Live Screen Output

The live screen is the output URL that displays your overlays in real time. It is designed to be used as a browser source in streaming software like OBS, vMix, or similar tools.

How It Works

Each tenant has one or more screen output URLs. When you send an overlay (person, song, bible verse) from the Playout interface, it appears on the live screen in real time. The screen has a transparent background, making it perfect for layering over a video feed.

What a screen displays — and how it looks — is configured per screen in the event's Screens tab, including an Extra CSS field (with an AI assistant) for restyling the output without changing the components themselves.

Screen URLs

Playout provides two types of screen URLs:

Standard Screen

https://your-instance.playout.studio/{tenant}/screens/{screenId}

This is the basic screen output tied directly to a screen configuration.

Production Unit Screen

https://your-instance.playout.studio/{tenant}/screens/{productionUnit}/{screenId}

This variant is tied to a specific production unit, allowing you to have different overlay outputs for different production setups.

TIP

You can find your screen IDs in the Screens configuration tab within an event.

Setting Up in OBS

1. In OBS, add a new Browser Source
2. Paste your screen URL into the URL field
3. Set the Width and Height to match your stream resolution (e.g., 1920×1080)
4. Ensure Shutdown source when not visible is unchecked so the connection stays alive

WARNING

A screen URL carries your tenant's service-account password (in the part after #, which browsers never send to a server). Anyone holding the link can open the screen, so treat it like a credential: share it only with the people and machines that need it, and rotate the password from your tenant settings if a link gets out.

Displays and Kiosks

A screen is designed to run unattended for a whole service, so Playout keeps a few things in hand for you:

• The display stays awake. An open screen holds a wake lock, so the projector or monitor showing it will not go to sleep. The operator's own machine does the same while its event is on air.
• New versions arrive quietly. A screen that has been open for days checks for a new release every ten minutes, and reloads itself only once nothing has been on air for five minutes — never in the middle of a service.
• It tells the operator it is there. Every screen reports back every 30 seconds; see Screen health below.

Opening a screen on a display

In an event's Screens tab, the screen's URL row has an Open on display action (Chrome and Edge). It asks for permission to see your displays once, then opens the screen as its own window on the display you choose — no tabs, no address bar — and offers a single Go fullscreen button on that display. While fullscreen, the Escape key is locked, so a stray keypress on the projector keyboard cannot drop the output.

If a display goes to sleep, or the machine restarts, simply open the link again: the screen signs itself back in from the URL.

TIP

For a machine whose only job is one screen, start the browser in kiosk mode with the screen URL — for example chrome --kiosk "https://…/demo/screens/lowerthird#pass=…" — and it comes back fullscreen on every boot with no one at the keyboard.

Screen Health

While an event is on air, each screen in the Screens tab's selector shows a dot:

Dot	Meaning
Green (pulsing)	The screen is open, visible and reporting in.
Amber	The screen is open but its window is hidden or covered by another window. Browsers slow down hidden pages, so lyrics and lower thirds may lag or stall there — bring it to the front, or give it its own display.
Red	The screen was reporting in and has stopped: closed, crashed, asleep, or offline.
Grey	Not open.

A hidden or stopped screen is also called out in the navigation bar while you are on air, with a link to the Screens tab. Hovering a dot names the screen and its state.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
Overlays not appearing	Verify the screen URL and screen ID are correct. Check that the event is started.
Transparent background shows as white	Ensure your streaming software supports transparent browser sources. In OBS, this works by default.
Overlays appear delayed	Check your network connection. The screen uses real-time Firestore listeners, so delays typically indicate network latency.
Overlays lag or freeze on a projector	The screen's window is probably hidden or covered — its dot in the Screens tab turns amber. Bring it to the front or use Open on display to give it a display of its own.
A screen shows an old version	It reloads by itself once nothing has been on air for five minutes. Reload it by hand if you need the new version sooner.
Wrong language or Bible version	Check your screen configuration — each component source has its own language and Bible version setting.