Skip to content

6.5 Mosaic Screens (Mosaics)

6.5.1 General Information

A mosaic displays video images or level indicators for the simultaneous visual monitoring of multiple objects. It is a grid of uniform graphical cells intended for output to monitors or workspaces via a video wall.

Technically, a mosaic is a compressed video image generated from user-configured cell templates. It can be transmitted to visualization equipment in various ways, including streaming. When configuring a mosaic, the user selects the encoder type used for compression.

A monitoring node must be selected when creating a mosaic — this node is responsible for generating the mosaic image. The following software packages must be installed on that node for proper operation: Stream Labs MP App Manager Service, Stream Labs MP Media Signal Service, Stream Labs MP Probe Manager Service, Stream Labs MP Video Display, and Stream Labs MP Audio Player (current versions).

Mosaic cells can display decoded images from the following source types: MPEG TS service, HLS, MPEG-DASH, RTMP, RTSP, Single signal service, NDI, and SMPTE 2022-6. A different cell template can be assigned to each individual cell, providing flexibility in the visual layout. Each cell can contain either a monitoring object or a rotator. All monitoring objects and rotators in a mosaic must come from the same node, selected at creation time.

Note

Dynamic and Penalty screen mosaics require an associated State panel, which is selected during mosaic configuration. The linkage between them works as follows:

  • For a Dynamic mosaic: the objects displayed on the mosaic always match those in the associated State panel. When the State panel's object set changes, the mosaic updates accordingly.
  • For a Penalty screen: the State panel displays only those objects that are currently shown on the mosaic — i.e., objects with active alarm events.

The recommended sequence for working with mosaics is:

  1. Create mosaic cell templates (Section 6.5.2).
  2. Create a mosaic using the cell templates, selecting templates per cell as needed (Section 6.5.3).
  3. Add the mosaic to a video wall (Section 6.6).
  4. Output the video wall to monitors or a workspace widget.

6.5.2 Working with Cell Templates

Cell templates define the visual design of mosaic cells. A single template can be applied to multiple cells, ensuring a consistent appearance. Cell templates are also used when configuring monitoring object recording and streaming.

To start working with cell templates, select Cell templates in the Visualization section of the Configuration screen.

Figure 203. Screen for working with cell templates Figure 203. Screen for working with cell templates

The cell templates screen contains the following sections:

  • Template list — a list of existing templates. System templates (marked with the system template icon symbol) cannot be modified, but users can create editable copies from the list item menu. Each row shows the template's Name and Description.
  • Preview — a visual preview of the selected template.
  • Additional info — a list of configuration parameters and their values.

To create a new template, click the New template button and enter a name and description. To edit an existing template, select it from the list.

Template Editor

Figure 204. Mosaic cell templates editor Figure 204. Mosaic cell templates editor

The template editor consists of four sections:

  • Template — the canvas showing the current cell template design.
  • Widget — a palette of available widgets that can be dragged onto the template.
  • Added widgets — a list of widgets already placed on the template, with their current parameter values. Selecting a widget here highlights it on the canvas and shows its editable properties. The lock icon lock icon toggles edit mode for the selected widget.
  • Widget properties — displays the configurable parameters of the widget selected in the Added widgets list.

Common Widget Properties

All widgets share a set of common property tabs (Figure 205):

  • Layout tab — alignment controls for text strings and numeric values, relative to the widget's boundaries. Vertical and horizontal alignment can be set independently.
  • View tab — sets Background color, Border color, Border width, and Opacity.
  • Font tab — configures Font color, Font size, Font family, Font weight, and Italic. Any font installed on the node's operating system can be used.
  • Text tab — sets properties for text display: Field name (the object property to display), Text (the label shown before the property value), and Is vertical (flag for vertical text orientation).

Figure 205. Widget properties section (tabs shown in expanded form) Figure 205. Widget properties section (tabs shown in expanded form)

To add a widget to the template, drag it from the palette onto the template canvas. The widget appears as a resizable frame. Resize it using the frame markers and reposition it with the left mouse button. To delete a widget, click the delete icon in its upper right corner (Figure 206).

Figure 206. Deleting a widget Figure 206. Deleting a widget

Available Widgets for Cell Templates

Video — displays a decoded video image in the cell. Multiple Video widgets can be placed in a single cell. In the Widget properties panel, the CPU resizer enabled parameter can be set; if enabled, CPU-based image scaling is used, and the interpolation type must also be selected: Point, Fast bilinear, Bilinear, or Bicubic.[^interp]

[^interp]: Listed in order of increasing CPU load and increasing image quality.

PPM (Peak Program Meter) — an audio level indicator. The Index of audio decoders parameter specifies which decoder(s) to use (multiple decoders can be selected; the index identifies the ordinal number when multiple audio tracks are present). The indicator is divided into three color zones:

  • Green zone (55% of scale): –97 dBFS to –18 dBFS
  • Yellow zone (25% of scale): –18 dBFS to –8 dBFS
  • Red zone (20% of scale): –8 dBFS to 0 dBFS

Loudness — a sound volume indicator (LU/LUFS meter). Parameters: Units (LU or LUFS), Scale type (EBU+18 or EBU+9[^ebu]), Show scale (displays the scale on the indicator).

[^ebu]: Terms defined in EBU specification R 128 "Loudness normalization and permitted maximum level of audio signals".

Text — displays a monitoring object property or custom text. Parameters:

  • Field name — selects the property to display. Options: None, Service name (from SDT[^sdt]), Custom service name, Service description, EIT:Present, EIT:Following.
  • Text — a label displayed before the property value (shown even when no property is selected).

[^sdt]: The user must ensure that MPEG TS information is available in the configuration. If unavailable, a blank line is displayed in visualization mode.

External text — displays text from a field in NDI signal metadata. The Field name parameter specifies the NDI metadata field to read.

Teletext — displays teletext content. Parameters: Display mode (Static — shows a single page continuously), Aspect ratio (for the graphical display area; must account for the widget's aspect ratio), Page (one or more page numbers; multiple pages enable Rotate mode automatically), Show caption (displays the page number in the header).

Subtitles — displays subtitles. Click Set position and size as video widget to align it with the video widget if needed. Parameters: Type (standard: ARIB, CEA-608, CEA-708, DVB, DVB-TTML), Order by PID (the ordinal position of the subtitle PID in ascending PID order, used when multiple subtitle PIDs are present).

Service info — displays service information. This widget is only used when visualizing a video wall in the workspace via the Video wall panel widget. Enable it by selecting Toggle service information from the mosaic cell's local menu (Section 12.2.7). Parameters (any combination may be selected): Show GPI, Show PMT, Show SDT, Show service info, Show service name, Show service rate, Show stream details, Show streams.

Alarm history — displays a history of alarm events for selected decoders. Parameters:

  • Depth — the number of items in the alarm list.
  • Custom alarms — enables selection of specific analyzers whose alarms are shown (see Section 10 for the analyzer list). Default enabled analyzers: Video QoE Analyzer, Audio QoE Analyzer, Loudness Analyzer, TS Bitrate Analyzer, SCTE-35 Analyzer, SCTE-104 Analyzer.
  • Decoder filters — restricts alarm display to specific decoders. Click New decoder to add a decoder by category (MPEG or Signal), type (e.g., Video decoder), and index.

Alarm indicator — shows the presence of an active alarm condition on selected analyzers and decoders. Parameters: Blink (indicator blinks on new alarm), Show alarm duration (shows the duration on the indicator), Custom alarms and Decoder filters (same as Alarm history).

Virtual service indicator — displays the status of a virtual service. Parameter: Blink (blinks when any alarm events occur, as described in Table 29).

Splice indicator — indicates active advertising insertion (splicing). Parameter: Timeout — the time in milliseconds before the indicator turns off after a splice ends (default: 3000 ms).

Analogue clock — displays an analogue clock face showing the current time. Parameters: Clock Face (Industrial, Multiscreen 3.X Classic, or Time — shown in Figure 207), Timezone.

Figure 207. Types of analogue clock dials Figure 207. Types of analogue clock dials

Digital clock — displays a digital clock. Parameters: Format (H-mm, H:mm:ss, HH:mm:ss, h:mm tt, or h:mm:ss tt), Timezone.

Date — displays the current date. Parameters: Format (select from 25 available date formats), Timezone.

UMD — displays a Tally indicator controlled via a network UMD source (configuration described in Section 5.7). Parameter: UMD Number — the number of the UMD source.

UMD GPI — displays a Tally indicator controlled via a GPI interface board (configuration described in Section 5.7). No configurable parameters.

Timecode — displays a timecode. No configurable parameters.

Web — embeds a web page. Parameters: URL, Refresh period (seconds), Region left, Region top, Region width, Region height (margin/offset settings relative to the widget frame), Interactive (enables user interaction with the page; only applicable when displaying the mosaic in the workspace), Entire page (displays the full page, ignoring margin settings).

After creating or editing a template, save it before closing.

6.5.3 Creating and Visualizing Mosaics

To start working with mosaics, select Mosaic in the Visualization section of the Configuration screen.

Figure 208. Screen for working with mosaics Figure 208. Screen for working with mosaics

The mosaic management screen contains:

  • Mosaic list — a table of existing mosaics with the following columns: Name, Node (cannot be changed after creation), Mosaic type (Static, Dynamic, or Penalty screen — cannot be changed after creation), Description, Rendering rate (fps; 25 fps recommended for video content), Width and Height (in pixels).
  • Preview — a visual preview of the selected mosaic.
  • Additional info — a list of configuration parameters and their values.

To create a new mosaic, click the New mosaic button (Figure 209). In addition to the columns listed above, the creation window includes:

  • State panel — the state panel to associate with a Dynamic mosaic or Penalty screen (only shown when these types are selected).
  • Preferred CPU socket — the CPU socket to use for rendering. Set this to manually allocate compute resources. Default: Auto.
  • Encoder preset — the encoder preset used to compress the mosaic image for transmission to visualization equipment.

Figure 209. Static mosaic creation window Figure 209. Static mosaic creation window

To edit an existing mosaic, select it from the list. The mosaic editor screen is shown in Figure 210.

Figure 210. Mosaic editor screen Figure 210. Mosaic editor screen

The mosaic editor consists of an object panel (left) and a workspace (right). The object panel contains the Monitoring objects tab — a list of monitoring objects on the selected node, configured as described in Section 5.1.

The workspace contains a grid and a configuration panel (upper left corner) with the following fields:

  • Row count — number of cell rows. Increases automatically when objects are added beyond the grid.
  • Column count — number of cell columns. Increases automatically when objects are added beyond the grid.
  • Cell template — the default template applied to all cells. Individual cells can be given different templates by selecting a cell and choosing from the list (Figure 211).

Figure 211. A fragment of the work area with cells of different types and a delete button Figure 211. A fragment of the work area with cells of different types and a delete button

To add an object or rotator to a cell, drag it from the object panel into the desired cell. Objects and rotators can be moved between cells. To remove an object from a cell, select it and click the delete button (Figure 211). Once the mosaic is ready, save it.

To visualize the mosaic, click the visualize button button in the lower right corner — a preview window opens showing the encoded mosaic output. The saved mosaic can then be added to a video wall (Section 6.6) for display on monitors or in a workspace widget.

6.5.4 Creating and Visualizing a PIP Sharing Mosaic

To create a PIP Sharing mosaic, select the PIP Sharing tab in the mosaic editor. The PIP Sharing mosaic editor is shown in Figure 212.

Figure 212. PIP Sharing mosaic editor screen Figure 212. PIP Sharing mosaic editor screen

The editor has an object panel (left) and a workspace (right). The PIP Sharing tab in the object panel lists all PIP Sharing monitoring objects configured in the PIP Sharing service (Section 5.8).

The PIP Sharing mosaic operates identically to the standard monitoring objects mosaic. Once PIP Sharing objects are added to the mosaic, their status in the PIP Sharing configuration screen (Section 5.8.1) changes from Disabled to Enabled automatically.

Warning

If a single PIP Sharing object is displayed on mosaics on two different nodes, two receivers are created — one per node. Removing the object from one mosaic stops only that node's receiver. Removing the object from the second mosaic stops that receiver as well, and also stops the PIP Sharing object itself, since it has no remaining active receivers.