Chains & Effect Racks

A Chain is an ordered list of VideoEffect nodes inside a track. Each track can hold multiple chains, but only one is active at a time.

Why multiple chains?

Chains are instant-swap preset slots. During a live performance you can switch a track from one look to a completely different look in a single click (or MIDI trigger) — no crossfade lag, no menu diving.

Example: Track 1 has three chains:

• Chain A — slow fractal noise
• Chain B — glitchy pixel sort + feedback
• Chain C — clean solid gradient

Trigger chain B to switch to the glitch look mid-performance.

Adding a chain

Click the + button in the Chain Slots bar (above the effect rack). A new empty chain is added to the right of the current one.

Switching chains

Click any chain slot tab to switch. The track immediately renders using that chain.

You can also map chain switching to:

• A MIDI note or CC (right-click a chain slot → Learn MIDI…)
• A scene trigger
• A keyboard shortcut

Unloading a chain (eject)

The eject slot at the end of the Chain Slots bar unloads the active chain, so the track produces no output until you pick a chain again. The chains themselves stay in their slots. Scenes capture the unloaded state.

The eject slot is mappable. Right-click it to bind it to a MIDI note or CC, a keyboard key, OSC, or an LFO, or open the mapping panel from the same menu. Bind the same note or key to the eject slot on several tracks to stop them all with one press.

To unload every track at once, use Eject All in the scenes bar.

Audition mode

Audition mode lets you build or tweak a chain in private while the audience keeps seeing the active chain. It is the classic preview/program workflow: your editor preview shows the chain you are working on, the output shows the live one.

1. Enable AUDITION in the CHAIN CONTROL panel on the right side of the Chain Slots bar (visible when the track has more than one chain).
2. Click a chain slot to inspect it — without pressing its play button. The inspected slot keeps its highlight outline even when MIDI or another trigger switches the active chain. When you’re inspecting the active chain, the outline follows it to the new slot.
3. The editor preview now shows the inspected chain, marked with an orange AUDITION badge at the top. The output window, Syphon, NDI, recording, and laser keep playing the active chain.
4. Edit the chain’s effects and parameters as usual. LFOs, sequencers, and audio mappings all animate in the preview.
5. Press TAKE next to the badge (or the slot’s play button) to switch the output to the auditioned chain.

Notes:

• The audition shows the chain in isolation — not the full mix with other tracks or master effects as it will look after the take.
• On feedback loop tracks, the audition renders without feedback accumulation while a feedback chain is live, so the live loop is never disturbed.
• Audition previews a chain of the selected track. To preview a whole track instead, use Cue →. If a different track is cued, the cue owns the preview pane and the audition badge is hidden.

Effect ordering

Within a chain, effects run in left-to-right order. The output of effect N becomes the input of effect N+1. Drag effect slots to reorder.

Rerouting an effect’s input

An effect doesn’t have to read from the effect above it. The small circle at the left of each effect card’s header is its input jack (effects that generate their own image and don’t read an input have none). Click it to open an Input picker:

Source	Description
Input Texture	The default — the output of the effect above
This Chain	The output of any effect in the same chain, or the chain’s own output
Tracks	Another track’s output, or any effect or chain inside it
Offscreen Renderers	The output of an offscreen renderer
Projection	The projection output or the projection quad mask, when projection mapping is set up

That gives you patchbay-style routing inside a chain — for example, feeding a blend effect with a copy of the signal from three effects earlier. Picking another track’s output turns on that track’s Background Render, so it keeps rendering even when its fader is down.

Once rerouted, the jack fills in and turns blue, and hovering it shows where the input comes from. Reset to Upstream puts the effect back on the effect above it.

Loading saved chains

Saved chains live under Saved Chains in the Add Content browser, in three tabs: Local, Community and Projects.

The Projects tab lists your recent projects and drills down project → track → chains, so you can see which track each chain came from. Use Back to Tracks and Back to Projects to climb back up.

Adding a saved chain to a chain that already has effects inserts its effects directly into your chain rather than wrapping them in a nested group. Its post-feedback effects are appended, and its macros come along if your chain has none. 3D and laser tracks load saved chains the same way as every other track type.

To bring in a whole track instead, use Add Track → Import from Project. Selecting a track loads it live with a Previewing banner, so you can see it in context before committing; click Import to keep it or Cancel to discard it.

Reset to saved state

Right-click a chain slot → Reset to Saved State to return that chain to how it was when the project was last saved, without reloading the project. It’s greyed out for a chain that has no saved state yet, such as one added since the last save.

Feedback architecture

Every chain has two hidden sections around the feedback tap:

Input → [pre-feedback effects] → feedback blend ← previous frame
                                      ↓
                               [post-feedback effects] → output
                                      ↓
                              (stored as next frame's feedback)

Add effects to pre-feedback to process the fresh input before blending with history. Add effects to post-feedback to process the blended result.

Chain Macros

Each chain has up to 5 Chain Macros — user-named knobs that can control multiple parameters across multiple effects simultaneously.

To create a macro:

1. Right-click any parameter → Map To… → Group Macro
2. The parameter is now driven by that macro knob
3. Multiple parameters can share the same macro

Chain Macros appear as sliders on the Track Fader and in the track inspector’s MACROS section when the chain is selected.