Node Editor

Backstage's visual programming surface. Where a show needs logic the built-in windows do not cover — custom triggers, conversions between protocols, controls of your own design — you wire it here.

The Node Editor is not a stage in the build order. It is a tool used across stages: it can drive a sequence, patch Art-Net, answer a UDP command, or put a switch on screen. That is why it sits after the linear stages rather than inside one.

Do this in order

1. Your first graph — nodes, pins, connections, and how a graph runs. Built around a real result: a sequence that starts on project load and loops.

   Your First Graph

2. Use templates instead of wiring from scratch — ready-made graph fragments for network parsing, sequence control, audio routing and string handling.

   Use Node Editor Templates

3. Build a Presenter area — a designated part of the graph showing only the controls you want visible, and none of the wiring.

   Build a Presenter Area

Custom logic, or the standard interface?

The Node Editor is the customisable route. Before building one, check whether what you want is already a standard interface:

• Driving playback from a control system is the JSON show-control protocol — no graph required, and it covers sequencers, steppers, schedulers, calibrators, audio mixers and NDI inputs.

• Giving an operator a browser page is a Web Console.

Reach for a graph when what you need is not in either — a conversion, a condition, a device that speaks something else, or a control laid out for one particular show.

Remote Control

Reference

Node Editor Window — the window itself: gestures, hotkeys, and what Alt and Shift add

Node Reference — one page per node, grouped by category