Recording & Playing Back Cues

A cue is a saved snapshot of everything currently in your programmer — intensity, color, position, beam settings, and active effects. Recording a cue lets you recall that exact look later with a single fader move or button press.

The Basic Recording Workflow

Here's the step-by-step:

1. Select your fixtures on the floorplan
2. Program the look you want — set intensity, color, position, beams, effects using the attribute tabs
3. Click the Record button (red circle-dot icon) or press R
4. The interface enters Record Mode — fader buttons change color to show they're ready to receive
5. Click any cue fader button to save the look to that slot
6. If the slot already has a cue, you'll be asked to confirm the overwrite
7. The cue is saved, the button turns blue, and record mode exits automatically

What Gets Recorded

Everything in the programmer state is captured:

• Intensity values for all selected fixtures
• Color settings (RGB, CMY, color wheel positions)
• Position values (pan, tilt, fan settings)
• Beam properties (gobo, prism, shutter, strobe, iris, zoom, focus, frost)
• Active effects and their parameters (type, speed, crossfade, spread, colors)
• Palette references — if you applied a saved color or position palette, the cue remembers which palette was used

Automatic Cue Type Detection

DMXDesktop routes your recording to the appropriate fader section based on what you've programmed:

Default Fade Times

Cues recorded from the programmer default to 0ms fade time (instant). You can change fade times later by editing the cue in a cue stack, or by using exec functions.

Walkthrough: Recording Your First Cue

1. Click your "Front Wash" group button to select all front wash fixtures
2. Press I, drag the master fader to 200 (about 78%)
3. Press C, click a warm amber gel (e.g., Lee L20 Medium Amber)
4. Press R — you're now in Record Mode
5. The fader panel appears. Click the first empty cue button (Cue 1)
6. Done! The button turns blue. Your amber wash is now saved as Cue 1
7. Pull the fader up to see it in action

The fader panel is your playback control center. Open it by clicking Cue Faders or pressing Q.

Fader Types

The fader panel has five tabbed sections:

How Cue Faders Work

Each cue fader has a slider (vertical) and a button (below the slider):

Slider behavior:

• Drag up from 0 — Activates the cue. The slider position becomes the intensity multiplier.
• Drag down to 0 — Deactivates the cue and stops it.
• Any position in between — The cue plays at that percentage of its recorded values.

Button behavior (outside special modes):

• Click — Toggles between 0 and 255 with a 2-second animated crossfade. This is the "flash" function — one click fades in, another click fades out.

Intensity Scaling Chain

The final output of any channel in an active cue follows a three-level chain:

Example: A fixture was recorded at Red = 200. The cue fader is at 191 (75%). The master dimmer is at 80%.

Output = 200 × (191 / 255) × (80 / 100) = 200 × 0.75 × 0.80 = 120

Cue Pages

For large shows with many cues, the Cues tab is organized in pages of 20 faders. Numbered tabs (1–20, 21–40, 41–60, etc.) let you switch between pages. Your current page selection is remembered between sessions.

Walkthrough: Playing Back Multiple Cues

1. Open the fader panel (press Q)
2. Click the Cues tab
3. Drag Cue 1 (your amber wash) up to 255 — it fades in
4. Drag Cue 2 (a blue backlight) up to 180 — it layers on top at about 70%
5. Now both cues are active simultaneously. The system merges them using LTP (Latest Takes Priority)
6. Drag Cue 1 down to 0 — the amber wash fades out, leaving only the blue backlight

The master dimmer is a global intensity control that scales all DMX output. It sits at the top of the fader panel.

The Rotary Encoder Interface

The master dimmer uses a rotary encoder knob with a 270° sweep (from 7 o'clock to 5 o'clock position):

• Drag vertically to adjust — up increases, down decreases (±0.5% per pixel of movement)
• Scroll wheel — ±1% per tick for fine adjustment
• Double-click — Instantly resets to 100%
• The percentage display in the center shows the current value

Visual Color Gradient

The encoder ring uses color coding to show the current level at a glance:

How It Affects Output

The master dimmer multiplies every intensity channel being sent to your fixtures:

• 100% — No effect, everything at programmed levels
• 50% — All output halved
• 0% — Complete blackout (all intensity channels zero)