# Prompt Desk Active Cue Software



## Christopher Bernardi (Mar 10, 2019)

I'm building a new prompt desk for my theatre space with a dual monitor mount for a live feed on the stage and some type of software for live cue readouts, but unfortunately, it seems no one has made anything like that yet for the theatre.

The idea was to have software that the stage management team could use to plug in all the different visual aspects for the show and give a readout of which cue was currently live. Primarily I think this would help reduce the number of calling mistakes made for our shows, but so far my research hasn't come back with anything I can use for this purpose.

Does anyone have any ideas/want to suggest any software that I could use for this?

Thanks


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## derekleffew (Mar 10, 2019)

Hmmm, anyone can now see what cue the ETC EOS is in merely by looking at their Apple Watch. We certainly live in amazing times.

That being said, nothing will "reduce the number of calling mistakes made for our shows" like a good prompt book. Paper and pencil my friend--that's the future.


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## DanH (Mar 10, 2019)

There's a lot of caveats - mainly that it needs a live internet connection to work properly, and your data's in the cloud - but maybe something like https://shoflo.tv/ would be useful?


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## danTt (Mar 10, 2019)

Christopher Bernardi said:


> I'm building a new prompt desk for my theatre space with a dual monitor mount for a live feed on the stage and some type of software for live cue readouts, but unfortunately, it seems no one has made anything like that yet for the theatre.
> 
> The idea was to have software that the stage management team could use to plug in all the different visual aspects for the show and give a readout of which cue was currently live. Primarily I think this would help reduce the number of calling mistakes made for our shows, but so far my research hasn't come back with anything I can use for this purpose.
> 
> ...


Why do you feel that giving the state management team another distraction would reduce calling mistakes?


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## themuzicman (Mar 12, 2019)

I don't quite get the value in this -- but I know some SM's who like to get a monitor split of the main LX cue stack screen. I think more screens = more distraction and you should trust your operators to be professional - but hey, what do I know.

If you really want to go all the way, grab a Dual or Quad Screen Multiview Single-Screen KVM and throw your LX Cue Stack, QLab, and Console overview on it. Find their favorite sports games and throw that on the 4th screen if you're grabbing a Quad View as it's the courteous thing to do for your SM.


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## Aiden Schramm (Mar 12, 2019)

Christopher Bernardi said:


> I'm building a new prompt desk for my theatre space with a dual monitor mount for a live feed on the stage and some type of software for live cue readouts, but unfortunately, it seems no one has made anything like that yet for the theatre.
> 
> The idea was to have software that the stage management team could use to plug in all the different visual aspects for the show and give a readout of which cue was currently live. Primarily I think this would help reduce the number of calling mistakes made for our shows, but so far my research hasn't come back with anything I can use for this purpose.
> 
> ...


Though I don't know what console you have in your space, I use an OSC connection to our Element console to display the current and pending cue to a number of different outputs. By just sending the OSC commands "/eos/out/active/cue/text" and "/eos/out/pending/cue/text" the console will send back the cue number, label, and the time/percentage of completion. Obviously this isn't very useful if you aren't using an EOS console, but OSC is quite good for sending/receiving show data.


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## Rob (Mar 12, 2019)

This is a ten year old article on Open Palette’s Cue Tip I wrote, amoung other cool things Palette did.


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## macsound (Mar 13, 2019)

What I've been doing for production feed splits is the Blackmagic Multiview. For $185 it allows 4 inputs to be split on 1 output. 
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod..._design_hdl_multip3g_04hd_multiview_4_hd.html
Then one can be camera, one LX split, one Qlab split and one RF split.


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## Joshualangman (Apr 24, 2019)

Something like Cue View?

https://www.cueview.app/


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## Jay Ashworth (Apr 24, 2019)

macsound said:


> What I've been doing for production feed splits is the Blackmagic Multiview. For $185 it allows 4 inputs to be split on 1 output.
> https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod..._design_hdl_multip3g_04hd_multiview_4_hd.html
> Then one can be camera, one LX split, one Qlab split and one RF split.



I was going to "oooh", but the 4 inputs are all SDI, right? How are you getting SDI from the source output formats, more converters?


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## macsound (Apr 24, 2019)

Yep. Tons of converters everywhere.
My favorite are blackmagic because they're more bulletproof than AJA or monoprice, but they're cheap. There's of course others.
So DVI and HDMI work semi-interchangabily, so you can use this adapter for any digital video source
https://www.markertek.com/product/b...MIgduc8e7p4QIVNBh9Ch2GPgFUEAQYAyABEgKMB_D_BwE


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## Jay Ashworth (Apr 24, 2019)

Joshualangman said:


> Something like Cue View?
> 
> https://www.cueview.app/



That looks *epic*; nice get.


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## Jay Ashworth (May 26, 2019)

And I've got it and it is neat. Doesn't seem to be any way to say "Don't show me *this* one", alas; I have 2 theatres on the same production net... and it's showing me both copies of Qlab.


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