Visual Assets Default Properties
Every visual asset has these, whatever its type. Type-specific settings are on the individual pages — Video, Image, Image Sequence, Capture Input and the rest.
Properties
|
Field |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Aspect Ratio Correction |
How the asset is fitted when its shape does not match the surface it plays on. Auto picks from the asset's own dimensions. |
|
Opacity |
How opaque the asset is, for layering one over another. |
|
Top-Bottom Stereo Asset |
The file carries a stereo pair stacked vertically, to be split into left and right eyes rather than shown as one image. |
|
Transparent Content |
The asset has an alpha channel that should be honoured. Without it, transparency is ignored and the content composites as opaque. |
Aspect Ratio Correction is where content that "looks wrong" usually comes from. A stretched or letterboxed image is more often this setting than a fault in the file or the surface.
Aspect Ratio Correction needs a rectangular area to fit the content into, so it takes effect on planar, cylindrical and frustum projection mappings. A spherical, dome, cubic or custom UV mapping has no such target, and content is stretched there whatever Aspect Ratio Correction is set to: the value is kept and the picture stays as it was. A Letterbox that seems to do nothing on a dome is this rather than a fault. Where a projector renders several surfaces, Aspect Ratio Correction applies when all of them use a supported mapping.
Format
What the asset's picture is made of. Backstage reads all of this from the file; the section is there for the cases where the file is silent or wrong.
|
Field |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Resolution |
Width and height, from the file. |
|
Input Format |
The pixel format the file is in. Read-only. |
|
Input Bit Depth |
Bits per channel — |
|
Color Model |
|
|
Chroma Sampling |
|
|
Pixel Layout |
|
|
Alpha |
|
|
Color Range |
|
|
Color Primaries, Color Transfer |
The colour space the content was authored in. |
|
Peak Luminance |
The mastering peak, in nits, that the HDR tone curve maps to white. Appears only while Color Transfer is an HDR curve (PQ or HLG). |
Every one of these also offers Auto, which keeps what the file reported.
Peak Luminance on Auto uses the peak the file declares. Video carries it as mastering-display or MaxCLL metadata; DPX carries no peak at all, so there Auto falls back to 1000 nits and the manual value is the only way to tell Backstage what the content was mastered at.
Only a video asset lets you change them. On every other asset type the whole group is read-only — it reports what was detected. Input Format and Input Bit Depth are read-only everywhere. Chroma Sampling and Pixel Layout are greyed out while Color Model is RGB, which has neither.
On a compressed video, a Video Stream entry below the fields reports what the decoder found — codec, Decoder Type, and the same colour fields as detected rather than as set.
Related
Supported Media Types — what plays without conversion
Import Video & Audio Assets — bringing assets in
Create an Additional Mapping on a Display — placing an asset on part of a surface