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Film in concert

A program puts a whole evening's cues on one timeline against the film. The master follows the house clock or is the clock, opens each cue as it arrives, and plays the film on the projector for the whole evening, through the gaps between cues.

Build the program

  1. Download or build every cue of the evening. Only cues with conductor events can join; that is where each cue's start timecode lives.
  2. In the Library tap + and choose New Program….
  3. Name it. Enter the film start, the timecode of the film's first frame as the house's clock will send it, on the keypad: type the digits and the colons appear. Choose the frame rate.
  4. Tick the cues. They sort themselves by their own start timecodes.
  5. Open the program and choose Add Film Video… to import the full scoring film. Its soundtrack becomes a Film strip in the mixer with the same two mixes as Click and FOH. If the movie carries embedded timecode, the film start is set from it.

Programs sit at the top of the Library. Long-press or right-click one to edit, share, save to disk or delete it.

Run it

The program screen shows the film, the transport, a scrub bar across the whole evening and the list of cues with the next one's countdown.

  1. Open the program. It loads as a local master: Play, Stop and locate here drive the film and every stand, with nothing broadcast yet.
  2. Under Clock choose House clock if QLab or a DAW sends timecode, or This device if the podium is the clock.
  3. Tap Lock. House clock: the device follows the house, opening cues as the time arrives. This device: the device broadcasts as master.
  4. Press Play. Each cue opens a few seconds ahead of its MIDI start so its prep clicks begin exactly on the timecode. The cue runs to its end bar, the program screen returns with the next countdown, and back-to-back cues hand over at the next cue's start.

Locked and rolling, the program screen becomes the stage view between cues: the film fills the screen with the next cue and the countdown over it.

Inside a cue during a program

  • The cue's video region shows the program film, the same picture the audience sees, with the cue's streamers and counter over it. Overlay Settings has a Picture switch to keep the cue's own video instead.
  • The filmstrip and scrub bar span the whole film, with this cue's stretch marked.
  • Bar and marker locates drive the program transport, and the Program face in the transport toggles Lock and Unlock, so you can navigate as a conductor without leaving the cue.
  • Tap any cue in the list to open it by hand; the clock takes over again when it reaches another.

Audio during a program

While a cue is open, the film's dialogue and effects run inside that cue's own audio engines beside the click and the FOH mix, so every fader of a mix stays sample-locked for the whole evening. Between cues the program plays the film itself. The hand-over is a short crossfade of identical audio, heard nowhere.

If it doesn't work

  • A cue starts at the wrong bar when locked to Pro Tools. The session, the MIDI file and the stems must share one start timecode, and the frame rate must match. Update the Link plug-ins to version 9 or later; earlier ones mis-reported sessions at 29.97 and 23.976.
  • A cue shows "not in library". Download it; the program finds cues by title as well as by id.
  • The next cue did not open. Cue timings are read from the packages; choose Refresh Cue Timings in the program menu after rebuilding a cue.