Interactive Preview

A generator that draws a media library as a thumbnail grid you can actually use with the mouse — in the Render Output, not in the inspector. Cable a Library node's Library output into it and put its Image on a Canvas: every file appears as a rounded, letterboxed thumbnail with its name underneath.

It is a control surface, not a picture of one. The wheel scrolls with the trackpad's own momentum; hovering brightens a cell and reports it on Hover; a click picks, and with Drive Source on (the default) that click sets the source library's Index directly, with no return cable. Selected comes out as an ordinary int for anything else that wants to follow the pick. Arrow keys move the selection after a click has landed on the grid, Home and End jump to the ends, and the view scrolls to keep the pick visible.

Hold a cell and drag to reorder. The other thumbnails slide aside to make room, the grid auto-scrolls near its edges, and the drop rewrites the library's order — undoable, visible at once in the library's own inspector grid, and respected by sequential playback afterwards.

The scroll pill and the page dots are controls, not decoration. Drag the pill or click anywhere on its track to scroll; click a page dot to turn to that page. They are laid out by the same code the mouse asks, so what is drawn is exactly what can be grabbed.

Thumbnails come from the system's thumbnail generator, are cached on disk, packed into atlases and drawn in one instanced call, so a large library costs one draw rather than hundreds.

Library (structure) — the list to show, from a Library node's Library output. Nothing else is needed for the node to work.

Interactive (bool, default true) — off makes the tile inert: it still draws, but the mouse passes straight through it. This is what you switch off for a show, once the picking is done.

Drive Source (bool, default true) — a click sets the source library's Index directly. Turn it off when the preview should only report Selected and something else in the patch decides what that means.

Style (int, default Grid) — Grid (columns, vertical scroll with a fading pill), Strip (one row, sideways — the VJ view), Pages (no scrolling, page dots).

Columns (int, default 4) and Cell (int, default Square) — the grid shape and the thumbnail aspect: Square · 16:9 · 4:3. Gutter (float, default 0.02) is the gap between cells in Grafit units.

Show Names (bool, default true) — file names under the thumbnails, in the quiet scene-text grey.

Scroll (float) — scroll position as a cable, so a fader, an LFO or a hand can drive the grid instead of the wheel. The current position also comes back out as Scroll.

Highlight (color, default (0.36, 0.64, 1.0, 1.0)) — the selection ring. The rest of the design is deliberately quiet: one accent colour, greys for everything else.

X, Y, Width (default 1.6), Height (default 1.0), Opacity — where the tile sits in the viewport, in Grafit units.

Besides Selected and Hover, the node reports Page / Page Count for the Pages style, Count for the whole library, and Visible for the indices currently on screen.

• VJ clip picker: Library (Kind Videos) → Interactive Preview (Style Strip) → Canvas, with Drive Source on — click a clip in the render window and the Video Player cuts to it.
• Image browser on a second screen: Style Grid, Show Names on, filling the output window — a contact sheet you can scroll and reorder during a session.
• Pick without a mouse: MIDI Receiver (a pad number) → Scroll or the library's Index, Drive Source off, and the preview simply shows where you are.
• Hands instead of a cursor: a Vision hand position remapped into Scroll, with Hover driving a UI Text readout of what is under the hand.
• Show mode: Interactive off and Opacity animated down — the grid becomes an overlay you bring up between pieces and put away for the piece itself.