Computer

SCS is available for ' PC's running Microsoft Windows. If you have an Intel-based Apple Macintosh then SCS will run under a Microsoft Windows virtual machine such as Boot Camp or Parallels.

Operating system

Windows 7, Vista, XP (SP2), 2000 (SP4), or NT 4.0 (SP6a) (all ©Microsoft) (SP = minimum Service Pack).

SCS is not supported for Windows 95, 98 or ME.

Processor

All current-day processors will satisfactorily handle SCS. For video playback of 720p high definition files, a 2.4GHz processor is recommended. For 1080p, either a 1.8GHz Intel Core Duo or higher (or equivalent), or a 3.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 or higher (or equivalent) is recommended.

A minimum of 512Mb memory is required.

Sound card

Any good or at least reasonable sound card should work satisfactorily with SCS. Please note that a cheap sound card or on-board sound processor may give satisfactory results when you listen to cues through your PC speakers, but may give less than satisfactory results when played through the sound system at your theatre.

Audio driver

The audio library used by SCS requires DirectX (©Microsoft). ASIO drivers are also supported, which do not require DirectX.

SCS Professional and higher license level users may alternatively select SoundMan-Server (SM-S) as the Audio Driver. SM-S may be installed on the same machine or on another machine accessible via a Telnet connection. Please note that all the audio files used for a production must be directly accessible by SM-S, and it is strongly recommended that they be on the same machine as SM-S. Unless there's good reason to use different machines for SCS and SM-S then it is much easier to have both systems resident on the same machine.

Video card

To play high 720p HD videos a 64Mb video card is required. 1080p videos require a at least a 128Mb video card.

Video engine

To play video files SCS uses DirectShow (© Microsoft) by default, but xVideo is also available which provides some additional functionality

MIDI in

If you wish to control cues using MIDI input messages sent by a separate controller device, your PC must have a MIDI input port.

MIDI out

If you wish to use cues that send MIDI messages sent to an external device (or devices) then your PC must have a MIDI output port. The MIDI output port can also be used for MIDI Thru to automatically stream MIDI input messages to the MIDI output port, whether or not those messages are used by SCS.

DMX Control

If you wish to control SCS cues via DMX from an external device (eg a lighting board) then you need an Enttec 'DMX USB PRO'. (Note that the cheaper Enttec 'Open DMX USB' is not suitable as this only supports DMX Send, not DMX Receive.)

Disk space

SCS requires about 7.5Mb of disk storage plus the size of some common windows components (DLL's), but sound files, especially PCM wave files, can be many megabytes in size. Note that PCM wave files are the recommended format for sound cue files.

SoundMan-Server will only play WAV or AIFF files but SCS also supports other formats such as MP3 and WMA. To play MP3, etc files via SM-S, SCS encodes a WAV file from the original file, and stores that WAV file in an 'Encoded Files' folder.

Display size

A screen display size of at least 960 by 600 pixels is required, although a minimum size of 1024 by 768 pixels is highly recommended. (If the screen height is less than 768 pixels then a vertical scroll bar may be displayed against the cue and sub-cue properties in the Editor.)