Playback

This page is about playing your show: the timeline, the transport, and getting around a track quickly.

The Timeline

The waveform is the picture of your track. Getting good at moving around it is most of getting good at CuePoints.

Zoom in and out: any of these:

• Pinch with two fingers on the trackpad.

• Option + scroll.

• Drag the round ends of the zoom region below the waveform.

You can zoom all the way in to full waveform detail, so landing a cue on an exact moment is a matter of looking rather than guessing.

Scroll along: two-finger drag left and right on the trackpad, or click and drag the zoom region.

Make the waveform taller: drag underneath it. This is display only; it doesn't change your sound. It is what you want on a quiet track, where the waveform is otherwise too flat to read.

Following The Show

While the track plays, the timeline follows the playhead. Reach in and scroll or zoom and it stops following, so you can go and look at something without the view yanking itself back. It picks the show up again when you're done.

Drag near the edge of the timeline and it auto-scrolls in that direction.

Timeline Breakdown

Tools > Toggle Timeline Breakdown gives each CuePoint Type its own row, instead of stacking every cue on one line.

On a busy show this is the difference between a readable timeline and a wall of markers.

The Scrub Bar

Shows how far through the track you are. Drag it to move around.

If you're on a Mac, scrubbing with the trackpad follows your Natural scrolling setting, so it moves the way the rest of your Mac does.

The Controls

Play / Pause: starts and stops.

Forward / Back Skip: nudges the playhead. Three sizes:

• arrows on their own: small

• Shift + arrows: medium

• Command + arrows: large

Set how big each one is in Settings > Shortcuts. Frames for precision, seconds for speed.

Skip to Start / End: jump to the beginning or the end of the track.

Loopback to Start Point on Pause: shortcut R. Press pause and the playhead goes back to where you started playing, rather than staying where it stopped. Ready to run the same passage again immediately.

A-B Loop: mark a start (A) and an end (B), and CuePoints repeats just that section. This is the rehearsal tool: set it around the tricky 30 seconds and run it until it's right.

Volume: this changes the track's sound only. Timecode going out, routed or generated LTC, is not affected. Turning the volume down will never take your timecode with it.

Getting Around With The Cue List

• Click a cue's time to jump straight there.

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

• Cmd+G opens Go to Cue: type the number, press Enter.

Turn on Auto-scroll CuePoints list in Settings > CuePoints and the list follows the show, so the cue that's playing is always on screen.

Video And Sync

Video, timecode and cue timers all start together from the audio. The sound is the clock and everything else follows it, which is why a show that starts in sync stays in sync, even a long one.

Video tracking during playback is smooth, so the picture doesn't jitter against the sound.

When Something Goes Wrong Mid-Show

CuePoints is built not to interrupt you at the worst possible moment.

• An audio fault shows as an indicator on screen, not a dialog box in your face.

• If the last audio output device disappears: someone unplugs the interface, playback pauses rather than carrying on silently pretending everything is fine.

• Waking the machine from sleep no longer stops the show.