Hi everyone,

First of all, thank you to the vMix team for building such a powerful and flexible live production platform. It continues to perform extremely well in complex broadcast and streaming environments.

I would like to propose an API enhancement related to structural input usage feedback.

Current Behavior

vMix currently provides reliable feedback for:

[]Inputs in Program
[]Inputs in Preview
[]Overlay states
[]Audio states

• Streaming / Recording status
  

However, there is no API visibility indicating whether an input is being used indirectly within an active composition.

Operational Scenario

An input may not be directly in Program or Preview, yet still be contributing to the live output through:

[]A MultiView that is currently on air
[]A Virtual Input feeding Program
[]A secondary Mix contributing to the main output
[]A layer inside an active composition

From the perspective of external control systems (Bitfocus Companion, Stream Deck, or hardware panels via Central Control), there is currently no way to detect that an input is indirectly in use.

This limits advanced tally logic and reduces situational awareness in distributed control environments.

Proposed API Extension

Expose an additional structural state such as:

[]InputUsedInActiveComposition
[]InputReferencedInActiveMix

• InputInUseAnywhere
  

Or alternatively, provide a generalized boolean flag indicating whether an input is contributing (directly or indirectly) to the active Program output.

Benefits

[]Improved tally accuracy
[]Better external control integration
[]Enhanced operational safety
[]Greater confidence in complex live productions

This request is intended as a constructive contribution to further strengthen vMix’s capabilities in advanced production environments.

If this would benefit your workflow as well, please consider adding a +1.

Best regards,
Fede.

Thanks for the detailed explanation — that makes sense.

I can confirm that layers / mixes / overlays can be tracked recursively via XML, but in my workflow Virtual Inputs are heavily used, and that’s where things become difficult, as you mentioned (“Virtual input isn’t easily trackable”).

That’s exactly why a simplified/official way to expose Virtual Input dependencies would be extremely valuable, for example:
• a list of referenced inputs per Virtual Input, or
• a key-based reference back to the original inputs used inside the Virtual Input, or
• a derived boolean like “InputInUseAnywhere” computed internally.

This would greatly reduce complexity for third party tools and improve tally/feedback reliability in real-world complex setups.