Tracks & Media

A track is one piece of your show, usually one song or one item. Everything else in CuePoints hangs off tracks: your cues live on them, your recordings become them, and your timecode counts through them.

What's In A Track

Each track holds up to three media slots: primary, secondary and tertiary. Each slot takes either audio or video.

Most people only use the primary slot. You'd use the others when the same item has more than one thing playing, say a click track alongside the music, or a video feed alongside the audio.

Making Tracks

The fastest way: drag a pile of media files onto the track list. Each file becomes one track, filling its primary slot.

CuePoints then asks one question: does this media have striped timecode? That means timecode recorded onto the audio as a sound (LTC). If you don't know, the answer is almost certainly no; leave No LTC selected.

To add media to the other slots, drag a file onto the secondary or tertiary slot. Hovering over a waveform gives you options to replace, delete or locate that media.

Track Settings

Select a track and press Edit (or Cmd+E).

• Track Name: filled in from the media file. Change it to whatever your show calls it.

• Offset: the timecode this track starts at. If the media has no timecode of its own, CuePoints generates LTC from this number.

• Framerate: how timecode counts on this track. It has to match everyone else on the show. New tracks start at the Default frame rate under Settings.

• Pre-roll: extra generated timecode before the track starts, so machines downstream have time to lock on before the show does anything.

Change the offset, framerate or pre-roll and the outgoing timecode is rebuilt straight away.

Edit All Tracks steps through every track in the project one after another: the quick way to check a whole show's offsets and framerates in one pass.

The Track List

The track list shows every track in the project. Drag to reorder them; the numbers renumber themselves. How the numbers are written is Display track numbering under Settings.

Track Colours

Colour a track to show its state: done, needs work, don't touch. Right-click a track and choose Set Track Colour, or use the Track menu. Right-click also gets you quick actions: duplicate the track, change its framerate, replace its media.

Switching Tracks

When you move to another track, the playhead either goes to the start of the new track or stays at the time position you were at. That is Skip to start when changing tracks under Settings.

Loading Speed

Tracks open instantly. The waveform appears straight away and the detailed version fills in behind it while you work. On a long track you'll see it sharpen up a moment after you open it, and you can carry on the whole time.

Media Line-Up

When a track's media slots are different lengths, or need to start at different times, line-up aligns them.

• Drag a waveform sideways to slide it into place.

• Or type an exact offset if you know the number.

• Adjust the volume balance between the media types so one doesn't drown the other.

Secondary and tertiary media play their sound out of your audio outputs too, at their proper offsets.

Showing And Hiding Media

Any media type can be hidden during playback. Right-click the media viewer, or use the Track menu. Hiding is about what's on screen; it doesn't remove anything from the track.

Which cue types are shown is a separate thing, and can be remembered per track. See CuePoint type visibility under Settings.

Media Popout Window

Opens one media slot in its own resizable window. Useful when you want to send a specific feed somewhere, for example capturing it over NDI into a visualiser. Open it from the Window menu.

Replacing Media

Replace media… swaps the file in any of the three slots, for when the file on disk has changed but everything else about the track is right.

You can also promote or demote media between slots, and CuePoints re-aligns your cues to timecode when the media is replaced, so your cue list doesn't slide out of place.

When Media Goes Missing

If a file has moved, been renamed, or lives on a drive that isn't plugged in, the Missing Media window appears when you open the project. You can search for the file now, or open the project anyway and sort it out later with Tools > Locate Missing Media.

The locator tells you exactly what it found:

• files that are in the cloud but not downloaded yet,

• files whose contents don't match what the project expects, and

• results it isn't sure about, which it asks you to confirm.

Right-click any row to reveal the file it found, or the place the original used to be. Once relinked, the file shows as found in the track itself.

"Not downloaded" Is Not "Missing"

On a shared project you'll sometimes see media marked as not downloaded yet. It means the file is on its way from your shared folder and hasn't arrived. Do nothing. CuePoints picks it up by itself the moment it lands.

Media marked as needing relinking is the one that wants you.

Media Cache

CuePoints keeps a cache of media so it doesn't have to do the same work twice. You can set a size limit on it, and clear it by hand if you need the disk space back.

Settings

CuePoints > Settings… > Tracks

Four settings.

• Default frame rate for new tracks: the framerate a new track starts with, 30 FPS unless you change it. Set this to the rate your show runs at and you'll never think about it again. It's only the starting value; changing it doesn't touch tracks you already made.

• Display track numbering: how track names are written in the track list. '1.' Track Name shows the number and the name together; the other options show one or the other. Pick whichever your team calls tracks by.

• Skip to start when changing tracks: On and you always land at the beginning of the new track. Off and you land at the same time position you were at on the old one. On suits most shows; Off is for jumping between different mixes of the same piece without losing your place.

• CuePoint type visibility: whether your shown/hidden cue types are remembered per track or for the whole project. Store Visibilities Per Track is right for most shows, because different tracks usually belong to different departments. Hide the Sound cues on the video track and they stay hidden there, while the audio track keeps showing them.