Tracking -- GRRRR

Tim,

If your "stock cues" don't have data for all parameters of every fixture in your show, then they may play back differently if you change the order that they are in (which I assume is happening when you build your cuelist for the service.

I'll give you an example that should illustrate why this happens. Imagine that your stock cuelist has 8 cues. Each of them has a single desk channel at full. Cue 1 would have desk channel 1, cue 2 would have channel 2, and so on. When you play back cue 8 (which only has channel 8), you see channels 1 through 8 all at full because those levels have tracked into cue 8 as nothing else has overridden their levels since they were brought up in earlier cues.

If you now copy some of these cues to a new list, you are only copying the data in the cue and not the state of the output. State is the term we use when discussing tracking to describe either the cumulative output based on playing a single list or the entire output from the console for all cuelists playing back. If you have copied cues 1, 3, and 8 to a new cuelist and you play them in order, you are only going to see channels 1, 3, and 8 on stage.

There are a couple of ways that you can go about transferring your cues to your running cuelist.

Option 1 - The State Button

When you want to transfer a stock cue to your running list, select your master of stock cues, press Load, press the State button on the main toolbar, type the cue number, and press enter. This will load the state of the cuelist in that cue into the programmer and you can then record this data to your other list.

The problem with this is that you can still end up with some tracking oddities. The reason is that the State of a cuelist will only include fixtures that have been affected already by the cuelist.

For example, using my 8 cue / 8 desk channel cuelist, if I load the state of cue 8 and record this as cue 1 to a different cuelist, I get all 8 desk channels at full. If I load the state of cue 2 and record this as cue 2 to my new cuelist, I only get 1 and 2 at full, I do not get 3 through 8 at 0. This is because my cuelist has no awareness of these desk channels when it's in cue 2. They haven't been used yet.

You can also save yourself the Load / Record steps by just copying the cues. There is a State button on the main toolbar when you copy, I just wanted to illustrate this option using Load.

Option 2 - Pig + Active

Play back the cue on your stock cuelist that you want to transfer to a new list.
Select all of your fixtures.
Hold down Pig and press the Active key.
This will grab all parameters of all of the fixtures and bring them into the programmer. It is a quick way of grabbing the entire output state for fixtures so that you can then record this into a new cue. Pig+Active will grab all values, even if they haven't been used, so when you record you will be recording a block cue that nothing can track through or change.

Whichever option you choose, I would suggest unblocking your new cuelist once you have finished building it. There is a toolbar button in the cuelist window that you can use to unblock. This will look through your cuelist and where there are hard values in cues that don't actually change anything (channel 1 at the same level in cues 1 and 2, for example) it will remove the redundant values. This will get you back into a state where you can still take advantage of tracking, it will make your show file smaller, and it will be less work for the console to play back the cues.

Hopefully this clears things up a bit. Please let me know how things go once you've had the chance to work with these ideas or ask any other questions you may have now.

Thanks.

Tim,

If your "stock cues" don't have data for all parameters of every fixture in your show, then they may play back differently if you change the order that they are in (which I assume is happening when you build your cuelist for the service.

I'll give you an example that should illustrate why this happens. Imagine that your stock cuelist has 8 cues. Each of them has a single desk channel at full. Cue 1 would have desk channel 1, cue 2 would have channel 2, and so on. When you play back cue 8 (which only has channel 8), you see channels 1 through 8 all at full because those levels have tracked into cue 8 as nothing else has overridden their levels since they were brought up in earlier cues.

If you now copy some of these cues to a new list, you are only copying the data in the cue and not the state of the output. State is the term we use when discussing tracking to describe either the cumulative output based on playing a single list or the entire output from the console for all cuelists playing back. If you have copied cues 1, 3, and 8 to a new cuelist and you play them in order, you are only going to see channels 1, 3, and 8 on stage.

There are a couple of ways that you can go about transferring your cues to your running cuelist.

Option 1 - The State Button

When you want to transfer a stock cue to your running list, select your master of stock cues, press Load, press the State button on the main toolbar, type the cue number, and press enter. This will load the state of the cuelist in that cue into the programmer and you can then record this data to your other list.

The problem with this is that you can still end up with some tracking oddities. The reason is that the State of a cuelist will only include fixtures that have been affected already by the cuelist.

For example, using my 8 cue / 8 desk channel cuelist, if I load the state of cue 8 and record this as cue 1 to a different cuelist, I get all 8 desk channels at full. If I load the state of cue 2 and record this as cue 2 to my new cuelist, I only get 1 and 2 at full, I do not get 3 through 8 at 0. This is because my cuelist has no awareness of these desk channels when it's in cue 2. They haven't been used yet.

You can also save yourself the Load / Record steps by just copying the cues. There is a State button on the main toolbar when you copy, I just wanted to illustrate this option using Load.

Option 2 - Pig + Active

Play back the cue on your stock cuelist that you want to transfer to a new list.
Select all of your fixtures.
Hold down Pig and press the Active key.
This will grab all parameters of all of the fixtures and bring them into the programmer. It is a quick way of grabbing the entire output state for fixtures so that you can then record this into a new cue. Pig+Active will grab all values, even if they haven't been used, so when you record you will be recording a block cue that nothing can track through or change.

Whichever option you choose, I would suggest unblocking your new cuelist once you have finished building it. There is a toolbar button in the cuelist window that you can use to unblock. This will look through your cuelist and where there are hard values in cues that don't actually change anything (channel 1 at the same level in cues 1 and 2, for example) it will remove the redundant values. This will get you back into a state where you can still take advantage of tracking, it will make your show file smaller, and it will be less work for the console to play back the cues.

Hopefully this clears things up a bit. Please let me know how things go once you've had the chance to work with these ideas or ask any other questions you may have now.

Thanks.