Show Timeline
The same show, every night.
Lay effects out across your fixture groups on a timeline aligned to the track. What you programme is what plays back: the same cues, in the same order, at the same moment, every performance.
Timeline features are on the Standard and Pro plans.
Rows, clips and a waveform
The Show Timeline is the Timeline Editor in DJ Mode. Every fixture group gets a row, the waveform of the track runs behind them, and you place clips on the rows to say what each group does and when. Pick an effect from the palette, drag across a row to draw a clip, then click it to open the inspector and set colour, speed, intensity and timing.
Save the show against the track and it is there again the next time that track loads. Build compiles it into a playable show, and a built show takes priority over anything DMXDesktop would generate on its own. Preview plays it back so you can watch the rig before anyone else does.
Timeline features are on the Standard and Pro plans.
Not everyone wants to start from an empty grid. AutoScript populates the timeline across all your groups from the track itself, and everything it puts down is an ordinary clip you can move, retime or delete.
Reactive or scripted, whichever the night needs
DMXDesktop can run a room both ways. They are built for different jobs, and neither is a lesser version of the other.
Live Wire
Reacts to whatever is playing, with nothing prepared in advance. Point it at an audio source and the rig follows tempo, energy and mood on its own. For a club night, a live band, or a party where nobody knows the running order. Standard and Pro.
About Live Wire →Show Timeline
Runs what you programmed, in the order you programmed it. For a play, a musical, a corporate presentation or a rehearsed set: anything where the same thing has to happen at the same moment on every performance.
If you know exactly what should happen and when, script it. If you do not, let Live Wire read the room.
Drop a whole effect cue in one gesture
Pick a cue from the effects list, drag out how long you want it to run, and the timeline fills in the clips for every group that cue covers, not only the row you drew on. From there it is ordinary clips. Keep what works, retime it, delete the rest. A starting point rather than a black box.
- A cue with several effects on one group lays them out end to end in equal segments, so you can see and move each one.
- If the drop would land on work you have already done, you are told how much it would replace and can cancel.
- The cues you have already built work as they are. Nothing needs rebuilding for the timeline.
Your own recorded movements, placed like any other effect
Movement sequences recorded in Pan/Tilt Finder appear in the effects list under Sequences, alongside the built-in movement effects. Each one is labelled with the group it was recorded on, and the timeline makes sure the clip is long enough for the heads to actually travel the path, so a figure of eight reads as a figure of eight rather than a twitch.
Point at the dancefloor, then the bar, then back
Aim a group in Pan/Tilt Finder, press Save Static Position, and it becomes a named look. Place it on the timeline and the lights travel there and hold for the length of the clip, so two clips in a row are a move and a gap between them is a hold. Eight bars on the dancefloor, eight on the bar, then back, without programming a single pan value by hand.
A saved position is not only a timeline thing. Recall it at any time from My Recordings, or use it inside an effect cue, without going near a timeline. Recorded movements and positions now live together: My Sequences is now My Recordings, with Static Positions and Sequences on their own tabs.
Decide how long a move takes
Movement clips have a Travel Time setting, so a sweep across a room can be as slow and deliberate or as immediate as you want. Left on Auto it behaves exactly as it always has, and every clip you built before this setting existed is untouched.
Saved positions and sequences carry their own Travel In and Travel Out times, so a recall reads as a move rather than a jump wherever it is played from.
Nothing snaps back at the final curtain
A gap on a movement row now holds the lights where the last clip left them instead of swinging them back to centre. The difference is most visible at the end of a show: the last movement clip no longer resets the rig the moment it finishes.
Every auxiliary channel your rig actually has
The timeline used to hold its own list of about ten channel types and quietly filter your patch through it. Anything outside the list was skipped in silence: no error, no log line, nothing on screen. A laser with Laser Mode, Colour Wheel, Pattern Select, Zoom, X Roll, Y Roll, Z Rotation, X Move and Y Move could not place a single one of them.
Every auxiliary channel on the group is now offered, and only the ones that group really has. Option lists come from the fixture's own profile instead of a fixed table, so a laser's real modes appear rather than one dead Off entry, and the timeline reads the same as the Channel Editor.
Clips let go when they end
An auxiliary clip used to have no end: the last value it wrote simply stayed on the channel for the rest of the song, so a four-bar X Roll left the laser rolling until the track finished. Each clip now hands its channels back to the fixture's resting value, which is what a live show settles on, so a compiled show and a live one agree.
A clip owns its channels while it runs
Nothing writes over a running clip, so a Laser Mode clip set to Sound Active stays on sound active instead of being reset underneath you.
Overlaps you can see
Two clips conflict only if they drive the same channel, so a gobo clip and a frost clip can share a spot while two frost clips cannot. Overlapping clips stack into their own lanes rather than being drawn on top of each other, and each is coloured by channel type.
Clips cannot land where they cannot work
Dragging, pasting and changing a clip's type all check the target group first, so a Frost clip cannot end up on a group with no frost channel.
What it looks like
Timeline Editor playing back a programmed light show in real time
Start with your fixture groups - each row represents a group in your rig
Browse and drag effects from the palette - movements, beams, chases, and more
Build your show clip by clip across the full track, synced to the waveform
Select any clip to fine-tune beam, color, intensity, and crossover settings
The other hat: Cue Timelines chase timecode
The Timeline Editor has a second mode. Where the Show Timeline lays clips across your fixture groups, the Cue Timeline lays your Programmer cue stacks along the same ruler and chases MIDI Time Code arriving over MIDI. Press MTC and it waits for code. When code arrives it locks, the SMPTE readout starts counting, and your cue triggers fire against the incoming time instead of a clock of its own.
- Reads 24, 25, 29.97 and 30 frame timecode.
- Seek or restart the transport and it re-anchors rather than losing its place.
- A pre-roll countdown is recognised as pre-roll, so the top of the show does not fire during it.
- If the source stops, the editor tells you it has lost sync instead of carrying on regardless.
- With more than one MIDI device connected, MTC Source picks which one to listen to, separately from your MIDI Clock source.
MIDI Time Code, not DJ timecode
This is MIDI Time Code from a console, a DAW or a show controller, driving cue triggers directly. DJ timecode is a different thing. DMXDesktop does not read timecode vinyl and has no direct hook into a rekordbox or CDJ playhead. For timecode-grade cue sync with rekordbox, an external bridge such as TimecodeSync or the open-source Beat Link Trigger can send OSC or MTC into DMXDesktop.
A DJ Mode show timeline is a different job and syncs a different way: with the track playing on a deck, Follow tracks the deck position so the timeline moves with it.
Editing that keeps out of your way
- Stretching a clip with the Duration slider stops at its neighbour instead of running over it, the same as dragging always did.
- Timelines stay attached to their songs. Move a track to a different folder and its saved show is found again.
- Hybrid Pulse and Emergency now run in timeline shows, the same as they do everywhere else.
- Clicking a clip opens that clip's settings, and the editor window always closes when you ask it to.
- Setting a shutter or strobe state no longer wipes brightness you had already set.
- Groups can have a colour, shown on the timeline swimlane and everywhere else a group is named. New groups get one automatically, spaced so that groups made one after another never look alike. Existing rigs are untouched until you set one.
Who builds shows this way
Theatre and musicals
Cue for cue repeatability across a run. The show that opened on Tuesday is the show that runs on Saturday.
Structured live sets
A band with a fixed setlist, a DJ with a planned opening, a headline track that has to land the same drop every time.
Corporate and presentation
Walk-in look, speaker states, video segments, awards. Timed, rehearsed, and handed to whoever is running the room on the night.
Schools and community productions
A student operator can run a scripted show with confidence, instead of programming it live under pressure.
Where the edges are
A timeline show is authored in advance, so the audio-reactive settings inside an effect cue, things such as dark on silence or strobe on peaks, do not come across when you drop that cue onto a row. There is no live audio for them to respond to. When you want the rig reading the room instead, that is what Live Wire is for.
Recorded sequences and saved positions can only be placed on the group they were recorded on, because that group is the set of fixtures whose aim was captured.
DJ timecode is not the same as MIDI Time Code. DMXDesktop takes MTC natively, but it does not read timecode vinyl and it has no direct hook into a rekordbox or CDJ playhead. For timecode-grade cue sync with rekordbox, an external bridge such as TimecodeSync or the open-source Beat Link Trigger can send OSC or MTC into DMXDesktop.
Questions about the timeline
Does DMXDesktop have a DMX timeline editor?
How is the timeline different from Live Wire?
Do I have to build the whole show by hand?
Can I use my own moving head positions in a show?
Can a timeline show run to timecode?
Does a Show Timeline follow the DJ deck?
What happens to the lights at the end of a show?
Which plan do I need?
Programme it once. Run it every night.
The Show Timeline is included on the Standard and Pro plans.
