Time-Based Cues

Time-Based Cues are only available with SCS Standard and higher license levels.

In SCS you can specify a time of day for a cue to start. For example, if your show starts at 7:30pm you could have an announcement you want played at 7:25pm. You can set up this cue to play automatically at 7:25pm so you do not have to be in the sound booth at the time.

That's OK if you just have evening performances, but if you also have matinees then you may want to play this same announcment at, say, 2:25pm. Also, there will be rehearsals when you don't want to play the announcement at all, or if you do then you want to activate the cue manually.

For Time-Based Cues (TBC's) you can set up a number of Time Profiles in your Production Properties. For example, you could set up these Time Profiles:

Evening
Matinee
Rehearsals

For each cue you want auto-activated by time of day, set the cue's Activation (How the Cue is Started) to Time-based Cue, and then for each Time Profile enter the time at which the cue is to start. You may use either 24-hour time or AM/PM time, eg 14:25 or 2:25PM. Times may be specified down to seconds, but remember that start times are based on your PC clock setting, so if your PC clock is wrong so will your cue start times!

For rehearsals you may want the cue to be activated manually, eg by using the 'Go' button. To have the cue activated manually for a Time Profile, enter m or Manual in the time field.

To prevent a time-based cue playing at all for a particular time profile, leave the time field blank against that time profile.

When you load your cue file for a production (eg when you start SCS), the Time Profile you have selected as the Default Time Profile in the Production Properties is the Time Profile initially used. Any time-based cue that has a blank start time for this profile will be ignored (although you will still be able to see the cue in the Editor). Also, any time-based cue for the selected profile that has a start time more than one minute ago will be regarded as 'complete', so if you restart the program during the show then you will not get your pre-show announcements re-played!

You can change the selected Time Profile on the Run screen by selecting the menu item File / Select Time Profile.

Example:

Cue PRE Pre-show music (playlist; master level -6dB)

Cue ANN Pre-show announcement (TBC with 3 sub-cues)

Sub-1: Level change of PRE, fade to -96dB over 2.5 seconds
Sub-2: Audio file of announcement, relative start 2.5 seconds (duration of audio file: 12 seconds)
Sub-3: Level change of PRE: fade up to -6dB over 2.5 seconds; relative start 14.5 seconds

Example:
Cue PRE	Pre-show music (playlist; master level -6dB)
Cue ANN	Pre-show announcement (TBC with 3 sub-cues) Sub-1: Level change of PRE, fade to -96dB over 2.5 seconds Sub-2: Audio file of announcement, relative start 2.5 seconds (duration of audio file: 12 seconds) Sub-3: Level change of PRE: fade up to -6dB over 2.5 seconds; relative start 14.5 seconds

When running your cues, the status of a 'ready' time-based cue will change to 'count down' one minute before the cue is due to play.

Back to Cue Properties