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Sidechain Software

Programming Guide

Once you’ve got CueConductor set up, it’s time to start programming your cuelist.

Concepts

There are several important concepts within CueConductor’s cuelist that you’ve likely seen before, though potentially named differently.

Cue Numbers

Despite what the name might suggest, cue numbers don’t have to be purely numeric. However, unlike some other software, CueConductor will order your cuelist based on the Cue Number field, attempting to recognise numbers where possible.

Auto Follow

Cues may be automatically set to fire the following cue either immediately after the first cue is actioned, or after a post-wait time (see below). As all cue actions are considered to be instant, there is no functional difference between Auto Follow and the Auto Continue function in some other software.

Pre-wait

After a cue is fired by an operator or an external device, CueConductor will wait this amount of time before actioning the cue (ie. outputting data).

Post-wait

After a cue is actioned (ie. data is output to external devices), CueConductor will wait this amount of time before firing any Auto Follow cues. If both a pre-wait and a post-wait are configured, the time between a cue being fired and the subsequent (auto-followed) cue being fired will be the sum of the pre-wait and post-wait times.

Adding Cues

Adding a cue to CueConductor can be done in one of several ways. You can click the button in the top left-hand corner, use the ⌘N keyboard shortcut, use copy (⌘C) and paste (⌘V) shortcuts, or the duplicate (⌘D) shortcut.

Once you have a cue in your cuelist, there are also several ways to edit it. All fields in the cuelist table may be edited by double-clicking on that field. Additionally, the following shortcuts will also allow you to edit certain fields:

  • Pressing n will focus the Cue Number field of the currently selected cue
  • Pressing q will focus the Label field of the currently selected cue
  • Pressing w will focus the Pre-Wait field of the currently selected cue
  • Pressing p will focus the Post-Wait field of the currently selected cue
  • Doing ⌘ along with a number key (1-9) will focus the field of the sink as numbered from left to right. For example, ⌘1 will focus the field of the first sink on the left of the cuelist.

Once you’ve made changes to a field, there are three possible ways to exit that field. Clicking away from the field or pressing Enter will save the data, while pressing Escape will exit the field and revert its value to its previous state.

Planning for Tracking

If tracking is enabled for your showfile it will undoubtedly become an important part of how you program your show. Beyond visually representing the current cue of external devices down the cuelist, enabling tracking at the show level and sink level has several functional implications as well.

Firstly, consider situations in which the Jump Assist feature may be used (see above link for information on this feature). If an operator may be moving between cues for any reason (rehearsals are a common case for this), you should endeavour to make this behave in a way that is most helpful and logical for the operator. Usually, this means sinks that have an ongoing effect such as console scenes and FX presets should have tracking enabled, while sinks that are momentary such as SFX or automated chat messages should have tracking disabled. This avoids a situation in which a SFX is fired in a cue other than the single cue that it is intended for.