Cleaning a session

[Pierre-Yves Laflamme]

Is there a way to delete media files from selected audio or video cues, without having to recreate new cues and copy all settings and make sure that all links to other cues are the same as the deleted cues?

I would like to be able to clean up a session quickly so that junior technicians can simply drag and drop the new files before each performance.

[RayZ]

Salut Pierre, 

est ce que "TARGET" ne ferait pas la job?..tu remplaces le Cue /file etc..  pas les ressources...

Ray

[Simon VB]

+1 for Pierre's question!
To be able to simply 'empty' ONE cue would be very nice. When building a show, this would help me remember when there's a cue of which I want to replace the audio (e.g. a new edit / sample / ...).

It could be as simple as adding a button with a red cross to the right of the 'target' field, next to the arrow. Click the button => cue loses its target file and appears 'broken'.

Or is there another way of achieving this result which doesn't mess up the structure of the cue list?

(Despite understandig French, I don't understand RayZ's proposed solution.)

[Rich Walsh]

This sort of works:

/cue/*/fileTarget "null"

I tend to use empty groups as placeholders and not build anything audio-related until the audio itself goes in. I might use a placeholder file if I had to – I have a lossless m4a of 60s of silence that is only 29KB.

Rich

[Ivan Birthistle]

Just put a colour on the cue, I usually put red for broken/to be changed, yellow for changed but not tested etc.

--
Contact support anytime: sup...@figure53.com
Follow QLab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/QLabApp
User Group Code of Conduct: https://qlab.app/code-of-conduct/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/AA24A087-6D0C-47B4-900C-2C3780947E1F%40mac.com.

--

Ivan Birthistle

Head of Sound

The Lir,

Pearse St.,

Dublin 2

(01)8964536
087 6699192

[Andy Leviss]

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 9:01 AM Simon VB <simon.van...@gmail.com> wrote:

+1 for Pierre's question!
To be able to simply 'empty' ONE cue would be very nice. When building a show, this would help me remember when there's a cue of which I want to replace the audio (e.g. a new edit / sample / ...).

It could be as simple as adding a button with a red cross to the right of the 'target' field, next to the arrow. Click the button => cue loses its target file and appears 'broken'.

Or is there another way of achieving this result which doesn't mess up the structure of the cue list? com

This seems like exactly the sort of thing the Flag function was designed for, or are you using that for something else in your workflow?

-Andy

[Sam Kusnetz]

Hello All

I’d love to know more from the folks who work this way!

What are the unique properties of a cue that you want to retain while removing its target file?

You can set defaults for all properties of newly created cues in Workspace Settings > Cue Templates; can you tell me about what else you need that isn’t achieved here?

I’d love to hear about some specific actual use case examples which I think will really help me understand the root causes of these requests, which in turn will help me articulate those requests when I add them to the feature request list that we keep.

(Obligatory reminder: that list is very, very long!)

Best
Sam

––
Sam Kusnetz [he/him/his] (what is this?)
Figure 53
https://qlab.app | https://figure53.com

--

Contact support anytime: sup...@figure53.com
Follow QLab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/QLabApp
User Group Code of Conduct: https://qlab.app/code-of-conduct/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/5b70b7ca-b19c-40c7-8d76-3479b0b9b4ean%40googlegroups.com.

[Pierre-Yves Laflamme]

Hi all!

Thank you all for your answers and suggestions!

Yes Sam, the option to work with templates is actually the one I'm thinking of using, but I was asking because I would have liked to be able to clean up my session before creating my template.

And the option to recreate new cues is not one because each one is currently targeted by at least 4-5 control cues, so way too much manipulation, and possible manipulation error! And it is impossible to simply give the cue number to the new cue because all the cues that target old one will not change their target to the new one.

My session example

To facilitate the identification of the cues to be modified, I placed them in a "TO MODIFY (À MODIFIER, in french)" list and tagged them with colors.

I have already adjusted the POST WAIT times with a negative value so that any new media file dragged onto an existing cue will fit even if the file length is different from time to time.

Thanks again for your help!

PY

[micpool]

On Tuesday, May 25, 2021 at 4:52:32 PM UTC+1 pierr...@coeuralouvrage.com wrote:

I was asking because I would have liked to be able to clean up my session before creating my template.

Rich's answer shows you how to do what you would have liked, doesn't it? (as long as you have  a licence to use network cues.

/cue/*/fileTarget none 

clears all the fileTargets from every cue

If you edit the q names of your template cues to be meaningful e.g Preshow Music, Announcement, Curtain up, etc. then those names are retained when you clear the targets.

Alternatively, for people who were asking to indicate empty cues or empty single cues, 

/cue/selected/fileTarget none 

on a hotkey, will clear the file target of the selected cue(s)

If you have not edited the q name then that will now be 'none'

If you want to have blank cues indicated like this (they will have a red cross as well), then you will probably want to put all your cues in timeline groups to give some indication of  the Cue List outline. A reset workspace with a lot of cues titled none isn't going to be a good template.

Sam,

 I think the reason template cues are not enough in all instances, for all users,  is because there is only one of them. e.g there might be 100  fade cues in a workspace. 30 of them might be fade ins, 30 of them might be fade outs with stop, 15 of them might be fade down 10dB and 15 might be fade up 10dB.

Which one of these would you set as the FADE template cue?

Similarly with cues with file targets. You might have 30 Mono audio files 30 stereo audio files and 40 multitrack wav stems, again the template cue is only going to help you in a third of the cues you create.

Of course, there are many ways to use fancy paste, scripts and network cues to speed up programming, and many of us will have techniques to make what are effectively many template cues for a particular q type, but if your shows all followed a  rigid standardised pattern, e.g  Intro Music/Check down for announcement/ Announcement over/fade Music/National Anthem/Intro First Dance performance/Music for First Dance performance/ Intro for Second dance performance.........etc etc ....../Walkout music, then a workspace template containing different cue routings, fade times, etc, for new cues just to be dragged into the placeholders might make sense for some users.

But as one line of OSC provides the  functionality to clear file targets from such a template  already,  QLab has this ability at the moment, so I'm not sure what more someone requiring this facility might need?

Mic

[Simon VB]

Thanks everyone for the valuable input!

Mic, the simple '/cue/selected/fileTarget none' is exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

Scripting doesn't come naturally to me at all, and most shows I use QLab for don't need it either.

I've built a couple of things before, but I've been reading this group and I've been learning lots of new tricks, thank you!

Sam, to answer your questions: "What are the unique properties of a cue that you want to retain while removing its target file?"
Well ... everything. When a show has been built and an audio cue needs a new audio file (eg. a shorter version of a song), I want to empty the cue until the new edit is done. All of the cue's properties: level, notes, auto-follow, pre-wait, ... are often set by that point and should be kept. Obviously, this cannot be achieved with templates.

Andy's suggestion of flagging the cue is a good one, I wasn't using the Flag function before. Ivan's suggestion of using colours, however, won't do it for me, as I use those for visual reminders (eg. sound FX are purple, stop cues are red, etc.).
However, despite having the option of using the Flag function, I'd much rather empty said cues, as the effect is much more 'noticeable', eg. a broken cue.

Also, when quickly building a QLab show for rehearsals etc., a broken cue cannot be played, and thus prevents the 'wrong' audio file from being used again.

Maybe it's interesting to give you some more context.
The situation where I last needed this was when preparing for end-of-year performances in a musical theatre school where I teach (as a freelancer).
That's 5 different performances of about 1 hour, each 'assembled' in a rehearsal of about 1,5 hour. (What's the right word for this in English? We call this process 'montage'.)

So for me, that's a race, as I know which songs will be sung, but I don't know the order, the scenes, the cues, ... beforehand.
So when I'm dragging in the tapes, playing them back, and one performer says: "Oh, we were going to use the shorter version" - which I hadn't received yet, I'd like to be able to quickly empty that cue and then carry on working (writing down the next cue line etc.).

So I'm often using QLab in a very basic way, which is why I hadn't resorted to scripting for something that seemed as 'simple' or 'basic' as decoupling a cue from its targeted file. I was honestly baffled there wasn't a simple button for this, I thought I had missed it :D
But hey - I respect all of Figure53's efforts to keep making QLab an awesome tool, and if this function was never in high demand, I understand it wasn't a priority to program it.
In any case, I'm very happy that there's a relatively simple solution I can use, and a group like this for tips & tricks. Thanks everyone for the input!

[Pierre-Yves Laflamme]

Guys, cue/selected/fileTarget none doesn't work for me...

I added it to my STREAM DECK with COMPANION and all other commands work fine but not this one....

I thought I made a ridiculous mistake somewhere, but after several checks I think all the parameters are correct. Do you have any ideas?

Thanks a lot!

Pierre-Yves Laflamme
Directeur technique, Coeur à l'ouvrage inc.
_____________________________________________
440, ave des Cordillères, Suite 203, Québec G1C 5C4
T  418-622-6269        C  418-998-1442   
Sans frais  1-844-622-6269

M  pierr...@coeuralouvrage.com   W   coeuralouvrage.com

--

Contact support anytime: sup...@figure53.com
Follow QLab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/QLabApp
User Group Code of Conduct: https://qlab.app/code-of-conduct/
---

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qlab/GBp72m3Q3uo/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/723d7674-c084-42ef-837d-9a50262c3a28n%40googlegroups.com.

[micpool]

You are missing the first forward slash.

Also, try it as the OSC message in a network cue with a hotkey trigger, and if that works get companion to fire that cue.

Mic.