Effect Cues

What is an Effect Cue?

Unlike traditional lighting cues that store static looks or single actions, an Effect Cue in DMXDesktop is a powerful tool that lets you:

Combine multiple dynamic effects (movement & beam) into one package
Assign different effects to different fixture groups
Trigger complex multi-effect shows with a single click

Key Features

Group-specific effects
Mix movement and beam effects
Select single or multiple beam or movement effects, and specify how frequently they are rotated.
Customizable timing and transitions
One-click activation
Save and reuse your favorite effect combinations

Hands-free Effect Cues: Auto Pilot is now Live Wire

Auto Pilot used to run your Effect Cues for you from live audio. It has been retired in v1.0.52, and Live Wire replaces it.

Live Wire listens to the live audio in the room and builds the show as it plays
It needs no Effect Cues prepared in advance, and if you run one of your own cues underneath, Live Wire adds to it rather than fighting you for control
It is on Standard and Pro, the same plans Auto Pilot was on, so nobody loses access

Learn more about Live Wire → or read what happened to Auto Pilot.

Common Use Cases

Create dynamic looks combining movement patterns with color effects
Set up different effects for front lights vs back lights
Build complex shows with minimal live operation
Save your favorite effect combinations for quick access

Effect Cue Playback

When played back, the Cue will activate every Effect defined for each group simultaneously, and keep them in sync.

Effect Cues can also be set to be timed, so they will run only for a set period, or to run indefinitely. This is good if you want to match Effects to a specific track or event. At the end of a timed Effect Cue, it will then jump to the next Effect Cue in the list.

Alternatively, you can set the Cue to have an infinite run time, meaning you have to stop or skip to another Cue manually.

Inside the Effect Cue you can define different configurations per group, if you organise your fixtures well this can allow you to have extremely powerful control over your lighting effects, with the option to keep it as simple or make it as complex as you desire.

Strobe on Peaks

You can enable this feature to allow the Cue to trigger the Strobe on audio Peaks. The setting when set is by Cue, not by Group. You may also override this setting globally via the Audio Configuration tab on the Settings page. This feature will only work when Direct Audio Detection is Enabled and active.

Select Beam Effect(s)

You can select as many or as few Beam Effects as you wish, or you can even select none. If you select none, then the Fixtures in the Group will be dark.

If you select multiple Effects then the Effects will be rotated, how frequently they rotate depends on the setting you apply to "Effect Frequency" slider at the bottom of the Cue configuration. 0 = Never, and 100 = Every Minute and the values in between are proportional.

Move Effects

Similar to beam effects you can also set up Move effects, and again you can select one or many, they will also be rotated based on the same time frames as per Beams set in the "Effect Frequency" when multiple are selected. You can apply move effects to a group, even if that group does not contain any fixtures with Movement functionality, so in case in future you do decide to add a moving head type fixture to the group the previously defined effect cue would work on that fixtures movement, if none are found it will silently take no action.

Color Theme

Here you can select the colour(s) to use for the group, there is a long list of different colours including multi-color effects. Some fixtures only have fixed colours, for example those with colour wheels in this scenario colours cannot be mixed and as such they will be static or rotating depending on the colour theme selected.

If you select a theme without any colours matching your device then they will default to white or open.

Settings

Fade In: When set the lights will fade in over the period of time defined on startup.

Fade Out: When set the lights will fade out over the period of time defined on stop.

Effect Frequency: When multiple effects selected for move or beam effects, this will define how often they rotate (0=Never, 100=Every 1 minute)

Dimmer: Overloads the dimmer for the Group. It is proportional to the Master Dimmer. e.g. if Master dimmer is set to 100% but the group is set to 50% then the output will be DMX Value 127 (or 50% of the master dimmer value of 255)

Background: Defines a minimum threshold below which the lights cannot go, in proportion to Dimmer and Master Dimmer. This can be used to create a background light effect and lights will never go dark.

Beam Speed : the Speed of the lighting effects will be looped.

Mover Speed : The speed at which the movers will execute the selected effect.

Fan Rate : Only applies to Mover Effects which contain a Fan option, and is used to fan in or out the moving heads.

Phase : Applies a delay to the moving heads, so they move more or less in or out of phase.

Gobo Frequency : How often the Gobos will be rotated, if Gobos are ENABLED. Similar to Effect Frequency, 0=Never, 100=Every 1 minute, and all values in between are proportional.

Prism Frequency : Same as Gobo Frequency.

Randomize Effects : When you have select multiple Move or Beam effects for the Cue, the order in which they are triggered will be randomized.

Enable Gobos : Enable or disable Gobos (if available) for the Group.

Enable Prisms : As per enable Gobos.

Dark On Silent : Shuts off the lights when the music stops, and resumes when the music restarts.

Dynamic Energy: Will adaptivly change the speed and impact of the Cue based on the live audio input.

Linked Groups

By default, each fixture group in an Effect Cue runs its own independent effect. For example, a Chase cue with 3 groups produces 3 separate chases - one per group. With Linked Groups, you can merge multiple groups into a single unified effect. That same chase would then run across all the fixtures from the linked groups as one continuous chase.

Setting Up Linked Groups

Open the Effect Cue editor (create a new cue or edit an existing one).
Look for the small link icon (chain link) on each group tab.
Click the link icon on the group you want to be the leader - this is the group whose effect settings will be used for all linked groups.
A popup will appear listing all other groups in the cue. Check the boxes for the groups you want to link.
Click Apply.

The linked groups' tabs will display a "Linked to [Group Name]" banner, and their beam and movement controls will be greyed out since the leader's settings are used instead.

What Stays Independent

Even when groups are linked, the following settings remain per-group and fully active:

Gobo cycling selections
Prism cycling selections
Auxiliary values (Focus, Iris, Zoom, Frost, etc.)

Unlinking Groups

To unlink a group, click the Unlink button in the banner on any follower tab, or click the link icon on a follower tab. When unlinked, the group's original settings are preserved and restored, and it will return to running its own independent effect.

Note: Linked Groups is a paid feature.

Color Override

New in v1.0.52

A Color Override repaints the rig from a palette of your choosing while the cue keeps running: the look carries on moving, only the colours change.

An override now holds until you clear it. It used to be applied once, then quietly overwritten by the next cue step, rotation or effect change.
Clearing it restores the cue's own recorded colours, which never happened before.
The buttons survive changing page. They only ever lit up in response to a click, so navigating away and back looked as though the override had been released while the rig was still driving it.
A cue that clears the override now tells you it has done so, rather than the control appearing to switch itself off.

See Colors & Color Themes for the palettes an override can draw on.

Fallback Cue: why Stop restarts it

New in v1.0.52

Pressing Stop on a cue marked as the Fallback Cue made it restart immediately, which looked like a broken button. It still restarts, because that is exactly what the setting is for, but the app now says so and tells you how to stop it.

Blinder

New in v1.0.52

Two blinder faults are fixed. Its fade time was being read in the wrong units, so it ran ten times shorter than the figure you had set. And the blinder now releases back to the cue instead of pulling the whole rig to black for the length of its fade and then snapping the cue back.

That was worst on automated paths, where a track cue point defaults to a half-second blinder against a five-second fade: a flash became a five and a half second near-blackout with nothing pressed.

Blinder fade speed also reaches sub-second now, on a logarithmic slider, so the short end of the range is usable.

Spread

New in v1.0.52

Spread behaves the same everywhere now. It is only offered on effects that actually support it, and QuickShow seeds each effect's own default when you pick it, the way the Programmer always has. Setting it from the desk, a phone, MIDI or a Stream Deck gives the same result.

Effect Cues on the Show Timeline

New in v1.0.52

You can drop a whole Effect Cue onto a Show Timeline. Pick the cue from the effects list, drag out how long you want it, and it fills in the clips for every group that cue covers. You can then tweak or delete the individual parts, so it is a starting point rather than a black box.

Hybrid Pulse and Emergency previously did nothing when used on a timeline. They now run as they do everywhere else. The Show Timeline guide covers the rest.

Fixed in v1.0.52

Cue faders no longer dim everything. A cue fader was overriding the brightness you recorded into the cue rather than scaling it.
Saving a cue twice no longer creates a broken copy. The Save button stayed live while the first save was still running, so a second click wrote a whole new cue that appeared in the list and fired from MIDI and the timeline, but rendered black. Existing damaged cues are repaired automatically.
Save Cue no longer disappears after previewing a cue, which used to leave no way to keep an edit without triggering the rig.
The gobo and prism "N Selected" counters count gobos, not fixtures. One gobo picked across four fixtures read "4 Selected".
Movement settings are hidden on groups that cannot move, rather than offering controls that did nothing.
Background brightness reaches the lighting engine. The setting was there and was being saved, and nothing was reading it.