OSC (Open Sound Control) lets machines on a network send each other short messages. With it, your lighting desk, media server, tablet or Stream Deck can control CuePoints, and CuePoints can control them.

Set it up in Settings > OSC. This page is about what to do with it once it's on.

What You Can Do With It

• Drive CuePoints from the desk. Press GO on the lighting console and a cue appears in CuePoints, at exactly the right moment. This is how most people record a cue list during a tech.

• Drive the desk from CuePoints. Fire a cue here and the console jumps to it.

• Run the transport from anywhere. Play, pause, skip and record, from a Stream Deck or a tablet.

• Show the state of the show elsewhere. CuePoints reports its transport, playhead and record state continuously, so a status display always knows where the show is.

The Basics Of Getting Connected

Three things have to line up, at both ends:

1. The same network. Both machines need addresses in the same range, 192.168.0.x talking to 192.168.0.x. If your Mac is on Wi-Fi and the desk is on a wired show network, pick the right network interface on the OSC pane so the messages leave by the right door.

2. The same port.8000 is the usual one.

3. The same message wording. Choose a preset for your console and this is filled in for you.

The message log on the OSC pane is the tool that solves nearly everything. Clear it, press GO once on the console, and look at exactly what arrived.

The Message List

The OSC pane lists every message CuePoints understands. Click one to copy it, and paste it into whatever is sending. The complete list is also at the foot of this page, see Message Reference.

Command templates support placeholders, so a single template can carry the cue number, name or timecode. An individual CuePoint can also carry its own command, which overrides the default for its type, useful when one cue in the show has to do something unusual.

Stream Deck, Using Companion

Bitfocus Companion is free software that turns a Stream Deck into an OSC controller. It also has a built-in emulator, so you can try all this with no hardware at all.

Download it from bitfocus.io/companion.

Set Companion up:

1. Choose the network interface that matches the one CuePoints is using.

2. Press Launch GUI.

Add CuePoints as a connection:

1. On the Connections tab, add a Generic OSC device.

2. Set Target IP to your Mac's address; the one shown for the network interface CuePoints is using.

3. Set Target Port to the port on the OSC pane (8000 unless you changed it).

4. Save.

Add the ready-made buttons:

1. Download the CuePoints Companion config from cuepoints.com/download.

2. Go to the Import / Export tab.

3. Import the config file.

You now have a page of working buttons, transport, cue navigation, and cue creation.

grandMA3

grandMA3 can drive CuePoints directly, using a set of ready-made macros.

Set up OSC on the desk:

1. Put the desk's network adapter in the same range as your Mac.

2. Go to Menu > In & Out > OSC.

3. Enable Output, with an active session.

4. Fill in OSC line 1:

   • Name: CuePoints (or anything)

   • Destination IP: your Mac's address

   • Mode: UDP

   • Port: 8000

   • Send: Yes

   • Send Command: Yes

Install the macros:

1. Download them from cuepoints.com/download.

2. Put them in grandMA3/gma3_library/datapools/macros.

3. On the desk, go to Menu > Import/Export.

4. Import CuePointsOSCMacros.

Press a macro to fire it, or put it on an encoder for skipping. The macros are ordinary MA3 macros, so you can edit them if your show needs different amounts.

Keeping A Connection Honest

CuePoints watches incoming OSC. If a connection stops delivering, it stops reporting itself as connected, so what the pane shows is what is actually happening.

Incoming messages are also rate-limited, so a device sending far more than it should can't overwhelm the app.

Message Reference

Every message CuePoints understands, and everything it sends back.

You don't need this page to use OSC, pick a preset on the Settings > OSC pane and the wording is filled in for you. This is for building something custom: a Companion page of your own, a tablet layout, or a console template that isn't one of the presets.

All addresses use the /cuepoints/ prefix. Arguments use standard OSC types: i is a whole number, f is a decimal, s is text.

Transport

Cue Navigation

Two ways to go to a cue, and they behave differently./cuepoints/transport/gotocue takes a cue type as well as an ID and finds the first match. /cuepoints/cue/goto ignores the type and searches backwards, so the last match wins. If you have the same Cue ID on more than one cue, that difference decides where you land.

Track

Volume

This is the track's audio only. Timecode going out is not affected.

Loop

Timecode

Art-Net and MTC are one or the other. Turning either on turns the other off, because there is a single timecode generator behind them. See Settings > Timecode.

Connection Settings

Arg 1 identifies the slot: i = 1-based index (1-8), s = the connection's exact Name. Mode aliases ignore case, spaces, hyphens and underscores.

These are the Cue Trigger Actions from the Settings > OSC pane, changed remotely. Handy for a desk that should create cues during a tech and do nothing on a show day, without anybody touching the laptop.

Recording

stop keeps the file. terminate throws it away. Label those two clearly on whatever you build.

CuePoint Creation

The cue type has to be visible and editable for this to land. A hidden or locked type is skipped, which is the usual reason a create that looks right does nothing.

Big Label Display

System

ping is the first thing to try when a link isn't working. A pong back means the network, the port and the connection are all fine, and the problem is in the message you were sending.

Outbound Feedback

These are messages CuePoints sends you, so a Stream Deck or a tablet can show what the show is doing.

Sent only to connections whose Send CuePoints Status Messages setting is Send (default: Disabled). Each address is sent on change, plus a 1 Hz heartbeat.

Nothing arrives until you turn it on. Feedback is off by default on every connection, switch on Send status messages for that connection on the Settings > OSC pane.

Because everything repeats once a second, a button that lights up when the show is playing recovers on its own if it misses a message or you plug it in halfway through.

Command Template Placeholders

These go in the messages CuePoints sends out: the per-connection Goto Cue Command template, and the OSC command on an individual CuePoint or a CuePoint type. CuePoints swaps each one for the real value as the cue fires, so a single template serves your whole show.

Case-insensitive.

A CuePoint of type "Cuelist 2" with Cue ID 5.1, Label "Blackout":

{CuelistID} is the useful one for lighting desks: name your CuePoint Types Cuelist 1, Cuelist 2 and so on, and one template fires the right cue list every time.