Recording

CuePoints records your show, picture and sound together, from a webcam, a capture card or a network source. Every recording becomes a new track in your project, and the cues you fire during the show land on it at the moment they happened. Audio and video are locked together by the recorder itself, so a take that starts in sync stays in sync across a three-hour show.

There are two halves. The Record button in the main transport starts and stops a take, and on an ordinary show day it is all you touch. The Recording pane in Settings, reached from the cog beside that button, is where you choose the camera, the audio inputs and the file format. Your setup is remembered, so you open the pane when something changes and not otherwise.

Recording A Show

Press Record. The first press after launching starts the recorder if it isn't already running, then begins the take as soon as the source is confirmed. Press it again to stop; the file is finalised and the new track appears in your project with every cue you fired sitting where it belongs.

Elapsed time shows on the main window while the take runs. A Discard button appears beside Record for a take you don't want to keep: it ends the recording and throws the file away, so your recordings folder only holds keepers.

The same commands work over OSC, so a console or a tablet can drive the recorder for you. See OSC.

Two ways to start

Record mode on the pane decides what pressing Record does:

• Manual Record: you press Record and Stop yourself. Right for most shows.

• Timecode Triggers Record: pressing Record arms the recorder. The take starts by itself the moment incoming timecode runs, stops when timecode stops, and arms itself again for the next run. Right for capturing every run of a show with nobody watching the machine.

A change of mode takes effect the next time you press Record.

Naming the track

Track name on the pane decides what the new track is called:

• Custom: you type it. Left empty, it falls back to the date and time.

• Date/Time: named after when the take started.

• Cue Range: named after the cues fired during it, like Q12-Q45, or Q12 if only one fired. CUEPOINT TYPE picks which type counts, so pick your primary one and standby notes stay out of the name. With no matching cues it falls back to the date and time.

Cue Range is the one that makes an archive easy to search a year later.

Long shows

Two things to do before a long take:

• Check your free space. At MP4 / H.264, Medium, 1080p, budget roughly 45 MB per minute, so about 8 GB for a three-hour show.

• Stop the Mac sleeping.System Settings > Displays > Advanced… > Prevent automatic sleeping.

Getting Sync Right

A camera delivers its picture later than a microphone delivers its sound. A network camera can be a few hundred milliseconds behind, because its video is encoded, sent across the network and decoded before it reaches CuePoints. Left alone, you'd hear things before you saw them.

The fix is to delay the audio to match, and the pane's Delay Compensation section holds the numbers. There are two ways to find them.

Sync Calibration…, the button on the pane, measures the offset for you and fills the fields in. Use it. It is quicker and more accurate than doing it by hand.

The clap test is the manual method, if you'd rather see it:

1. Set the offsets to 0 and record a single sharp clap, filmed so the moment of contact is clearly visible.

2. Open the recording in your editor and measure the gap between the frame where the hands meet and the spike in the audio waveform.

3. Enter that figure, in milliseconds, as the audio offset.

4. Record a second clap to confirm the waveform now lands on the contact frame.

The right value belongs to your camera and network, not to the show: the same camera on the same network wants the same correction every time. CuePoints remembers it. Re-check it when you change camera, network, or the camera's encoder settings.

OSC MARKER applies the same idea to cues arriving over OSC from a console. The console's message arrives instantly while the picture is delayed, so this shifts those cues later, and they land on the recording at the moment the picture shows them firing.

On how sync feels: a clap aligned exactly to the frame can still read as slightly early on playback. Perception is asymmetric, because light arrives before sound in life, so viewers notice early audio about three times more readily than late (ITU-R BT.1359-1; EBU R37). If a frame-accurate alignment still feels early, one extra frame of audio delay, 17 to 40 ms depending on frame rate, is well within broadcast tolerance and usually reads as perfect.

Recording The Overlay Too

The Overlay setting on the pane records a second copy of the take with your overlay burnt into the picture: cue names, timers, timecode, whatever you built in the Overlay Editor.

• None: one clean file.

• Current: bakes whatever the main overlay is showing, and follows it. Hide the overlay mid-show and it leaves the recording too.

• A saved overlay set: bakes that set whatever the main window is doing, so the recording can carry an overlay the audience never sees.

Anything other than None writes two files at once: the clean recording, and a copy named …_overlay. Save overlay recording to chooses where the copy goes, and defaults to the same folder as the clean file. The clean file is always the primary one.

Presets

A preset stores the whole recorder setup: camera, audio devices and channels, resolution, format, quality, record mode and naming. Moving between venues or rigs is one click instead of ten.

• New Preset starts a fresh one.

• Save Recording Preset stores what's set up now, under a name.

• Pick a saved name to load it back. CuePoints reopens with your last-used preset.

• Delete preset removes the selected one. It doesn't change your current settings, only the saved copy goes.

With no preset chosen, (No Preset) means "whatever I last set up", and that is remembered too.

Settings

CuePoints > Settings… > Recording, or the cog beside the Record button.

Video Source

• Video device: your camera, capture card, or network source. Webcams, Continuity Camera, capture hardware that appears as a camera, NDI® sources on your network and Blackmagic DeckLink inputs all show here. If a device you plugged in a moment ago is missing, click Refresh Devices.

• Digital Exposure: brightens or darkens the picture before it is recorded. Leave it alone unless the picture is too dark or too bright to read; it changes the file, so get it right before the show.

• Show a record preview in main window: a small live picture on the main window, so you can see what's being recorded without opening Settings. Worth leaving on.

• Preview window: a bigger floating picture for a proper look.

Audio Source

Two sides, AUDIO L and AUDIO R, which become the left and right of the recording. For each:

• Audio input L / R: which device. None is a real choice: pick it to record silence on that side.

• Channel: which socket on that device, for multi-channel interfaces and embedded SDI audio.

• Gain L / Gain R: how loud. Watch Levels and aim for the loud moments to move well up the bar without pinning at the top.

Both sides can use the same device, which is the usual setup, or two different ones. Set both devices to the same sample rate; 48 kHz is ideal.

Delay Compensation

• Offsets (ms): shifts the audio later so it lines up with the picture.

• OSC MARKER: shifts cues arriving over OSC later by the same amount.

• Sync Calibration…: measures the offset and fills the fields in for you.

Why, and how to check it, is under Getting Sync Right.

Output

• Video output: resolution, format and quality of the file.

  • Resolution: 1920 × 1080 is right for almost everyone. 3840 × 2160, 2560 × 1440 and 1280 × 720 are there when the far end needs them.

  • Format: MP4 / H.264 plays everywhere. MP4 / H.265 makes smaller files on modern machines. If unsure, H.264.

  • Quality: Medium is the sensible default. Higher means a bigger file.

• Overlay: whether a second copy with the overlay burnt in is recorded. See Recording The Overlay Too.

• Loopback Output Device: lets the recorder capture sound playing on this computer rather than arriving down a cable, so a take can include what CuePoints itself is playing.

Save Locations

• Save recording to: where the file goes.

• Save overlay recording to: where the overlay copy goes, when you're recording one.

Files are named with the date and time they started, so takes never overwrite each other.

Control

• Record mode: Manual Record or Timecode Triggers Record. See Two ways to start.

• Start Recorder, then Start or stop a take, Pause the take, Resume the take and Discard the take in progress. These mirror the main transport. The status shows Running or Not running.

Name

• Track name: Custom, Date/Time or Cue Range, with CUEPOINT TYPE choosing which cues count. See Naming the track.

Preset

• New Preset, Save Recording Preset, and Delete preset. See Presets.

When It Isn't Working

My device isn't in the list. Click Refresh Devices. For an NDI source, check the sender is on the same network and not blocked by a firewall. For a DeckLink input, check Blackmagic Desktop Video is installed.

The preview is black. The source is connected but not sending a picture. Check the camera's output, the cable, and on a capture card that the input connector you're using (SDI or HDMI) is the one the cable is in.

No audio in the meters. Check the device and channel for that side, and that the side isn't set to None. If the device is listed but silent, another app may have exclusive control of it.

Audio and video are out by a constant amount. That is the latency of your source. Run Sync Calibration…, or the clap test under Getting Sync Right. If the offset changes over the length of a recording rather than staying constant, send us the recording and your debug logs.

The sound feels early even though the waveform lines up. See the perception note under Getting Sync Right, and add up to one frame of extra delay.

Cues from my console land slightly early. Same latency story as the audio: the message arrives instantly, the picture is delayed. Set OSC MARKER to match your measured video offset.

Technical Notes

• Audio is recorded as 48 kHz stereo AAC.

• Audio and video are timestamped against one shared clock, whatever their source. A dropped frame or a brief audio interruption is preserved as a gap rather than shifting everything after it, which is why sync holds over time.

• The audio track begins at exactly the same instant as the video in every file, with no hidden container offset, so editors, players and waveform tools all agree about where sync sits.

• A file is finalised on Stop and is not playable until that completes.