Scheduling Playback

The Vū Studio scheduler lets you automate content playback — set assets, scenes, or experiences to play automatically at specific times without anyone needing to be present. Useful for digital signage, recurring events, and overnight content rotations.

Accessing the Schedule

Go to Library → Dashboard → Schedule to view and manage your scheduled playback calendar. The same Scheduled Tasks view is also available on its own page at one.vu.studio/schedule — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home, then open Scheduled Tasks.

The calendar view shows all upcoming scheduled items at a glance. Switch between day, week, and month views.

Creating a Schedule Item

In the Schedule view, click New Schedule or click a time slot on the calendar to open the Schedule Playback window. Fill it in from the top down:

1. Action — a row of four buttons at the top of the window sets what the scheduled event does. Pick one first, because it decides which fields you get underneath:

   Action	What it schedules
   Play	Content — a theme, a folder, or a single asset.
   Wake	Wakes the target players from sleep.
   Sleep	Puts the target players to sleep.
   Reserve	Blocks the time slot without playing anything (see Avoiding Scheduling Conflicts).

2. Event Name — required, and how you will recognize the event on the calendar.

3. Target displays — required for every action. Switch between By Group and Individual, then pick the player group, or tick the individual players.

4. Content — for Play only. Choose Theme, Folder, or Single Asset, then select the specific one.

5. Start Date and Start Time — required. The time list runs in five-minute steps. A start time in the past is rejected.

6. End Date and End Time — optional for Play (select + Add end time to reveal them, and Remove end time to drop them again), and required for Reserve, which has to have a window to block.

7. Wake displays before playing — for Play only. Tick it and the job wakes the target screens first, then casts the content, as one scheduled event.

8. Repeat — tick it to set a recurrence (see Recurrence Options).

A summary of what you have built — Action, Content, Displays, and When — sits above the buttons at the bottom of the window, so you can check the event before committing to it. If anything required is still missing, the window says what it is still waiting for and keeps the submit button disabled.

Select Schedule Task to create the event (on an existing event the button reads Save Changes instead), or Cancel to back out.

At the scheduled time, Vū Studio automatically sends the command to the player. The player must be online and connected for scheduled playback to execute.

Recurrence Options

Option	Description
Once	Plays one time only
Daily	Repeats every day at the same time
Weekly	Repeats on selected days of the week
Custom	Set specific dates and times

How Recurring Schedules Behave

Turn a scheduled item into a repeating one with the Repeat option in the Schedule Playback window, then pick the cadence — and, for a weekly rule, the days of the week it should run on. The time of day is taken from the item's start time and is held for every occurrence in the series.

What to expect once a series is running:

• One entry per occurrence in the calendar. The day view shows a single upcoming entry for each occurrence of a series. Occurrences that already exist as real scheduled items are drawn solid; occurrences further out are drawn as projected entries with a dashed border and a repeat icon, labelled Future occurrence (not yet scheduled). A projected entry is a preview of when the series will next come round — it is never a second copy of an entry that is already there.
• Completed occurrences stay completed. An occurrence that has already run, or is running right now, can no longer be edited — only deleted. Opening a past occurrence to look at it, and editing the series' details, leaves that finished occurrence finished; it is not put back into the queue and it will not fire a second time. Changes take effect from the next occurrence onwards.
• An interrupted series recovers. If an occurrence is interrupted — the dispatch fails, or the run is cut short partway through — the series does not silently stop. The affected occurrence is marked Failed in the list and calendar views with a retry control next to it; retrying re-arms that occurrence, and once it succeeds the series continues generating its next occurrences as normal.
• Scheduling conflicts still apply per occurrence. Each newly-created occurrence is checked against everything else booked on the same players. If a future occurrence would collide with another job, that occurrence is flagged rather than double-booking the screen; clear the conflict and retry it to put the series back on track.
• Deleting. Deleting the pending occurrence of a series ends the series while leaving its history intact. Deleting the whole series removes every occurrence, past ones included. The schedule offers both choices when you delete an item that is part of a series; a one-off item still gets the plain confirmation.

Scheduled Scenes and Multi-Player Groups

When a scheduled item that plays a scene triggers, the scene is sent to every assigned player that is online at that moment, not just the player you happened to be connected to when you created the schedule. Each target player receives the scene and draws its layers on its own displays, and none of them needs to be restarted, reconnected, or manually woken for the scheduled scene to appear.

Players that are offline when the schedule triggers can't receive it — a scheduled item does not queue up and deliver late. If a display was dark for a scheduled scene, check that the player was online at the trigger time rather than re-saving the schedule.

Display Power and Playback Actions

The scheduler can do more than play content — it can also send power and playback commands to connected displays at a set time, so screens can power down, wake, and stop playback on their own. Choose one of these actions instead of selecting media:

Action	What it does
Sleep	Puts the target players to sleep at the scheduled time
Wake	Wakes the target players from sleep
Exit Playback	Stops all content currently playing on the target players

Sleep and Wake are the two you can pick in the Action row. Exit Playback exists as a scheduled action and existing Exit Playback events keep running and stay editable, but it is not one of the four buttons in the current Schedule Playback window.

Schedule these the same way you schedule content: in the Schedule Playback window, select Sleep or Wake in the Action row at the top, name the event, choose the target displays, and set the time and any recurrence. Power actions carry no content — they only need a player target. A common pattern is to schedule a Sleep action for after hours and a Wake action shortly before opening, so displays are dark overnight and ready for the day without anyone touching them. Sleep and Wake are two independent jobs; a Sleep action does not automatically schedule its own Wake.

Sleep Applies to a Whole Media Server

Sleep is a per-player command, not a per-display one. A scheduled Sleep action puts every display driven by the targeted Vū Media Server to sleep, not only the display you happened to be looking at when you created the schedule. The same is true of Wake, which brings all of that media server's displays back together.

This is what you want for the usual end-of-day case — one scheduled Sleep darkens the whole wall rather than leaving stray displays lit — but it does mean you cannot schedule one display on a multi-display media server to sleep while its siblings keep playing. If you need part of a wall to go dark and the rest to carry on, schedule an Exit Playback action or new content for those displays instead of a Sleep.

Sleeping displays stay connected. A player in Sleep Mode still reports in, still accepts commands, and shows a distinct Sleep Mode indicator on the Display Dashboard rather than reading as offline — see Connection Indicators on Display Nodes.

Waking a Screen as Part of Scheduled Playback

You no longer need a separate Wake job in front of a content schedule. When you schedule content, the Schedule Playback window offers a Wake displays before playing option; tick it and the scheduled action wakes the target screens first and then casts the content, as a single scheduled job.

To use it:

1. Create or edit a scheduled item with the Action set to Play.
2. Choose the content, the time, and the target displays as usual.
3. Tick Wake displays before playing.
4. Select Schedule Task (or Save Changes when editing).

Notes and limits:

• The option applies to the Play action only. The power actions don't offer it, because Wake already is the action.
• The wake is sent to the same players the content is going to, immediately before the cast, so a display left asleep from the night before doesn't sit dark under freshly scheduled content.
• It is harmless on a screen that is already awake, so you can tick it on any recurring content job as insurance rather than reasoning about what state the wall was left in.
• It wakes the screen; it does not bring an offline player back. A player that is powered down or off the network still can't receive scheduled content — see Player Offline Status.

Folder Playback

You can schedule an entire folder to play rather than a single asset. When a folder is scheduled:

• Assets in the folder play in order
• Playback loops through the folder for the scheduled duration
• New assets added to the folder are automatically included in future scheduled runs

This is particularly useful for digital signage — drop new content into the folder and it appears in the rotation automatically.

Schedulable System Actions

See Display Power and Playback Actions for scheduling Sleep, Wake, and Exit Playback on your players.

Team Visibility

On a Team plan, the schedule is shared across the whole team. All team members can see scheduled playback events created by other members, so everyone works from a single view of the team's schedule rather than only seeing the jobs they created themselves. Both personal and team scheduled tasks appear together in the schedule view.

Visibility is shared, but editing is still controlled: an existing scheduled job can be edited or deleted by the team member who created it or by a team admin. This lets a team coordinate shared displays — for example, a studio or briefing center used by several people — without everyone stepping on each other's schedules.

Theme Scheduling

You can schedule themes directly from the Display Dashboard. Theme scheduling is managed from a modal on the dashboard, and the dashboard's control bar shows a notification of the next scheduled theme event. See Themes → for details on creating and loading themes.

Managing Scheduled Items

From the calendar, click any scheduled item to:

• Edit — change content, time, or recurrence. Editing is available only for items that haven't started yet. Once an occurrence has already run or is currently playing, it can no longer be edited — you can still delete it.
• Skip next occurrence — skip just the next instance without deleting the schedule
• Delete — remove the schedule entirely

When creating or editing a schedule, the start time must be in the future — you can't set a scheduled time that has already passed.

Timezone

The scheduler uses the timezone set in your Vū Studio account. If your player is in a different timezone from your account, check Settings → Timezone to make sure everything lines up correctly.

Recurring Schedules and Daylight Saving

A recurring schedule holds its local time of day across a daylight saving change. A series set to run at 8:00 AM keeps running at 8:00 AM after the clocks move, in both directions — it does not drift an hour earlier or later for the rest of the season, and you don't have to edit the series twice a year to correct it.

This applies to every repeating cadence — daily, weekly on chosen days, and monthly — and to device actions as well as content, so a nightly Sleep and a morning Wake stay pinned to the opening and closing times you actually keep.

Two things to keep in mind:

• The local time that is held is the one belonging to the schedule's timezone. If your account timezone and a player's physical location disagree, the schedule follows the account setting — line them up in Settings → Timezone before relying on a recurring series.
• On the day a clock change happens, one occurrence is naturally an hour closer to, or further from, the previous one in absolute time. That is the correct outcome of holding local time, not a missed or duplicated run.

Tips

• Test your scheduled items by setting them to run in the next few minutes before setting the final time
• Use player groups to schedule the same content across multiple displays simultaneously
• Combine scheduling with Experiences for fully automated briefing center programs
• Leave a buffer between scheduled items — back-to-back scheduling with zero gap can occasionally cause the first item to not finish cleanly

Avoiding Scheduling Conflicts

Vū Studio prevents two scheduled playback sessions from running on the same players or player groups at the same time. If you try to schedule an event that overlaps an existing one on the same target, the scheduler blocks the conflicting time slot, so overlapping schedules can no longer collide on the same screen.

You can also reserve a screen without assigning any content. In the Schedule Playback window, select Reserve in the Action row at the top — the window then explains what a reservation does ("Block playback on the selected players — no scheduled content runs during this time window") and asks only for a name, the target displays, and the window itself. There is no content to choose.

A reservation must have an End Date and End Time; unlike a Play event, the end of the window is what the reservation is for, so the window won't let you save without it.

This is useful when a studio or display is being used in person and you want to make sure no automated playback starts on it during that window. A reserved slot counts as a conflict for that time, so other events can't be scheduled over it. Nothing is ever sent to the player — a reservation exists purely to hold the slot.