Skip to content

Building the show

A timeline of cues switches sources. A show also has to tell people what is happening, run in a running order, and survive the change of plan that arrives an hour before doors. This page covers the layers on top of the cues, and the structure around the timelines.

Markers

Markers are navigation points: song sections, scene changes, the moment the guest walks on. Each one has a name and a colour, and nothing else — no duration, no text body.

Add one at the playhead with Alt+M, the add-marker button in the toolbar, or the button in the Markers panel. To rename or recolour, right-click the marker on the marker track and choose Edit... — there is no inline editing on the track. The dialog offers the name and one of eight colours.

On the marker track, a single click starts a drag; a double click moves the playhead there. The Delete key does not remove a marker: markers are outside the timeline's selection model, so deletion is right-click > Delete, one at a time.

Colour labels and the showcall window

Colours are only useful if the team agrees what they mean. In Settings > UI, under Marker color labels, you can name each of the eight colours for this project — "song", "VT", "link", "hard out". The names then appear next to the colours in the marker dialog.

The Markers panel lists every marker; clicking a row moves the playhead (refused in Live, allowed elsewhere). From the panel you can pop the list out into its own always-on-top window you can drop on a second screen — a marker list large enough to call a show from, independent of the editor.

The notes track

The notes track is for what is happening in the show, not for what a camera is doing. Each note has a start, a duration and up to two lines of text: "verse 2", "band enters stage left", "pyro at 3:45", "guest walks".

Notes are not shot descriptions

A shot description belongs to a cue and describes that shot. A note belongs to the timeline and is deliberately asynchronous with the camera calls — it starts and ends where the show does something, not where you cut. They are different objects with different audiences and different lifetimes. Do not use one for the other.

Double-click empty space on the notes track to create a note, double-click a note to edit it, or use the add-note button in the toolbar. Right-click gives Edit Note... and Delete Note. If you create one near the playhead, it snaps to it.

Who sees notes

  • The web views. Notes are published to connected clients. The shipped browser client shows them in the director view, behind its NOTES toggle. The camera view never shows notes — an operator sees their own shot descriptions, not the show-wide running commentary.
  • The output display, if you assign the Cur Note or Next Note cell. Those two cells read the notes track (with a countdown to the next one); the On Air and Next cells show the cue's shot description instead.
  • The PDF cue sheet, if you tick "Include notes track" on export. See Cue sheets.

The M/E status track

Cameras are only part of what an M/E is doing. The status track maps out the rest as coloured blocks: graphics, full-screen playback, split screen, black. Everybody — you, the graphics operator, the crew on their web views — reads the same strip and knows what is driving the output.

Blocks come in five named types — GFX, LIVE, BLACK, SPLIT, GFX+LIVE — plus CUSTOM, which carries its own label and its own colour for that one block. The five named colours are project-wide, under M/E Status Colors in Settings > UI; a CUSTOM block ignores them and keeps what you gave it.

Drag across empty space on the status track to create a block; HotPunch immediately asks which type it is. Double-click an existing block to change the type, right-click to delete. The track is hidden by default — show it with the M/E status button in the transport bar (icon only, hover for the tooltip) or View > M/E Status Track.

The status strip travels: it appears on the output display as a band, and in the web views. With dual M/E there are two independent status tracks, one under each lane, sharing a single show/hide toggle — see Dual M/E.

Note

Parts of the status-block dialogs are still in Italian in this beta. They work; they just have not been translated yet.

Importing a status track

File > Import > M/E Status Track from CSV... takes a file with exactly this header:

type,start,end

start and end are seconds, not timecode. Any type name is accepted; the import dialog then asks you to map each distinct name in the file onto a HotPunch type (unmapped names become CUSTOM blocks keeping their name), where time zero should land — the timeline start or the start of a video track — and whether to Replace all blocks or Add to existing blocks. This is the path for a rundown exported from a graphics or playback system.

The pool and the shows

Every timeline in the project lives in the pool. The pool is your library: acts, rehearsals, alternative versions, last year's opener. Timecodes may overlap freely there.

A show is an ordered selection of pool timelines for one performance. Inside a show, timecode ranges may not overlap — that constraint is what lets incoming timecode identify one position without ambiguity. HotPunch enforces it when you build the show, and also when you change a timeline's start or duration.

The Show Manager (Project flyout > Manage Shows, or the Window menu) has three columns: the shows, the timelines of the selected show, and the pool — where "pool" here means every timeline not already in the selected show.

  • Create a show from the shows column, then drag timelines from the pool into the middle column. Reorder by dragging, or with Move Up / Move Down in the right-click menu.
  • A conflict behaves differently depending on how you add. Dragging a timeline whose timecode overlaps one already in the show asks "Replace 'X' with 'Y'?" — accept and the conflicting timeline is removed from the show (and the new one is appended at the end, not in the slot it replaced). Going through Add from Pool... instead simply refuses, with "Cannot Add Timeline".
  • Make a show active by selecting it and pressing Load Show, then confirming. The Show Manager closes, and the switch happens as it closes.
  • Removing a timeline while a show is active asks which you meant: Remove from Show or Delete from Project. Deleting from the project removes it from every show that used it. The pool can never drop below one timeline.

Warning

The Show Manager does not open in Live. Choose your show before you go on air.

Shared timelines and variants

The same timeline can sit in several shows. That is the point: the same act travels with you, and you fix it once.

The consequence is the part to be careful about. Editing the cues of a shared timeline changes it in every show that uses it, silently and immediately. There is no prompt, because there is no copy — it is the same object.

HotPunch does ask in two places:

  • Editing a shared timeline's own settings (name, start TC, duration, frame rate) from the sidebar opens a dialog listing the shows involved and offering Modify in all shows or Create a variant for this show only. The variant is a full copy, named Timeline (Show), that replaces the reference in the current show alone.
  • Right-click > Make Unique to This Show does the same fork on demand, without waiting for you to edit anything. In the Show Manager it appears only when the timeline really is shared.

Duplicating a show asks the same question one level up: Use same timelines keeps both shows pointing at the same timelines, so a fix propagates to both; Duplicate timelines (independent) copies them, so the new show can drift. Pick "same" for a second night of the same production; pick "independent" when the venue changes everything.

Importing a rundown from CSV

File > Import > CSV... brings a rundown in from a spreadsheet, or from another HotPunch project. Cues land on the active timeline.

The file needs a header row. Only two columns are required:

Column Required Notes
TC In yes Timecode. ; before the frames means drop-frame
Source yes CAM n (within your camera count), BLACK, WHITE, MP 1-MP 4, or MARKER
TC Out no Used for duration if Duration is absent
Duration no Wins over TC Out. Missing both gives 5 seconds
Transition no MIX, DIP, WIPE, DVE, STING, CLIP; anything else is a cut
Mix Duration (ms) no
Shot Description no For a MARKER row this is the marker's name
Private Notes no
Color no Applied to markers only — a cue's colour comes from its source
M/E no Advisory only. Every cue lands on the M/E you pick in the dialog

Rows whose Source is MARKER become markers, not cues. Unrecognised sources, unparseable timecodes and positions past the end of the timeline are skipped, and the summary at the end tells you how many and why. Read it — a rundown that imports "successfully" with 40 skipped rows looks identical to one that worked.

Before the file chooser, HotPunch asks three things:

  • Replace existing or Append. Replace clears the target lane first.
  • Aligned to timeline start or Use absolute timecodes. Aligned shifts everything so the earliest row lands at the timeline's start — the right choice when the rundown was written against a different clock. Absolute takes the timecodes literally.
  • Import into M/E 1 / M/E 2, when dual M/E is on.

Import is refused in Live and Break, before the dialog opens — "Replace existing" against the timeline currently driving the mixer is not a mistake worth allowing.

Tip

A CSV exported by HotPunch re-imports into HotPunch, drop-frame included: the semicolon in 01:00:00;02 carries the designation, and the frames are converted with it. Two things do not survive the round trip: cue colours (rebuilt from the source) and the M/E column (you choose the target in the dialog). Exporting a project with M/E 2 cues writes a separate _me2.csv, which has to be imported separately. See Handoff to post.

Your show exists. Next, get it onto paper for the crew: Cue sheets.