Christmas Window Scenes: setup, controls, and troubleshooting

Christmas Window Scenes plays a looping holiday scene: falling snow, Santa waving at the glass, an elf showing off a gift, a reindeer, a snowman, or a snowy village square with a lit Christmas tree. In Hologram display every scene sits on solid black, so on a window only the scene itself lights up, and from the street it reads as a floating decoration rather than a lit rectangle on your glass. In Full scene display you get complete pictures for a wall or TV, such as Santa on a snowy rooftop, an elf at work in a toyshop, or a Christmas village, a toy train circling the tree and a crackling fireplace that loop without fading to black.

Before you start

• A projector or a screen you can point at a surface. A wall or TV works directly; a window needs something to project onto first (see below).
• Rear-projection film, a sheer white curtain, or frosted film for a window. Plain clear glass is transparent — the image passes straight through it and there's nothing to see from outside. Hang one of these across the window and project onto that instead.
• A dark room. This is a light source with no ambient-light compensation. Competing room light or streetlight spilling onto the material washes out the scene and turns the black background gray.
• A decision on front or rear projection, since it changes one control. Projecting from inside the house onto the back of your window material is rear projection and needs mirroring so the scene reads correctly from outside; projecting onto a wall or a screen from the same side your audience stands on doesn't.

Set it up

1. Connect your projector or display and open Christmas Window Scenes on it.
2. Set Display: Hologram (black background) for a window, curtain or scrim, or Full scene for a wall, TV or garage door. See Hologram or full scene? below.
3. Choose a scene from the Scene menu. It lists only the scenes that suit your Display choice.
4. Select Play Fullscreen.
5. Use Scale, Horizontal position, and Vertical position to fit the scene to your window or wall.
6. If you're rear-projecting onto the back of a curtain or film, turn on Mirror horizontally so the scene reads the right way round from outside. Use Flip vertically if your setup needs that too.
7. Darken the room and set Brightness for the surface. At 0 the whole display is black.
8. For a film with sound (Santa on the Roof, Elf Toyshop, Reindeer, Snowman or Christmas Train), turn on Scene sound under Sound if you want the soundtrack.

You'll know it worked when, in Hologram display, the scene fills your window with black everywhere else and, from outside, the decoration itself seems to glow rather than a projector beam hitting glass. In Full scene display, the picture fills your wall or screen edge to edge.

To leave fullscreen, press Escape or move your mouse and select Exit Fullscreen. The controls fade out after five seconds without mouse movement, same as everywhere else on the site.

What each control does

Display and Scene sit under Effect. Play, Animated scene length, and Film plays sit under Playback. Scale, position, and the two flip controls sit together under Placement. Scene sound and Volume sit under Sound.

Hologram or full scene?

Hologram (black background) is for see-through or semi-transparent surfaces: rear-projection film, a sheer white curtain, frosted film, or a scrim. The projector sends almost no light where the picture is black, so only Santa, the elf, the reindeer, the snowman or the snow shows, and it seems to hang in the window. It needs a dark room to work.

Full scene is for a painted wall, a garage door, a pull-down screen, or a TV. Every part of the picture is lit, so there's no empty black for the projector's grey to show up in, and it holds up better when you can't get the room fully dark. On a window, a full scene looks like a rectangle of video on the glass. Use Hologram there.

In Full scene, Falling Snow drifts over a still picture of a Christmas market at night, with lit wooden stalls, festoon lights and a tall tree, which very slowly pushes in. In Hologram the same snow falls on pure black.

If you change Display while a scene that doesn't fit is selected, Scene switches to Falling Snow. Play all and Shuffle only play scenes that match the current Display, so a window display never shuffles into a rooftop picture.

Play all and shuffle

Set Play to Play all and the effect runs the scenes for your Display setting in order, then starts again. In Hologram that's Falling Snow, Santa at the Window, Elf Workshop, Reindeer and Snowman, and in Full scene it's Falling Snow, Santa on the Roof, Elf Toyshop, Christmas Village, Christmas Train and Christmas Fireplace. Shuffle plays the same scenes in a random order, then reshuffles. It never plays the same scene twice in a row. Either way, each scene fades out to black and the next one fades in over about a second.

• Animated scene length sets how long Falling Snow, Christmas Village, Christmas Train and Christmas Fireplace stay up, from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. The default is 60 seconds. The three films loop seamlessly for that whole time.
• Film plays sets how many times each of the other films (Santa, the elves, Reindeer and Snowman) runs before the next scene. The default is 2. Each is about 11 seconds, so it holds the screen for about 22 seconds.
• The panel shows Now playing with the current scene's name. It sits in the panel rather than on the projected image, so it never shows up on your window.
• The playlist starts from whatever scene was on screen. Set Play back to One scene and the scene you picked in the Scene menu returns.
• If the tab is hidden, the animation timer pauses, so nothing is skipped while you're away.

At the defaults, one full cycle takes about two and a half minutes in Hologram and about five in Full scene.

Common setups

• Front window facing the street. Falling Snow, Scale 100, Brightness 70–90, room lights off. Snow looks right either way round, so you can leave Mirror horizontally off even when projecting from inside.
• Rear projection onto a curtain or film from inside. Santa at the Window, Elf Workshop, Reindeer or Snowman, Mirror horizontally on, Scale sized to fill the window's height. Keep Brightness a little lower than a direct wall projection — thin fabric and film show hot spots faster than a flat wall.
• A small window or narrow frame. Scale 50–70, Horizontal position and Vertical position nudged until the scene sits centered inside the frame rather than spilling past its edges.
• Leaving it running all evening. Set Play to Shuffle, go fullscreen and walk away. Passers-by get a different scene every minute or so. If you'd rather the characters turn up more often, lower Animated scene length to 30 seconds.
• Living-room wall or TV for a party. Display on Full scene, Play on Shuffle, Scene sound on with Volume around 20–30% for background atmosphere. Santa on the Roof, Elf Toyshop and Christmas Train give the room a soundtrack of ambient sounds and soft music, with no talking.
• Garage door facing the street. Display on Full scene, Scale 100 or higher so the picture fills the door, Scene sound off. A full scene reads better than a hologram on a big, opaque, light-coloured surface.
• A calm backdrop all evening. Display on Full scene, Play on One scene, Scene on Christmas Village or Christmas Fireplace. Both loop without fading to black, so it works as a festive backdrop on a wall or TV at a party or behind a dinner table.
• Under the tree, for kids. Display on Full scene, Scene on Christmas Train, Scene sound on at a low Volume. The train circles the tree without a visible restart, so it can run for hours on a TV or a wall near the real tree.
• Choosing scenes yourself through the evening. Leave Play on One scene. Use Falling Snow as background earlier in the night, then Santa at the Window or Elf Workshop when more people are walking by. Each is a quick change from the Scene menu, and you don't have to leave fullscreen.

Troubleshooting

Plain glass shows nothing, or just a faint, washed-out reflection. Clear glass doesn't hold an image — you're seeing light pass straight through it. Hang rear-projection film, a sheer white curtain, or frosted film across the window and aim the projector at that material instead of the bare glass.

From outside, the scene looks reversed — Santa or the elf seem to be facing or moving the wrong way. This is a mirroring mismatch. Turn Mirror horizontally on when you're rear-projecting from inside onto the back of your material, and leave it off when you're front-projecting onto a wall or a screen from the same side as your audience.

A message reading "The scene video could not load" appears, and a film scene shows nothing. The video failed to load in this browser session. Switch to Falling Snow in the meantime, or reload the page and pick the video scene again. With Play all or Shuffle running, the effect moves to the next scene after a few seconds by itself, so the window doesn't stay dark.

Scene sound is on but I hear nothing. Only Santa on the Roof, Elf Toyshop, Reindeer, Snowman and Christmas Train have sound, so check that one of them is playing. If the browser blocked sound, which some browsers do until you interact with the page, turn Scene sound off and on again. Also check Volume and your device's own volume.

Santa at the Window, Elf Workshop, Reindeer or Snowman is missing from the Scene menu. Display is set to Full scene. Switch it to Hologram (black background) to see them. The same goes the other way for Santa on the Roof, Elf Toyshop, Christmas Village, Christmas Train and Christmas Fireplace.

The playlist started over. Entering or leaving fullscreen restarts Play all or Shuffle from the scene selected in the Scene menu. Your Play settings are kept. Go fullscreen once and leave it there for the evening, and the order runs without restarting.

The black background looks gray instead of black once it's projected. The effect outputs solid black around every scene at any Brightness setting, so lowering Brightness further won't change it. The gray is the projector's own black level plus ambient light landing on the material. Darken the room further, keep other light sources out of the projector's throw, and try the projector's eco or low-lamp mode if it has one.

Next steps

For more on choosing between the two displays, read Hologram vs Full-Scene Projection. To control the snow itself, including heavy or blowing snow, big crystal flakes and a drift that settles along the bottom, use Falling Snow Projector. For the same black-background projector setup with a different set of scenes, see Halloween Scenes. For warm ambient light without a projector or window material, try Fireplace.