Cue Panels

The Cue Panels on the Main Window by default show details of the next few cues or sub-cues, starting with any currently playing cues. A scroll bar to the right enables you to scroll through to other cues, but note that completed cues are not displayed in the cue panels, so you cannot scroll to a completed cue. Also, hot key cues are only displayed in the cue panels when they are playing, so you cannot scroll to a hot key cue.

The information displayed in a cue panel depends on the sub-cue type.

Audio File Sub-Cues and Common Fields

Cue Number (Q10): This shows the label or number of the cue, sub-cue, or playlist track number. As previously mentioned you can use the cue panel's scroll bar to scroll through the cues. If you wish to jump to (or "go to") a cue then you can click on that cue in the cue list in the upper part of the Main Window. If the Cue Number is followed by // (eg Q1 //) then this indicates that gapless playback will be implemented for this cue. See Gapless Playback for more information.

Description (Tiger Island): This is the description of the Sub-Cue, not the description of the Cue. For cues with only one sub-cue the cue and sub-cue descriptions will be the same unless you have changed one or the other. The Description for an audio file sub-cue is initially derived from the 'Title' property in the file header if available, otherwise the Description is initially set to the name of the file without the extension.

If the cue's Page property is set then this will be displayed before the Description, eg 'p25 Tiger Island'.

Progress Slider: This slider shows the current position in the audio file, or the selected portion of the audio file. You can drag the pointer to any position either before or during playback.*

The audio graph will not be displayed if the file's duration is greater than the Editing Option Max. File Length for Audio Graph File Scan. This also applies to the audio graphs displayed for other cue types.

For Audio File Cues only (not Playlist Cues etc), superimposed over the Progress Slider may be displayed yellow lines showing the playback levels of the device(s), and orange lines showing the pan settings. The level curve is scaled so that the highest level of the curve touches the top of the progress slider. You can control which type of curves you want displayed (or none at all) by selecting options under Display Options.

Level and Pan Controls: These controls display the current or required level and pan for each device used by this sub-cue. The pan control is only displayed for 2-channel (stereo) output devices. You can manually adjust the level and/or pan by dragging the pointer.* When you make a manual adjustment to the level or pan, you will be able to save the new level or pan by selecting the appropriate menu item from the Save Settings button in the toolbar, unless a Level Change sub-cue has affected this sub-cue.

Transport Controls: The transport controls can be used to manually start, stop, pause, rewind, fade-out or loop-release the cue. Most of the buttons are common to multi-media players, but there are two SCS specific buttons:

Fade Out: If the cue or sub-cue has a Fade-Out time specified then clicking this button will commence the fade out.

Loop Release: If the cue or sub-cue contains a loop then clicking this button will cause the loop to be released, which means SCS will ignore the 'Loop End' point when it is next reached, and will keep playing up to the 'End At' point (or to the end of the file if no 'End At' has been specified).

* If you want to make fine adjustments to a slider, left-click the slider and then use the left-arrow and right-arrow keys as required. On left-clicking the slider, the background color is changed to your Windows color scheme's "Selected Items" color. This indicates that the slider is "selected" and that using the left-arrow or right-arrow keys will affect this slider. When you click elsewhere the slider will no longer be "selected" and the background color will revert to the standard color for sliders.

SFR (Stop/Fade/Release) Sub-Cues

Transport control: The Play button is displayed for SFR sub-cues and some other non-media cue types to provide a button to activate the sub-cue. So if you click the Play button on an SFR sub-cue it will activate the SFR sub-cue.

Playlist Sub-Cues

With Playlist sub-cues, cue panels are displayed for up to two tracks. These will be for the track currently playing or ready for playing, and for the next track to be played.

Transport Controls: The Shuffle button is enabled provided the "Random Play" property has been selected for this playlist. You can only use the button prior to starting the playlist as the effect is to shuffle the play order. The button is therefore (a) only enabled on the cue panel for the first track to be played, and (b) is disabled when the sub-cue is started.

Transport Control Selector: The drop-down list showing "File" alongside the transport controls primarily enables you to stop or fade-out the whole playlist. To do this, change the drop-down list to "Cue" or "Sub-Cue" and then click the required button (probably stop or fade-out). When this selector is set to "File", which is the default for playlist tracks, then the transport controls act only on the currently playing track. Stopping or fading-out a track causes the playlist to move on to the next track to be played, if any.

The Transport Control Selector is also displayed in the cue panel for any cue that has multiple sub-cues. The default setting for sub-cue types other than playlist is "Sub-Cue", but by selecting "Cue" you can, for example, stop all the sub-cues in the current cue just by clicking the Stop transport control button.

Level Change Sub-Cues

There are two types of Level Change: Absolute and Relative. An Absolute Level Change will displayed as shown below, where the level of Q12 is be changed to -13.2dB over 3 seconds.

A Relative Level Change will be displayed as shown below, where the 'Front' level of Q10 is to be increased by 6dB over 2 seconds. In this example, no change is to be made to the 'Rear' level.

Transport control: If you click the Play button on an Level Change sub-cue it will activate the Level Change.