its developers. **No telemetry,
no usage reporting, no crash upload, no account.** Crash logs are written to a
file next to the app for you to read or forward, and they stay there.
There is an update check, and it is **off by default**. Switched on, it asks
GitHub's releases API whether a newer version exists — nothing about you goes
with the question, and finding one never installs anything without you saying
so. A machine sitting on a venue's network should do nothing nobody asked it
to.
It is deliberately network-active — NDI discovery, PTP, NMOS registration, OSC,
Companion control and streaming all talk to the network by design. Every one of
those goes to your own LAN or to a destination you configured.
---
## Platforms
One show file opens on Windows, macOS and Linux, and nearly everything above
runs on all three. The exception: texture sharing with Resolume, TouchDesigner
or OBS is Spout, on Windows only.
Hardware decode is used wherever the platform provides it — D3D11VA, Video
Toolbox, VAAPI — and on Windows and macOS the picture never touches system
memory on the way to the screen: roughly ten times less CPU for 4K, which is
CPU your machine gets to spend on everything else.
---
## Documentation
- [Code map](docs/CODEMAP.md) — file inventory, data flow, threading model
- [Packaging guide](docs/PACKAGING.md)
- [Changelog](CHANGES.md)
- [ST 2110 feasibility](docs/ST2110_FEASIBILITY.md)
The changelog is the authoritative record of what landed and, just as
importantly, what each feature deliberately does not do.
---
## Friends of Deckboy
- [AV Tools Pro](https://avtoolspro.com/) — free AV design calculators:
projector throw and brightness, AVoIP and Dante/AES67 bandwidth, video wall
and LED pixel pitch, cable, rack and PoE planning
---
## Roadmap
**Audio, next:**
- Multichannel audio files, up to 24 channels each, every channel routable
- Object audio: place a cue in your speaker layout and move it across the room
**DJ and sampling:**
- Drop audio files straight into decks and mix them like a DJ: the tempo
(BPM) of each track found and matched, decks synced to each other and to
the video, and panning, mixing and EQ on every deck
- Slicing, chopping, looping and sampling
**Show control:**
- Cue carts, and templates for new shows
- A routing map: tap a deck's "to Out 1" tag to see where every deck, layer
and output goes
- A lighting dashboard, beyond the fixture patch
- Live scoreboard data as a source: the clock, scores and fouls read off a
venue's scoreboard by [OSO (Open Scoreboard OCR)](https://github.com/openscoreboardocr/OSO-Open-Scoreboard-OCR)
and its XML/JSON feed, driving text and lower thirds on the outputs
**The face:**
- A face you can make your own: how it looks, what it does and what it talks
about, including lines you write yourself. Every setting starts from the face
as it is today, and none of them can touch playback, routing or outputs
**Picture:**
- Every output at its own screen's refresh rate on Windows. Today an output
on a screen at a different rate from the main one (59.94 Hz beside 60) is
shown at the main screen's rate and drops or repeats a frame every so
often; for now, run the screens at the same rate (the manual's "Screens
at different refresh rates")
- Lip sync held within a few milliseconds across a whole day of playback, on
every platform
- HDR the rest of the way: HDR over SDI shown on a real DeckLink card (it is
built, not yet tested on one), HDR in over SDI, HDR over NDI (which needs
NDI's separately licensed Advanced SDK), and HDR input on macOS and Linux
- Local AI upscaling: an upscale job that turns a clip into a sharper, bigger
file, and real-time upscaling on the GPU where the hardware offers it
- Drawing on the picture: a pen that draws over the output live, the way a
sports telestrator does, and paint cues drawn ahead of time that take, fade
and layer like any other cue
**Scopes:**
- Scopes on the desk, on any output and over NDI
**Deckboy Mini:**
- A media browser in the terminal: browse folders, filter by typing and add clips
without leaving the keyboard, shared with the desk's own browser
**Web Monitor and network:**
- A Web Monitor at full resolution and the right shape
- Encrypted connections (HTTPS) for the Web Monitor and the phone remote
**Platform:**
- Hardware-paced ST 2110 output for narrow-model compliance
- Syphon *input* on macOS as a cue source (Spout already works both ways on Windows)
---
## License
Deckboy is free software under the **GNU General Public License v3.0 or later**.
Copyright © 2026 Deckboy Contributors. The full text is in [LICENSE](LICENSE).
Bundled components keep their own licences — ffmpeg ships with its LGPL/GPL
notice beside the binary, and the NDI and DeckLink SDKs are loaded at runtime
rather than distributed.
NDI® is a registered trademark of Vizrt NDI AB.
---
## Contributing
Deckboy is built in the open and contributions are welcome — code, bug reports,
documentation, testing, or production feedback from a real show.
The best open-source tools are built by the communities that use them.
---
## Project status
Actively developed, on all three platforms. Windows, macOS and Linux build from
the same source and every commit is checked by CI in both full and
reduced-feature configurations — macOS as a self-contained app bundle, Linux as
a portable tarball and an AppImage.