Library — Songs, Text & Media

Every slide Spectra projects starts as content somewhere in the library. This guide covers the three sidebar tools that feed the slide deck: Song Collection (with the Lyric Segmenter), the Text Builder, and the Media Center.

Song Collection

The Song Collection sidebar is your shelf of hymns and worship songs. It combines a built-in hymn library with your own saved songs— anything you've segmented for a previous service is one click away the next time you sing it.

Saved songs

• Every song you commit from the Lyric Segmenter is saved to your Song Collection automatically (the Save to library toggle in the segmenter footer, on by default) — you don't have to re-paste or re-segment. Committing a song with the same title updates the stored layout instead of creating a duplicate.
• Songs are persisted to your account, so they sync across machines when you sign in. Each song stores its segmented verses, per-section reveal configs, slider settings (max-lines / max-chars), and your manual edits.
• Organize songs into folders by series, language, season, or service slot. Folders are nestable and drag-friendly.
• Right-click any saved song for quick actions — add to today's schedule, edit, move to folder, or delete.

Hymn browser

The built-in hymn list ships with the app. Drag any hymn straight to the slide deck to add it as a parent song slide with its verses already segmented, or click to open it in the Lyric Segmenter for tweaking before committing.

Lyric Segmenter

The Lyric Segmenter takes raw song lyrics and automatically splits them into presentation-ready slides, respecting your max-lines and max-chars constraints per slide. It detects song structure — verses, choruses, bridges, pre-choruses, intros, outros, refrains, tags, hooks, interludes — and labels each segment with a color-coded badge.

Opening the segmenter

• Search the catalog — start typing a hymn or song name, pick a result from the dropdown, and the lyrics are loaded and segmented in one step.
• Paste lyrics directly — dump any lyrics into the textarea and the segmenter re-runs in real time as you type or paste. No upload, no external API — everything happens locally.
• Edit a saved song — clicking edit on a song slide re-opens the segmenter with your previously-saved structure intact. Manual splits, merges, custom labels, reveal configs, and slider settings are all restored.

How segmentation works

The segmenter is pattern-based (not AI) and handles the common ways songs are written:

Section types

The segmenter supports these section types, each with its own color badge in the preview:

Editing after segmentation

The segmenter's output is fully editable before you commit it. Each segment card in the preview has:

• Inline content edit — click the text to rewrite lyrics
• Split / Merge / Reorder / Delete — standard segment operations
• Change type — the verse-part-type picker re-labels any segment from a color-coded popover
• Reveal config — the “Reveal: …” pill opens the per-section reveal style picker (Static / Line / Word + linger mode + default line animation). See the Animated Lyric Reveal section in the Presentation guide for what these do at runtime.
• Per-line strip — when the segment uses Line reveal, each individual line gets its own entrance animation override and emphasis toggle
• Title controls — the title segment is organized into three collapsible accordions: Style (5 layout chips incl. Concert + the 10 decorative font picker + subtitle + entrance animation), Backdrop (background image / video and overlay tint for just the title), and Text & motion (per-title text colour, animated background layer)
• Warnings — segments that exceed your max-lines / max-chars limit show an inline warning

Apply to all

At the top of the segments list, the “Apply to all”picker lets you set a reveal config that's copied onto every segment in one click. Useful for quickly putting a whole song into line-mode reveal with the same animations, then customizing individual segments afterwards. When segments diverge, the picker shows a small (mixed) hint.

Size constraints

Two sliders in the segmenter let you shape the output for your screen:

• Max lines per slide — 1 to 8 (default 4)
• Max characters per slide — 100 to 500 (default 300)

Adjusting either slider re-runs segmentation in real time. Slider positions are saved with the song, so re-editing later restores your previous settings instead of falling back to defaults.

Song backdrop (applies to every verse)

At the top of the segmenter is a Song backdrop accordion that sets one look for the whole song — every verse, chorus, bridge, and outro slide inherits it. The title segment can still override with its own per-title backdrop; everything else falls back to this picker, then to the slide's own backgroundImage, then to global branding.

• Background image / video — preset photos, your own uploaded image, or a short video loop (up to 50 MB) projects as autoplay / loop / muted under every slide in the song.
• Overlay tint — 9 presets (None, Purple Haze, Midnight, Sunset, Gold, Crimson, Emerald, Mono, Vignette) ground a busy backdrop in one mood color.
• Motion — pick from the 12 animated background styles (Snow, Rain, Fireflies, Embers + the 8 ambient styles) for the whole song. Restores the global setting on the next non-song slide.
• Logo position — override the global logo placement per song (Inherit / Top-Left / Top-Right / Bottom-Left / Bottom-Right / Hidden). “Hidden” suppresses the logo entirely — useful when the backdrop already has a wordmark.
• Default font — apply one of the 10 decorative display fonts to every verse / chorus slide in the song, so the song's typography matches its title.

Design slides on canvas

Beyond backdrops and reveal animations, lyric slides can be designed freely on the same canvas editor used by the Text Builder — drag and resize text boxes, add images, layer decorations, and place the lyrics exactly where you want them. There are two levels:

• Song design — the Design slides button above the segments list opens the canvas editor for the whole song. The design contains a lyrics box: every verse, chorus, and bridge pours its own words into that box when it's presented, so one layout serves the entire song.
• Per-slide override — the paintbrush button on any segment card designs just that slide (starting from the song design if one exists). Overridden slides show a Canvasbadge with an × to clear the override and fall back to the song design.

The lyric text itself stays editable in the segmenter — designs never freeze the words, so fixing a typo later updates the designed slide too. The lyrics box keeps Spectra's automatic text sizing and your presentation font: designing a slide (say, highlighting one word) doesn't shrink or re-font the lyrics — the box auto-fits its words up to a “Max size” you can lower if you want a smaller fixed look. The canvas editor's background section edits the song-wide backdrop; for a background on just one slide, add a full-frame image inside that slide's design. In the slide deck, verses that project through a design show a small paintbrush icon.

What gets created

When you save a segmented song, Spectra creates one parent song slide with its verses (including the optional title) stored as nested children. In the slide deck the song appears as a single expandable card; each verse can be queued independently (its+ button or by dragging it onto the schedule) or presented directly (double-click). A single click does nothing, so verses never land in the schedule by accident. Editing a song later preserves your manual splits, merges, custom labels, reveal configs, and slider settings.

Text Builder

The Text Builder is the fastest way to put a free-form text slide on screen — announcements, sermon points, a quote, a welcome message, anything that isn't a Bible verse or a song. Click Text Builder in the sidebar to open the panel.

Fields

• Title (optional) — bold heading line, useful for “Announcements”, “Welcome”, sermon-series titles.
• Content — the main body. Character count is shown live so you can stay readable on the projector. No length cap — the auto-fit font sizer handles short and long content.
• Prayer slide — flip this on to tag the slide as a prayer. It looks and behaves exactly like any custom slide on the projector; the only difference is that on an NDI output it picks up the Prayer caption style — or the dedicated Prayer caption template if one is selected — instead of the scripture or song look.
• Text size & spacing — nudge the font size up or down (A− / value / A+, a percentage of the auto-fit base size, 40–200%) and choose line spacing (Tight 0.9 / Single 1.0 / Normal 1.5 / Double 2.0 — Tight pulls multi-line text closer together). The thumbnail preview updates live, and both values carry through to the projector and NDI outputs. Leave size at 100% to let the auto-fit sizer pick the size.
• Layout — toggle between Single (one full-bleed content area) and Split (two side-by-side columns projected together — great for prayer / response pairings, before / after quotes, or scripture beside reflection).
• Background color — no background by default: the colour picker shows a crossed-out “none” swatch, and the slide uses your branded presentation screen (Settings → Presentation) — background and text colour both inherit, so a plain announcement matches the rest of your service automatically. Pick a colour only when you want to override it for that slide; click the crossed swatch to go back to the branded screen. The preview shows the real result either way.

Backdrop & font

The Backdrop & font accordion exposes the same controls the Lyric Segmenter uses for songs, so a Text Builder slide can look every bit as cinematic as a worship lyric. All controls are optional — leave them alone and the slide uses the global branding.

• Background image or video — pick one of the bundled preset photos, or upload your own image (resized to 1920px on the longest edge to keep storage small) or a short video loop (.mp4 / .webm / .mov, capped at 50 MB).
• Overlay tint — 9 mood presets (None, Purple Haze, Midnight, Sunset, Gold, Crimson, Emerald, Mono, Vignette) sit between the backdrop and the text so a busy photo doesn't fight your message.
• Motion — layer one of the 12 animated backgrounds (Snow, Rain, Fireflies, Embers, Aurora, Bokeh, Gradient, Particles, Stars, Waves, Mesh, Worship Rays) between the static backdrop and the text.
• Font — pick a decorative display face (Lilita, Bagel, Berkshire, Lobster, Pacifico, Alfa Slab, Rye, Yeseva, Anton, Cinzel) just for this slide, or leave it on Default to inherit the branding font.

Split layout & verse picker

In Split mode the panel grows a second Right content textarea and the live preview re-renders as two columns. Each column has a small Verse popover next to its label — pick the book (searchable), then the chapter, verse, and an optional toverse for a range, and Spectra looks the passage up in your current translation and pastes the verse text plus a citation into that column. The chapter and verse lists are driven by the chosen book, so you can only pick references that exist. Useful for “scripture + prayer”, “promise + response”, or any side-by-side composition without leaving the Text Builder.

Split slides also support the operator's progressive reveal and spotlight controls in the LivePreview — the right column stays hidden until you tap Reveal companion.

Design on canvas (free-form layout)

For slides that need real layout control, press Design on canvas to open the full-screen Slide Designer — a Photoshop-style editor where text and images are free-positioned boxes rather than centered blocks.

• Multiple layers — add as many text, image, shape, and countdown elements as you like; the layers list on the left lets you select, reorder, duplicate, and delete each one, and the toolbar has full z-order control (bring to front / forward / backward / send to back) so any element can sit above or below any other.
• Shapes — press Shape and pick from a visual grid of about 20 live shape previews: rectangle, ellipse, triangle, right-triangle, diamond, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, 5- and 6-point stars, trapezoid, parallelogram, chevrons, arrows (up / down / left / right), plus, and speech-bubble. Each shape has a fill colour with an optional two-colour gradient (with angle control), an outline (width + colour), a corner radius, opacity, and a Blur slider (0–10) that softens it — great for lower-third bars, badges, and colour panels behind text. The outline and corner radius apply to rectangle and ellipse only; the other shapes are cut with a clip-path that also clips their border.
• Countdown timer — press Timer to drop a countdown onto the canvas. Set its length (minutes + seconds) and pick Digital (05:00), Words (“5 minutes”), or Flip clock (split-flap cards that flip each second, airport-board style). The timer is just the digits — for a label like “Service begins in” add a normal text box above it. It uses the same font, size, colour, alignment, and drop-shadow controls as a text box. Crucially, it starts counting down when the slide is presented, not when you build it — in the deck and editor it sits frozen at its full length, then runs once it goes live on the projector and every NDI output.
• Type on the canvas — a new text box drops straight into edit mode so you can just start typing; double-click any text element later to edit it in place. (The right-panel text field still works too.)
• Drag & resize — move any element by dragging it, and resize it with the eight handles, directly on a true 16:9 canvas with your slide background behind it.
• Slide background — the right panel has a Slide background section (always available): pick a background colour, or upload an image or video to fill the slide behind your elements. By default a design has no background of its own — the canvas shows your presentation background behind it, and that's exactly what projects. A clear button removes any colour or media you applied and returns the slide to the presentation default. Backgrounds you set here affect only this slide (or, from the Lyric Segmenter, the song backdrop).
• Per-element styling — each text box has its own font (or the presentation default), size, colour, bold / italic / underline, alignment, line-height, letter spacing, a text outline, and drop shadow — plus a Text box section that paints the box itself: fill colour with opacity, corner radius, border, and padding, for chip and lower-third looks without layering a shape behind. Image elements have fit, opacity, corner radius, a border, and a Blur slider (0–10) for a soft, frosted look. Numeric X / Y / width / height fields give exact placement.
• Per-word styling — while editing a text box on the canvas, highlight any part of it (e.g. just “church” in “Welcome to church”) and apply a different colour, bold, italic, underline, or a word highlight (a background colour painted behind just those words, with a Clear button to remove it) to that selection only. The style buttons act on your highlight; with nothing selected they style the whole box.
• Multi-select & arrange — Shift-click (on the canvas or in the layers list) to select several elements and drag or nudge them together. While dragging a single element, pink snap guides appear as its edges or center line up with the slide's edges and center.
• Keyboard & history — full undo / redo (⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z, or the toolbar arrows), plus arrow-key nudging (Shift = bigger steps), Delete to remove, ⌘D to duplicate, and ⌘C / ⌘V to copy-paste elements.
• Seeded from your text — opening the designer the first time drops your typed title and content in as elements, so you start from what you already wrote. Press Done to keep the design, or Clear canvas design to fall back to the simple centered layout.

A designed slide renders identically on the deck thumbnail, the Live Preview, the projector, and every NDI output — the editor and the live output share the same renderer, and sizes scale with the screen, so what you place is exactly what projects at any resolution. From the Text Builder the designer covers custom / prayer slides; song lyrics get the same canvas via the Lyric Segmenter's design buttons. Scripture keeps its auto-fit sizing so AI auto-present stays hands-free.

Editing an existing slide

Click the kebab on any custom Text Builder slide in the deck and pick Edit — the Text Builder panel re-opens with every field hydrated (title, content, layout, secondary column, background colour, image / video, overlay, motion, font). The save button switches from Add to Presentation to Update slide so you commit the changes in place instead of adding a duplicate. A small Editingbadge in the panel header reminds you you're in edit mode; the Cancel button next to Update bails out without saving.

Live preview + automatic contrast

The panel includes a 16:9 preview that updates as you type. Spectra watches the background colour's perceived luminance and auto-picks the text colourfor you: light backgrounds get dark text, dark backgrounds get white text. No manual contrast tweaking required, and the auto-picked colour is persisted on the slide so the projector matches the preview exactly (it doesn't fall back to whatever the global branding text colour is set to).

Adding to the presentation

The Add to Presentation button commits the slide as a custom-typed slide and clears the form so you can immediately compose the next one. The new slide lands in the slide deck where you can reorder, duplicate, or queue it like any other slide.

Media Center

The Media Center is Spectra's shared asset library — every image, video, audio file, and imported document your service might need, organized in one place and reusable across slides and services.

Importing files

Files are imported via the OS file picker, grouped by type so the picker filters the right extensions:

Each imported file is copied into Spectra's media store, so it keeps working even if you later move or delete the source file. The original path is also tracked so you can see where it came from.

Linked folders (no importing)

Prefer to keep media where it already lives? Click Link folder in the Media Center sidebar and pick any folder on your machine — its images, videos, and audio list straight from disk, nothing is copied. Add, rename, or remove files in Finder / Explorer and the listing reflects it on the next refresh. Linked items present, schedule, and drag-and-drop exactly like imported media.

The trade-off: linked media is only as reliable as its folder. If the folder is renamed, moved, or lives on a drive that gets unplugged, the entry shows a missingbadge and its items can't load — so keep service-critical media imported (copied and safe), and use linked folders for large, frequently changing libraries. Unlinking a folder never touches the files on disk.

Folders + nesting

Files can be organized into collections (folders). Collections nest — a Sermon Series folder can hold a Joshuasub-folder, which can hold per-week sub-folders. Drag any file between folders or right-click for “Move to…” The folder tree on the left of the Media Center mirrors the structure for fast navigation.

Search + filter

• Search — filter visible files by name across the whole library or within the current folder.
• Type tabs — switch between All / Images / Videos / Audio / Documents to focus on what you need.
• Thumbnails — images get auto-generated thumbnails; videos and audio get clear type icons; documents get extension badges.

Using media on slides

There are three ways to put a media file on a slide:

• Drag-and-drop — drag from the Media Center grid onto the slide preview or schedule.
• Single click — adds the file to today's schedule as a media slide (image becomes a background-image slide, video / audio become playback slides).
• Double click — presents the media immediately, bypassing the schedule. Great for spontaneous “throw this image up right now” moments.

Last-used tracking

Spectra remembers when each file was last used in a presentation. That timestamp powers a couple of useful behaviours: surfacing recently-used files first, and giving you confidence that something hasn't been touched in months when you're deciding whether to delete it.