Slice Transform in Resolume Arena

Slice Transform is the effect that turns Resolume Arena from "video playback on a single screen" into "send specific content to specific parts of your LED wall — and change it on the fly." It's the bridge between your composition and your physical stage layout. Once it clicks, modifying which content shows on which panel becomes a drag-and-drop operation you can do mid-set.

This is also one of our most-watched tutorials. We're going to walk through the whole effect end-to-end, cross-referenced against Resolume's official Transform documentation so what you read here matches the source of truth.

Prefer to watch? Here's the full walkthrough — keep scrolling for the written version.

What Slice Transform Actually Does

Per Resolume's official docs: "by dragging the Screen onto a clip, a layer, a group or the whole composition, you can instantly place content in every slice in that screen."

Translated: Slice Transform takes whatever content you've got playing in a composition and routes specific pieces of it to specific slices of your output. Want the DJ name on just the booth screen? Want a logo duplicated symmetrically across three LED panels? Want to bypass one column of pixels for a buildup? Slice Transform is how.

Resolume's docs note that the effect works with regular slices, polygon slices, and fixtures, respects slice orientation, and respects any input masks applied to the slice. Whatever you've built in Advanced Output, Slice Transform will route to.

Step 1: Open the Slices Panel

Head to View → Show Slices. This opens the Slices panel, which shows every screen and slice you currently have available in your Advanced Output.

If the panel is empty, that means you don't have any slices set up yet — head into Output → Advanced and build your projection map first. (We won't cover Advanced Output setup in this lesson — it's a whole topic of its own.)

Step 2: The Drag-to-Create Shortcut

Here's the shortcut that makes Slice Transform feel fast instead of fiddly. Don't manually search for "Slice Transform" in the effects list and drop it on. Instead:

1. Go to the Slices panel
2. Select the slices you want (or all of them)
3. Grab them and drop them onto your composition (or a clip, layer, or group)

Resolume automatically creates the Slice Transform effect for you with all the right slices already wired in. One drag-and-drop. Done.

Pro move from the video: drop a Slice Transform effect on your composition panel with all of your slices loaded. Now your composition monitor shows the actual input map layout — your physical stage projected into the UI. Especially useful for bigger productions with multiple LED screens. Lets you see everything in one little screen.

Step 3: Choose a Scaling Mode

Once Slice Transform is applied, each slice gets its own row of controls. The first big choice: how should content scale to fit each slice? Five options, per Resolume's official documentation:

Fill (default)

Scales content to fill the entire slice, cropping the sides or top and bottom if aspect ratios don't match. The default — and our most-used setting for most layouts. Content fills the panel cleanly, nothing looks letterboxed.

Fit

Scales content to be completely visible inside the slice — possibly adding empty pixels on the sides or top/bottom. Less common in practice because the empty pixels look like dead space on an LED wall. Use it when preserving the full frame matters more than filling the panel (e.g., showing a logo or asset you can't crop).

Stretch

Warps content to match the exact shape of the slice. This distorts your visuals — rarely the answer for real shows. Useful only for very specific intentional looks.

Mask

Uses the slice layers as a mask and overlays your content over it. Common for 16:9 LED wall layouts — keeps your content's native proportions while letting the slice shapes define what's visible. Second most-used after Fill in most workflows.

Invert Mask

The inverse of Mask. Where Mask reveals content inside the slice shapes, Invert Mask reveals everything outside them. Per Resolume's docs: "you leave the content as it is, and essentially use the Slice Transform as a mask to show and hide specific parts of it." Less common but worth knowing it exists.

Step 4: Pac-Man Icon — Orientation Flips

Each slice row has a small icon Resolume's docs call the "Pacman icon" — looks like a Pac-Man mouth. This toggles the slice's orientation through four states:

• Regular
• Mirrored Horizontally (flip X)
• Mirrored Vertically (flip Y)
• Mirrored Horizontally and Vertically (flip X+Y)

Practical use: when you have symmetric LED layouts (two panels facing each other, mirrored wings on either side of a DJ booth), flip the X on one of them so the content mirrors cleanly across the centerline. Looks dramatically more polished than letting identical content play on both panels.

Step 5: Bypass, Solo, and Delete

Three small buttons on each slice row that change how live mixing feels:

• B (Bypass) — temporarily hides content for that specific slice. Use it for buildups: kill the side panels, leave the main wall running, drop them back in on the beat.
• S (Solo) — solos that slice and hides the others. Note: only one slice can be solo at a time. Per Resolume's docs.
• X (Delete) — removes the slice from the effect entirely.

Tip pulled straight from Resolume's docs: if you accidentally hit X on a slice and realized you needed it, just drag the slice back in from the Slices tab. No need to rebuild the effect.

Step 6: Match Input Shape (Don't Skip This)

Whenever you make manual changes to slice dimensions in Advanced Output — splitting a wall in half, copying slices, repositioning panels — the next step is critical and easy to forget.

In Advanced Output: select all your modified slices, right-click → Output → Match Input Shape.

This matches the output slice to the input shape you've defined and keeps everything in sync. Skip this and your slices will be visually set up but won't actually route content correctly.

Note from Resolume's docs: when you don't manually edit slice dimensions, Resolume keeps the Slice Transform effect in sync automatically. The Match Input Shape step is specifically for the workflow where you've drawn or modified slices by hand.

Step 7: Stack Transform Above Slice Transform

Per Resolume's docs: "You can apply more than one Transform!"

Practical application: if you put a regular Transform effect above your Slice Transform in the effect chain, you can scale and position your content before it gets routed to the slices. Useful for logos and assets that need to fit cleanly inside a specific panel without distorting.

From the docs: any Transform applied after the first one gets its own Opacity and Blend Mode (treated like an effect). This lets you do things like scale a layer down, mirror it, then position the result in a specific corner — all inside one effect chain.

Step 8: Build Presets for Multiple Layouts

This is where Slice Transform stops being a setup tool and starts being a performance instrument. Per Resolume's docs: "you can create presets to quickly recall specific looks and switch between them."

The workflow:

1. Keep a base Slice Transform on your composition panel showing every slice
2. Build alternative layouts (DJ logo on main only, content split in half, content tripled across the wing) as separate effect setups
3. Save each as a Transform preset
4. Switch between them with one click — even mid-performance

Example from the video: a "doubles" preset that splits the main screen into two mirrored halves, a "triples" preset that splits the DJ booth into three equal parts, and a "singles" preset that runs each slice one-to-one. Three presets, four buttons, an entire stage layout that can shift on the drop.

Missing Slices — The Red Highlight

Worth knowing because it'll happen to you. Per Resolume's docs: "if a particular slice can't be found, Resolume doesn't panic. It just lets you know something is missing by highlighting the slice in red."

This happens when you've loaded a different Advanced Output preset, accidentally deleted a slice, or modified the projection map after setting up Slice Transform. Any remaining slices continue to display fine — the red highlight is just Resolume's polite warning to go fix something in Advanced Output.

The fix: head into Advanced Output, either restore the missing slice (or undo if you just deleted it — undo brings it back everywhere) or delete the missing slice row from the Slice Transform effect.

Coming Next — Chaser

Once Slice Transform is wired up, the next thing worth learning is Chaser. Chaser uses your slices to build sequenced flickering, on/off patterns, and timed effects across the wall — great for drops and buildups. You can stack Chaser with other effects, which is where really polished LED-wall work starts living. We'll cover Chaser in its own write-up — for now, just know that building slices isn't only for Slice Transform; it unlocks Chaser too.

Cheat Sheet

• Open Slices panel: View → Show Slices
• Apply the effect: drag slices from Slices panel onto composition (auto-creates Slice Transform)
• Most-used scaling: Fill (default), Mask (for 16:9 layouts)
• Mirroring: Pac-Man icon cycles 4 orientation states
• Bypass / Solo / Delete: B / S / X buttons per slice row
• Undo a delete: drag the slice back from the Slices tab
• After manual slice edits: Output → Match Input Shape
• Multiple Transforms in one chain: stack a regular Transform above Slice Transform for pre-routing scaling
• Live mixing: save layouts as Transform presets and switch on the fly
• Red slice = missing — fix in Advanced Output or delete from effect

What's Next

Slice Transform is one of the highest-leverage skills for VJs doing multi-panel LED-wall work. If you haven't built the foundation yet, the beginner course covers everything that comes before this:

1. Install & interface
2. Composition Settings
3. Composition Layout
4. Display Output
5. Codec Conversion
6. Audio Reactivity
7. Blend Modes

The Mask scaling mode pairs especially well with Sprite Sheets for clean logo overlays on LED panels, and Slice Transform plus Effect Stacks is where really polished multi-panel work lives.

Need help setting up your Advanced Output before tackling Slice Transform, or running into the red-slice warning and not sure how to resolve it? Drop a comment on the YouTube video above or email vjacademy@outlook.com and we'll dig in. (Technical claims on this page cross-referenced with Resolume's official Transform documentation as of June 2026.)