Project Settings

Designer provides some standard project settings which can be accessed through the state menu.

This page provides an explanation for each setting in the menu, as well as how to access it.

Project Settings editor with first tab open

Accessing the Project Settings

Button to open Project Settings highlighted in pink

Right-click on “d3” in the top left corner of the interface on the dashboard; this will open the d3State Options window.
Left-click Project Settings from the menu to open the Project Settings menu.

Project tab

New Project

Creates a new Project

Archive project file

Essentially a “save as”. Type in a name and it creates a project file in the history folder with the name you defined..

New Checkpoint

Creates a Checkpointed project. Checkpointed projects are frozen in time and locked to a specific Disguise version.

Restore Checkpoint

Restores a previously made Checkpoint.

Autosave Frequency

Defines the autosave frequency expressed in minutes. This defaults to 5 minutes.

A new ‘Autosaving’ indicator with a 5 second countdown has been added in the bottom right hand corner above the timeline.

Autosaving Example

Prepare to archive unused objects

Generates a batch file for you to then define an archive directory outside of the project file, thus releasing the files from Designer. See Archive old media topic for more information.

Unpack d3 file

Unpack the contents of the .d3 project file into a new ‘unpack’ folder, for advanced use cases. For further information, see importing and exporting objects.

Consolidate tagged files into assets

This is used to upgrade old projects to use versioning.

User Interface tab

Framerate fraction

The fraction of the framerate that the GUI renders at. This option is used to sacrifice responsiveness for performance. This option is not suitable for lower latency modes.

Options for this setting are:

1 represents full framerate
1/2 represents half framerate
1/3 represents one third framerate

DPI Scale

The DPI scale determines the font and icon size in Designer. The Default option follows the Windows DPI scale, while other options apply the selected scale directly.

Options for this setting are:

Default
100%
125%
150%
175%
200%
225%
250%

Tooltips

Controls when tooltips appear in.

Options for this setting are:

Only when F1 is pressed
After 1 second (default)
After 2 seconds
After 3 seconds

Persistent Key Widgets

When enabled, key widgets will remain open on creation or on selection of a new layer with the same property.

Disable UI Transparency

Untick this setting to turn off transparency for UI windows to save performance.

Disable key frame editor film strip

Untick this setting to turn off rendering intermediate frames of videos inside keyframe editors which can increase performance when viewing video clips.

Global layer colour rules

Select the default rules that will determine the colours of layers on any tracks that do not have their own Layer colour ruleset. For more information about layer colour rules see the Layer Colour Rules page.

Unit Display Settings tab

Display value as

Defines the way the numerical values are displayed for Brightness, Volume, and Colour.

The options are:

Normalised (0-1)
Percentage (0-100%)
8-bit (0-255)

Unit Display

Measurement unit

Determine the units that measurements are displayed in.

The options are:

Metric
Imperial

Movie Output tab

Output movie format

Defines the output format for Stage & Feed movies. For more information about outputting Stage & Feed movies see our Stage and Feed Movies page.

Options for this setting are:

Photo-JPEG (no audio)
Animation (no audio)
MPEG-4 (with audio) (default)
Photo-JPEG mov (OLD QuickTime players)
HAP (no audio)
DPX image sequence (no audio)
WEBM vp9 (audio as Vorbis output)

Output movie FPS

Sets the FPS the output movies should be rendered at.

Stage movie size

Sets the resolution Stage movies should be rendered at.

Below, the actual output movie size is displayed after licensing restrictions are applied.

Add head to output movie

Adds additional seconds to the start of the output movie.

Add tail to output movie

Adds additional seconds to the end of an output movie.

Animation movie format

Select the 3D format to use when writing an Animation movie.

Encoding Options

Bitrate (Kb)

Sets the target bitrate of your output movies. Setting this to 0 will allow Designer to use it’s best-guess per codec.

Screenshots tab

Output format

Defines the output format for Screenshots.

Options for this setting are:

JPEG
BMP
PNG (default)
TIF
DPX
EXR

Timeline Control tab

Global latency mode

Defines the levels of buffering and the rendering interval of the video output system.

Options for this setting are:

Full speed ultra low latency (no buffering)
Full speed low latency (one frame buffer)
Full speed (default) (two frame buffers)
Half speed low latency (halves the frame rate, one frame buffer)
Half speed (halves the frame rate, two buffers)

Frame buffers are on the video output system, other system processing will add further latency.

Sometimes it is very useful to use half speed mode to swap between 2 framerates quickly without needing to re-apply genlock. In this case, always make sure you are genlocked to the full framerate. If you genlock to the half-framerate you may get tearing between machines when in half speed mode.

Global refresh rate

Sets the project refresh rate. For more information see the Setting Project Refresh Rate topic.

Project bit depth

Sets the bit depth the project will output at. This setting will not take effect until Feed Settings have been applied. For more information about applying feed settings visit our Configuring Output Settings page.

Timeline audio device

Sets the default timeline audio device.

Deferred jump

With this feature activated, you can now hit the left or right Arrow keys (while playing) to jump Track bars without losing sight of the original bar you jumped from (this bar will also continue to flash).

Global crossfade

Sets the Universal crossfade mode for all tracks and sections by default. This can be overridden on a per track and per section basis.

Reset on stop

This defines the behaviour of the Stop button. You can either reset to the start of the bar, or stay where you are.

Options for this setting are:

Always
When Quantised (default)
Never

Output Settings tab

Video information overlay

Overlays debug information on the content of video layers.

Options for this setting are:

None (default)
Resolution
Smoothness - A white line that moves across the image to assess playback smoothness.
Frame/Time - A readout of what frame is currently displayed.
Regions/Tiles - Each mapping region in SLC.

Colour Management tab

Colour Management

This defines what model for colour management disguise uses.

Options for this setting are:

Disabled
Gamma Space (default)
ACES
OCIO

More information about colour management can be found on our Colour Management page.

Default ingest profile

This defines the default colour profile that will be applied to all media when it is ingested. This does not apply retroactively to media that has already been ingested or had another colour profile set.

Default ingest profile

This defines the default colour profile that will be applied to all displays when they are created. This does not apply retroactively to displays that have already been created or had another colour profile set.

RenderStream Settings tab

RenderStream latency override (ms)

This can be set to define a fixed latency for all RenderStream workloads in the project. Frames received more than this latency after the previous frame will always be dropped. Leaving this setting at 0 will allow Designer to automatically measure and set an optimal RenderStream latency for your specific network configuration.