CuePoints

A CuePoint is a marked moment on a track, "lights change here", "sound effect here", "video starts here".

Every cue belongs to a CuePoint Type. Types are how you keep departments apart: Lighting, Sound, Video, Standby. Each type can be shown, hidden, synced and exported on its own, so the lighting operator sees lighting cues and isn't buried in everyone else's.

Adding Cues

Put the playhead where you want the cue and either:

• click the CuePoint Type, or

• press its keyboard shortcut: much faster, and the only sensible way during a live run.

A new project comes with some generic types to get you going. Change them to suit your show.

Naming Cues As You Make Them

If Label CuePoints at creation is on, a small box appears the moment you drop a cue so you can type its name. Press Enter to keep it, Escape to cancel.

Playback behaviour when labelling decides whether the show carries on while that box is open. Keep Playing for a live run; Pause for building a cue list at your desk.

Both live in Settings > CuePoints.

Managing CuePoint Types

Click the three dots next to CuePoints. From there you can:

• reorder types,

• show or hide them,

• lock one so you can't change it by accident, and

• + New Type to add one.

Each type has a name, a colour and a point. Save a set of types as a template and every future project starts with them already there.

Locking Is Just For You

Locking a cue type only locks it for you. On a shared project, locking Lighting so you don't nudge it does not stop the lighting operator working. This changed in version 2; it used to lock the type for everybody.

Solo Mode

Solo lets you narrow the show down to one or two cue types for a minute, then put it back exactly as it was. Nothing you do in Solo Mode is saved: your real show/hide settings sit underneath, untouched, waiting for you.

To turn it on: Alt-click a cue type. That's the only way in. You go straight into Solo Mode with just that type soloed.

To add or remove types while you're in it: Alt-click them. Alt-click a second type and you're now seeing two. Alt-click one again and it drops out.

Everything not soloed is dimmed rather than hidden: you can still see the cue types are there, and which ones you've picked. Their cues come off the timeline and out of the cue list.

Clicking a dimmed cue type does nothing. Normally clicking a type drops a cue; in Solo Mode a dimmed one is inert, so you can't create a cue you wouldn't be able to see.

Getting Out

An S button appears next to the cue types while Solo Mode is running. It's only there while you're in it.

• Click S to come out. Everything returns to how it was.

• Alt-click S to clear your selection but stay in Solo Mode, ready to Alt-click a fresh set.

• Alt-click the last soloed type off and you leave Solo Mode too, since soloing nothing means nothing.

CuePoints also drops you out on its own when Solo Mode would get in the way, when you change track, and when you open the cue type editor. Both of those are about your real visibility settings, so solo steps aside rather than letting you edit a view that isn't the real one.

Visibility Per Track

Track > Enable CuePoint Type Visibilities Per Track lets each track remember its own shown/hidden types, so hiding Sound on the video track doesn't hide it everywhere.

Reset CuePoint Type Visibilities To > Used Types In Each Track sets every track to show exactly the types it actually contains. On a big project this saves a lot of clicking. Visibilities can also be copied from one track to another.

The default for new projects is on the Settings > Tracks pane.

Follow-On Cues

Normally a cue sits at a fixed timecode. A follow-on cue doesn't: it hangs off the cue before it and moves whenever that one moves.

Use it when two cues belong together; a cue and its restore, a hit and its release, a chase that always starts two seconds after the state it follows. Retime the first one and the rest come along.

Setting One Up

The TRIGGER column sets how a cue fires. Three values:

• TC: fires at its own timecode. This is the normal one, and what every cue starts as.

• F/O With: fires a set time after the cue before it starts.

• F/O After: fires a set time after the cue before it has finished fading.

The TRIGDELAY column is the gap. Set it to 0 and the cue lands exactly on its trigger point; set it to 2 and it lands two seconds later.

Both columns are switched on together in Settings > CuePoints, they're one entry in the column list, because neither is much use without the other.

Which Cue It Follows

The cue before it of the same cue type. Not the cue above it in the list; the previous Lighting cue, if it's a Lighting cue.

That's what makes this usable on a busy show. A Lighting cue follows the Lighting cue before it and ignores everything Sound and Video are doing in between.

With, Or After

The difference is what they measure from.

• F/O With counts from the moment the previous cue starts. A F/O With of 0 fires at the same instant.

• F/O After counts from the moment the previous cue has finished: CuePoints uses the longer of that cue's fade in and fade out. A F/O After of 0 fires the moment the fade lands.

So a 5-second fade with a follow-on at 0: F/O With fires immediately, F/O After fires five seconds later. Change the fade to 8 seconds and the F/O After cue moves out to match, on its own.

What Happens When You Move Things

A follow-on cue stores the gap, not the time. Its position is worked out from whatever it's following, and re-worked every time anything changes.

• Move the cue it follows and it moves with it, keeping the gap. Move a cue with three follow-ons behind it and all four travel together.

• You can watch it while you drag. The followers track live as you move the cue, so you see the whole chain land where you want it.

• Change the fade on a cue with an F/O After behind it and the follow-on repositions itself.

• Positions are rounded to the frame, so a chain never ends up half a frame off.

• A follow-on can't overtake the next cue of its own type. If the numbers would push it past, CuePoints stops it one frame short and keeps the order intact.

If You Delete The Cue It Was Following

The follow-on has nothing to hang off any more, so it goes back to TC and stays exactly where it is. Its TRIGGER and TRIGDELAY cells update as it happens, so you can see it has become an ordinary cue.

Nothing moves and nothing is lost; you just have a normal cue at that timecode, which you can leave or re-link to something else.

Shared Projects And Permissions

On a shared project, cue types can be restricted per person.

• Cue types you don't have access to are hidden completely: you won't see them on the timeline, in the list, or in the type manager.

• Numeric keyboard shortcuts number from 1 over the types you can see, so your keys stay sensible even when half the show is somebody else's.

• Creating a new type needs permission. If you don't have it, CuePoints tells you clearly rather than failing quietly.

• If someone changes your permissions, or renames, adds or deletes a type, the cue type editor updates while you're looking at it.

The Cue List

Every cue in the current track appears in the cue list.

• Click a cue's time to jump the playhead there.

• Up and down arrows step through the cues one at a time.

• Cmd+G opens Go to Cue: type a cue number and go straight to it.

Columns

Choose which columns you see, and their order, in Settings > CuePoints.

Always There

Three columns are always shown, because a cue list without them isn't one:

• TIME: where the cue sits, in timecode.

• CUE TYPE: which type it belongs to, in that type's colour.

• LABEL: the cue's name. This is the column that absorbs the space when you switch others on and off, so it stays as wide as it can.

The Ones You Choose

• CUE: your own cue numbers, matching the desk. Decimals work, so 5.1 can sit between 5 and 6. Its position is fixed at the front of the list, but you can switch it off.

• FADE: the cue's fade time.

• NOTE: a free-text field for anything the label doesn't cover. What it's for, who does it, what to watch out for.

• OSC: the OSC message this cue sends when it fires. Fill it in to override the default for its cue type, when one cue has to do something the others don't. See OSC.

• COMMAND: a command for the receiving console, carried through to your exports.

• Trigger / TrigDelay: one entry, two columns, because neither is much use alone. TRIGGER is how the cue fires, TC, F/O With or F/O After, and TRIGDELAY is the gap when it's following something. See Follow-On Cues.

Order And Width

Drag a column up or down in the settings list to change where it appears. Reset order puts them back to FADE, NOTE, OSC, COMMAND, Trigger / TrigDelay.

Drag a column edge in the cue list to resize it. Your widths are remembered, and they survive changing track: you don't have to set them up again every time. A width you've set by hand is never rescaled behind your back, so Reset widths is how you get back to the defaults.

Reset order and Reset widths do only what they say. Resetting the order leaves your widths and your on/off choices alone, and vice versa; a mis-click costs you one drag, not your whole setup.

Worth Switching On

Most people run CUE, FADE and NOTE and leave the rest off. Turn on OSC and COMMAND when you're driving a console, and Trigger / TrigDelay when you start using follow-on cues.

Cue ID

Tools > Toggle Cue ID Display turns on your own cue numbering.

• Type a number to set one.

• Type 10+1 to renumber from that point on, in steps of 1; the fast way to insert a cue into the middle of a numbered list.

• Select several cues, right-click, and choose Sequential Cue IDs from selection… to number them all at once.

Fade Time

Tools > Toggle Fade Time Display turns on fade times. The starting value comes from Default fade timing in Settings > CuePoints.

Two shortcuts worth knowing:

• Type +: the fade becomes exactly the gap to the next cue, so one cue runs seamlessly into the next.

• Type 1/2: a 1-second fade up and a 2-second fade down.

Moving Cues Around

Copy, paste and alt-drag all work, including on shared projects, and every copied cue gets its own identity, so duplicating a track doesn't create two cues that the sync engine thinks are the same one.

Update playhead when moving cue points in Settings > CuePoints makes the playhead follow a cue you're dragging, so you hear exactly where you're putting it.

Importing And Exporting

• Import a cue list from a CSV file, including cues that sit right at 00:00:00:00.

• Export your cues to grandMA2, grandMA3 and ETC Eos.