Troubleshooting

Most faults show in a caption bar, the status line or the log. These are the ones you can fix.

No Sources Found

Symptoms: the Sources menu is empty or shows No NDI® sources found. An unbound tile shows HML Balance | No Source.

Solutions:

1. Wait one discovery cycle. Vector snapshots the network every 2 s, so a new camera appears.
2. Refresh by hand at Menu → Sources → Refresh Sources, or Blackmagic Inputs ({n}) — Rescan for capture.
3. On a network multicast cannot reach, use ⚙ Discovery Server Config with Use Discovery Server and Save & Apply.
4. Free a slot. A menu row is disabled while every slot is taken. Clear one and the feed appears.

NDI® is a trademark of the Vizrt Group.

DeckLink and UltraStudio are products by Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd.

A Tile Is Black or Frozen

Symptoms: a tile shows one picture and will not update, or the picture has gone.

Solutions:

1. Look for a paused scope. A Stream Deck Pause key freezes the picture and shows scope paused. Press it again for scope resumed.
2. Check the caption bar. An unbound scope shows HML Balance | No Source, and its Sources Palette cell (empty).
3. Reassign the feed. The slot cell’s + offers Assign a source to this slot, and the Sources menu the same feeds. A slot whose source has gone shows the offline slate, an unresponsive one the grey placeholder.

A Scope Shows Nothing

Symptoms: the caption shows a kind but the plot is empty, or the tile shows words.

Solutions:

1. The tile shows the words: QC DISABLED, FLICKER CHECK OFF, NOT CHECKED, No compatible GPU found, or a caption ending | No Source.
2. Turn Flicker on. Flicker Heatmap is behind the Flicker switch in the tile’s pane.
3. Check Grid. Grid, Grid color and Grid strength decide whether the graticule appears.

See Audio and Timecode for an empty meter or Goniometer.

A License Will Not Activate

Symptoms: the header shows Product not licensed in yellow, a gated layout row YELLOW, or the license window an Error: line.

Solutions:

1. Open the license manager at Menu → Help → Manage License, from the yellow unlicensed state or a gated layout row.
2. Paste the key. The field is Enter License Key:, the button Automatically Activate License, and Requesting activation… shows while it works.
3. Check Status: and Error: together. Concurrent container limit reached. clears itself as Vector retries.
4. With no route to the server, Get Offline Request File and Save Request File save activation_request.fetchreq, and Import Activation Token From File loads the token back.
5. A key for another Fetch product will not work. Vector licenses are issued for product id 97.

The Stream Deck Plugin Does Not Appear

Symptoms: the Stream Deck application shows no Vector category after an install, or a key stays blank.

Solutions:

1. Install it from the File menu: Install Stream Deck Plugin, wherever the Stream Deck application runs. Every click installs, replacing what is there.
2. Restart the Stream Deck application. The Stream Deck Plugin window ends with ” Restart the Stream Deck application to see the plugin.”
3. Check the Stream Deck Plugin window, which shows Nothing has been installed yet. before a click, and the outcome after.

The Web API Does Not Answer

Symptoms: a client cannot reach the port, or a route answers with an unexpected status.

Solutions:

1. Check the switch. Preferences ▸ API ▸ Enable Web API is off by default, and a restart applies it.
2. Ask GET /api first. It lists every route, each with origin, set to shared or vector.
3. 404 covers a path that is misspelled or not offered.
4. The preview stream is GET /api/stream, and a client that stops reading it stops receiving frames.

High GPU Load

Symptoms: the machine is working hard, the fan is up, or the scopes fall behind the live picture.

Solutions:

1. Leave Every pixel off. That follows the processing default and measures a quarter of a 4K frame.
2. Set the cap deliberately with Limit to 1080p processing on the Vector — Input Settings window, at Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I.
3. Drop tiles. Every scope tile uses its slot. The shipped pages have 6, 6, 11 and 7 tiles: Colorist, DIT, QC, Broadcast.

A Screenshot Did Not Appear

Symptoms: you asked for a screenshot and no file is where you expected one.

Solutions:

1. Check the directory in Preferences ▸ Screenshots, where Choose… sets it and Reset returns to the Pictures folder. No directory to save into could be found. is what you get when nothing resolves.
2. Check the message. It shows for 10 s: “Scope screenshot saved to {scope} — the whole window is saved beside it, as {window}.”, or “{why}, so the whole window was saved to {window}.”, or “The screenshot could not be saved — {why}.” The log has screenshot: wrote {path}.

Getting Help

• Take the version. Menu → Help → About Fetch Media Tools | Vector shows the version you are running.
• Take the log. Startup prints Logging to: {path}. The logs are in a logs folder under Vector’s data directory:
  • Windows — %APPDATA%\FetchMediaTools\Vector\data\logs\
  • macOS — ~/Library/Application Support/com.FetchMediaTools.Vector/logs/
  • Linux — ~/.local/share/vector/logs/
• Ask the API. GET /api/status answers with the layout, the version, the licensed state and the slot count. See the Web Control API page.
• Check for a newer version at Menu → Help → Check for Updates before you spend time on a fault. See the Software Updates page.
• Contact Fetch Media Tools at https://fetchmedia.tools/contacts with the version, the platform, the log lines, what the caption bar showed and the message you saw.

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