Importing Cues from other Cue files (in 9.4.0)

[NylonOxygen]

Here's another one for you Mike. I'd love to be able to import cues from other cue lists. For example, I may create a master cue list of all my drum rolls (cues with loops, fade outs) and need to use them in new cue lists. Theoretically for now, I can duplicate the master cue list and take out the ones I won't be using, but it would be a great feature down the line to be able to import cues from other files.

Thanks for listening!

[jpudsey]

I agree with Jason.

I sometimes do shows with the local college, and often they will do two slightly different versions of the same play with the cues in a different order, or with extra/less cues. The ability to copy cues from one cue list to another would be of great benefit to me doing these shows.

Cheers

[Ian Beeby]

It would be really nice to be able to build up a block of cues and then save them as a template to use in other productions, for instance to have a standard switch over to the interval music, killing stage mic's via midi then reverting back after the interval, This involves a sequence of about 8 cues which we would use on virtually every production.
If this is already possible, please, please pretty please can someone tell me how?

[chawkey]

Here here! I have requested this feature twice now, to be able to import or copy and paste cues. My school also changes the order of our one act plays every night, and it is a REAL pain for my students to have to build a different file for each night. As soon as this feature is in, I'll upgrade to version 9.

C. Hawkey

[Mike Daniell]

I'll do some planning towards an implementation of this feature. I can offer an interim solution for users familiar with an ASCII editor - even NotePad would do but there are much better editors available, such as UltraEdit.

Your cue file (the .scs file) is an ASCII XML file. Every cue starts with the line:
<Cue>
and ends with the line:
</Cue>

For example, Q1 in demo.scs looks like this:

Code: Select all

   <Cue>
      <CueId>Q1</CueId>
      <MIDICue>1</MIDICue>
      <Description>Fanfare</Description>
      <DefDes>True</DefDes>
      <Sub>
         <SubType>F</SubType>
         <SubDescription>Fanfare</SubDescription>
         <AudioFile>
            <Filename>$(Cue)\fanfare.mp3</Filename>
            <DBLevel0>-6.0</DBLevel0>
         </AudioFile>
      </Sub>
   </Cue>

The concept is the same in SCS 8 files but the XML 'tags' within cues are different.

If you want to copy cues from another file, save cues to another file, or move cues within a file, you can copy-and-paste or cut-and-paste the lines from each required <Cue> line up to and including the matching </Cue> line. Multiple consecutive cues can be moved or copied if required.

A few important points:

• Close SCS if it is currently open.
• Backup your cue file before you start, ie take a copy of the cue file before you do any editing with an ASCII editor. Then you can reinstate this backup if necessary.
• Cue labels (stored in the cue file in the <CueId> item) must be unique within a cue file, so if you copy cues to another cue file make sure you do not end up with duplicate cue labels. If you want a library of cues to drop into any show it would be advisable to use cue labels in that library that are distinctly different. You can always change the cue labels later using SCS.
• Sound device assignments must be the same between the cue files. For example, if the first device in your source cue file is 'FOH' but the first device in your target cue file is 'Rear' then your copied cues are not going to play thru the correct speakers.
• If you have any inter-cue dependencies in the cues to be copied between files, such as auto-starting 3 seconds after the end of another cue, or a level change cue, then the related cues must also be copied or you could end up with invalid cue references.

Although the above is only an interim solution until SCS is modified to include this feature, it may help ease the pain of manually duplicating cues.

Regards,
Mike