Show Cue System

Hello All, the following is a list of suggestions that I have already emailed to Mike, and am now posting on the forum so he can get other folks' take on them.

1. Clock Display: a simple window in SCS that would show a large version of the current time.

2. Play-List Cues: more specifically, the ability to start a play list cue, pause it, and continue from the same point sometime later in the show. For example, I would set up one play-list cue with a bunch of preshow music. The music would play prior to the show, then fade out and pause once Act 1 starts. Upon completion of Act 1, we could have a command that starts playing the same play-list cue from the same point where we left off earlier. This procedure could be repeated for any other intermissions, post-show, etc. The advantage is that we reduce the amount of play-list Q's to 1, and we dont have to start from the beginning of the list each time we have an intermission (this prevents patrons from hearing the same songs multiple times).

3. Notes: The ability to just add a note Q to the list of Q's. In our show, there are a few acapella songs with no tracks. It would be nice to be able to insert a "Note Q" in the list allowing the sound operator to remind himself. We found a way to circumvent this, by just inserting a Q that has a short, silent audio file.

4. Pause Qs via the keyboard: Often during rehearsal it would be nice to allow pausing of the tracks via a keystroke. Perhaps also even some form of fixed speed fast-foward/rewind using keystrokes. This would be extremely useful if one built a custom external control interface with just the basic shuttle controls (play, pause, stop, RR, FF).

Please share and comments or suggestions. Thanks!

I'll add some of my replies to Dan's original email to me:

1. Clock Display: I've had a few requests for this feature so I am considering this for a future release.

2. Play-List cue being re-used from where it left off: Good idea. I'll have to think about this because it breaks with the current approach of treating all cues except hot key cues (and standby cues) as play once and then close. However, I see there is merit in this suggestion.

3. Notes: I'm considering this for SCS 10. Some users have requested this for clearly identifying the end of an Act or something similar.

4. Pause Q's via keyboard: I've had other requests for pause and restart via keyboard. I've primarily relied on being able to drag the appropriate slider forward or backward to support the fast-forward/rewind functionality, but I realise a free-standing (eg domestic) CD player has Fast-Forward and reverse buttons, so I could look at emulating these.

I'd like to add support for Dan's requests 2 and 3 (and I have no objection to 4 either)

I'm using SCS for the first time on our holiday childrens show and I'd like to have the preshow music fade out, then resume where it left off when we get to intermission, then fade out again for act 2 and resume for post show.

What I'll have to do is have three playlist cues with different songs, but it would be nice to have one long playlist that starts, stops, and restarts as needed within the flow of my show's cuelist.

Notes cues are a definite yes, and I might also like the ability to replace a cue with a different cue type. I tried to add an audio file cue that I didn't have a file for yet and SCS wouldn't let me. That seems like a reasonable restriction, but I would like to have some mechanism for putting a placeholder in my cuelist even if I don't yet have the actual sound to go there.

As a workaround for this I suppose I could just record a sound file of my own voice saying "insert cue here", but it would be nice if there were an official feature. A "note" cue saying "insert sound xyz here" would be convenient.

Mike Daniell wrote: 2. Play-List cue being re-used from where it left off: ...

Starting the resume at the beginning of the next file in the playlist would be even better.

Greetings,
Walter

sound wrote:Starting the resume at the beginning of the next file in the playlist would be even better.

I like that idea. I'll see if I can include this in SCS 10 (due for release early next year). I'm considering providing a new property in the playlist cue which as an alternative to specifying a list of files enables you to specify 'resume playlist' with a dropdown list where you select a previous playlist. In practice you probably only have one previous playlist in this scenario. At run time, when the original playlist is stopped, probably by an SFR cue, it will be kept open if you have supplied a related 'resume playlist' cue.

The 'Note' cue type is already programmed into SCS 10.