The following is a collection of common mistakes reported by new and experienced users of Ventuz. While all the information presented here is also available throughout this documentation, you might want to have a look here and at the F.A.Q. in case of trouble.
When creating a new scene, the render output will be completely black since there is no geometry to render in the scene yet. This is normal, simply drag a Layer node from the Toolbox to the Layer Editor or use the Add Layer Button and you should see something in the renderer output.
All Nodes available in Ventuz can be found in one of the Three Toolboxes. Some nodes are "hidden" behind others, as similar nodes are often grouped to one entry in the toolbox. If the Icon in the toolbox has two additional lines at the bottom and right, it is a Stack of Nodes. Click or click on it to see all nodes hiding underneath it. Note: There may be a difference between dragging the "master node" of a stack into the scene vs. dragging one of the individual nodes. The former often launches a selection wizard which will implicitly create additional required nodes for you.
While starting to use Mover Nodes or doing other animations, the Property Editor might still show old values instead of the current ones. Events also won't show they are fired. To always show the correct values, activate Monitor Values in the Property Editor. This can be deactivated to prevent refreshing the UI at every frame which can reduce performance.
A lot of scenes require some form of trigger to start their animations. For some, this is a key stroke, for others an external device that sends data. Use the Scene Statistics from the Tools menu in the menu bar and look out for nodes in the I/O category (i.e. Keyboard, Mouse, OSC). If the scene contains a slide presentation, look for the Slide Manager Toolbar.
Running a show is different from designing one. First, check out the document on Deployment. Do not use the Ventuz Designer to run a show but the Ventuz Presenter. The Designer does many things that can stall a presentation as for example doing automatic backups. Make sure you are running in exclusive fullscreen and not in virtual fullscreen. Above all, make sure to test the scene on the final hardware setup well before the show.