Does QLab3 support manual fade-out-and-stop?

[Jay Ashworth]

I've just snagged QLab2 (because it is in what is presently my budget :-}), and set up my next show with it.

And after I figured out that the way you import multiple audio files to separate cues at once was by group-drag from Finder, I was good to go.

Except that I don't see -- as some googling tells me no one else saw -- any way to manually fade out and stop a cue. And the googling results I *did* find suggested to me that the author didn't understand why anyone would ever *want* to do that (hint: because we only have one channel out audio out of our laptops .

The place to put it is obvious (to me, anyway): in the Active Cues panel, which presently has a Play/Pause button. Add a Stop button, with a workspace preference for the fadeout duration, and probably a second one for a fadeout duration on the Emergency Stop/Stop All button.

Does anyone who's running QLab 3 know whether this issue's been addressed?

(QLab is, honestly, more complex than I really need for what I do -- and in my opinion, Progressive Disclosure wasn't implemented as much as I'd like to see, so that power unduly complexifies using it for simple stuff -- but that's the one thing I really can't live without for the sort of theatre I work, and if it's in 3, I'll probably budget it in for sometime in the future. If not, I'll look at other stuff.)

(Oh, and yes, I have a Mac now. 7,1 MBP)

 

[Jay Ashworth]

*channel of audio, and yes, I know, multichannel output boxes are available, which make this easier, but not everyone has those.

 

[Txtech]

Hitting escape fades out all current signal, and double-tapping escape will take it out immediately. But as far as I know, there's no easy way to manually take out a cue. One of the tabs in the display shows you the waveform, and it's where you set up your fade envelope, and the name of it currently escapes me, but I believe it's "Time and Length" or something to that extent. You can go there and use the pause button for playback to stop a cue, but there's not any easy, single-cue stop or fade out that I know of.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

A test just now shows that <Esc> does Stop-All, but in my installed copy of v2.3.9, it doesn't fade out; it just stops hard. v2 appears to call the Inspector tab you're talking about Settings, but it doesn't solve this problem, of course, since the point is interactivity to follow actors.

No clue whether v3 has this, though, huh?

 

[Amiers]

I would switch to a MAC and rewrite my whole show if I had a fade out on a stop or new cue being played. The only thing I have seen that on is high end film gear. Maybe you can get QLAB to add it to their next patch.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Could you, maybe, edit that reply, Amiers? I can't tell which assertion you're trying to make, there. QLab, clearly, is Mac software already, and that's what I'm running it on.

 

[SHCP]

I am running Qlab 3, so I will answer with 3 features. I will look at two later and see if the same features are there.
Do you need to slide it down at a specific rate that is non specific? If so you can always select the cue and go to "device and levels" and roll the master slider down at any speed you want, like when dancers are leaving as stage, but NEVER do it the same speed twice...(grrrrrr) This does not kill the cue but you can then kill it in the active cue list. BTW, in Qlab 3 the Active Cue list has an "x" to kill the cue with a 1 sec fade, it does not stop it abruptly.

We just did 3 Musketeers and had fight music running during the fight scenes, and the Sound OP just used the Device and Levels Master slider to fade up and down the music when the actors would speak. A tad clunky but it worked fine.

Otherwise, you can add two or three different fade out cues, like a 2 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec, and just choose one of them. I have had a dance where I used three fades for the music, a 15 sec, an 8 sec and a 2 sec, and I just hit the first one, and if I needed to "speed up" i just advanced to the next cue.

I do agree that a big fat audio and video fade down slider would be a nice addition to the software.

Hope this helps,
Tim

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Well, Tim, the change to the Active Cues panel would be what I need, yes. It's mostly just a solution to "not having a multichannel output box": if you did, you could put each successive cue on a separate fader, and fade them out to match the music by hand.

A 1 or 1.5 second general fadeout is fine for me: the issue is just that I want to be able to do it to *one* running cue, while letting the rest keep playing. If 3 knows how to do that, then I will, in fact, likely budget for that; the audio-only version's not all that incredibly spendy to buy out of pocket.

 

[SHCP]

Hi Jay,
You can selectively "kill" running cues in the active cues control panel in Qlab 3.
Hope it works for you.
Tim

 

[Amiers]

Could you, maybe, edit that reply, Amiers? I can't tell which assertion you're trying to make, there. QLab, clearly, is Mac software already, and that's what I'm running it on.

I know QLAB is MAC I was saying if you could get then to make that addition to their software I would make a complete switch of my whole show in order have the ability to get a fade out of audio at any point in the cue. As some times the acts end prematurely due to the speed of the horses or because something goes drastically wrong. Not only would that save me a hand to do other things as right now if said event happens even with my hand on the sound board there is atleast a half second if not a full second down time between acts as I have to manually fade the sound B/O the light cue and switch to the next act and raise the sound back up. It would just flow that much better and not sound like crap since I don't have a live band to make those corrections for me.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Then you might want to read Tim's first reply to me above, which suggests that the Active Cues panel in QLab 3 has a stop button for each running cue, which does a short fadeout.

On re-reading what everyone's written, though, it seems to me that in your case, if the spots where things might run short are relatively well defined, and have new cues coming in right behind them, you might be able to make QLab's cue 16 automatically fade cue 15 out for you when you fire it; I'm too new with it to be certain that's possible, though.

 

[Amiers]

Then you might want to read Tim's first reply to me above, which suggests that the Active Cues panel in QLab 3 has a stop button for each running cue, which does a short fadeout.

Yeah I saw that after I posted. I think I might research that tomorrow. That or see if I can get the boys at Venue Magic to add it for me .

 

[SHCP]

Then you might want to read Tim's first reply to me above, which suggests that the Active Cues panel in QLab 3 has a stop button for each running cue, which does a short fadeout.

On re-reading what everyone's written, though, it seems to me that in your case, if the spots where things might run short are relatively well defined, and have new cues coming in right behind them, you might be able to make QLab's cue 16 automatically fade cue 15 out for you when you fire it; I'm too new with it to be certain that's possible, though.

You can set cues in Qlab exactly like you describe.
Example:
Cue 1: Play music file 1
Cue 2:Fade down music file 1 and automatically fire cue 3 (you can fire this cue at any point during Cue 1) and then stop music file 1
Cue 3: Play music file 2
You can add additional automatic cues to fade up the music files as well, or you can option to adjust the audio file to have the fade built in to the waveform.
Tim

 

[Jay Ashworth]

The part that I am not clear about, Tim, is this: if I do that, and I hit play on cue 2 does the play head not move to cue 3? Followed immediately by everything coming apart around my ankles?

Or is there unobvious magic built-in to move the play head to cue 4 where it needs to be?

 

[SHCP]

The part that I am not clear about, Tim, is this: if I do that, and I hit play on cue 2 does the play head not move to cue 3? Followed immediately by everything coming apart around my ankles?

Or is there unobvious magic built-in to move the play head to cue 4 where it needs to be?

Qlab has three basic ways to handle a cue:
1. By default, firing a cue readies the next cue (the playhead moves to the next cue waiting on go)
OR
2. You can set the cue to automatically fire the next cue immediately (and so on, basically firing a number of subsequent cues simultaneously if you want)
OR
3. You can set the cue to fire the next cue AT THE END of it's own time.

At the end of any of these, the playhead goes to the "next" cue and WAITS when all is done. (Unless you triggered a cue that loads a previous cue...... Qlab has LOT of functonality)

The really nice thing is that you also have a lots of flexibility in WHEN the "next" cue fires if triggered immediately by setting a timer on each cue. I have run some really complex video and music sequencing this way. Multiple files firing all from one initial cue. Qlab can do much more than I am describing. I am trying to just touch on the basics.

It's a great tool. I am happy to help you with any questions you may have setting up a show. I imagine there are many people on CB with more experience than me that can also help.
Tim

 

[nomuse]

What you are talking about is non-linear playback. I do that extensively with QLab. The first trick is simple; add a fade cue after each sound cue. If you need to fade the cue whilst it is playing, use the fade cue. If not, then just click through it after the cue has concluded.

To give more flexibility, you can move the stack pointer in the middle of a show. Using the arrow keys, or better yet, using a MIDI keyboard or controller surface. I use a Korg Nanokey for this; it is small enough to park right in front of the laptop. Advantages are large, easy-to-see buttons, that the MIDI controller is always active regardless of whether the QLab window is focused, and another I will explain in a moment. Using the "Remote Control" function found in the setup screens, I map play, stop, jump forward, jump back, and reset all to the MIDI keyboard and label the keys with board tape using the standard "tape player" symbology. This means I can hit a go without having to look away from the stage, jump a cue if the actors jump a few pages, or back up (very useful during tech rehearsal!)

In addition, QLab will let you fire certain cues out of order. Place them below your regular cue sequence. They can be hot buttons on the computer keyboard, or assigned to your MIDI controller. IN ADDITION, you can create a pair; a sound cue set to endless loop, and a fade cue for that sound, with the latter patched to keyOFF on your MIDI controller. This allows you to play a sound for as long as you hold down a key on the controller; a poor man's sample player.

(On one production, I assigned a circus snare to the first cue, and a cymbal crash to auto-follow the fade cue. The result; a snare roll that would end with a cymbal crash on command).

 

[Jay Ashworth]

All of those are useful capabilities, nomuse, but even the first doesn't completely make up for the lack of the facility which Tim says is in Version three: if you make 3 a fadeout cue for two, it then becomes difficult to overlap start 4.

And yes, I get that it's powerful and flexible enough to do anything you need... but that is also true of Windows Media Player.

The raison d'etre of cue players is to make it /easy/ both to use and to understand. Having to build the facility yourself means everyone will do it differently.

 

[SHCP]

All of those are useful capabilities, nomuse, but even the first doesn't completely make up for the lack of the facility which Tim says is in Version three: if you make 3 a fadeout cue for two, it then becomes difficult to overlap start 4.

And yes, I get that it's powerful and flexible enough to do anything you need... but that is also true of Windows Media Player.

The raison d'etre of cue players is to make it /easy/ both to use and to understand. Having to build the facility yourself means everyone will do it differently.

I did not say that overlapping cues is difficult. It is actually very easy to overlap cues.

 

[nomuse]

Which is pretty much why QLab trumps WMR or (shudder) iTunes; you can play as many overlapping cues as your CPU can handle. Not just overlapping sounds, but overlapping events; a fade cue happening while another cue is started, stopped, etc.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

To recap my actual assertion:

Fade Cues are fine for what I want, but using them for this (asynchronous fade out) generally then loses you the luxury of overlapping cues unless you manually navigate the cuelist, something which nullifies the main advantage of having a cue player in the first place.