Venue Profiles

What it's for — A venue profile is a saved snapshot of a room's rig: which outputs to connect, what the rig can physically do, and how your cues should be routed there. Save one per room you play, and switching venues becomes a single click — the same show drives the GrandMA3-and-lasers rig at one club and the modest LED-wash rig at another, without you rebuilding a thing. CueSync can even recognize a venue by its network and offer to activate it for you.

You can keep 3 venue profiles on CueSync DJ, 25 on CueSync Theatre, and unlimited on CueSync Production. The editor and setup wizard are identical in every edition — only the number of saved profiles differs.

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Creating a venue

Open Settings → Venues. You can build a profile two ways:

• New Venue starts a blank profile you fill in by hand.
• The setup wizard walks you through it in three steps: Confirm Devices (scan the network and tick the gear that's here — or Skip Discovery to build it offline), Assign Roles (label each device Main Lighting, Video Server, Effects, Audio Cues, or Custom), and Test & Save (name the venue, test each connection, and save). The wizard seeds output presets and a network fingerprint from the devices you picked. It does not fix a look number, level, visual or on/off for you: a cue's own look number, level, visual and on/off reach every protocol on the rig as the cue states them, and a Blackout's restore sends the restore, not the blackout again. A venue an earlier version of the wizard wrote carried one fixed entry for each, so every look went to cue 1; when such a venue loads, exactly those wizard-written entries are removed and the file is rewritten without them at its next save. Anything you authored or edited stays, and venues written by the very first wizard versions keep their entries, because those cannot be told from ones you edited.

You can also Paste or Import File a venue profile shared as JSON from another machine or operator.

An imported venue says what it can do before you use it. Right after an import, an inline banner under the venue list gives the venue's name, how many raw console commands or raw OSC addresses it fires and the first few of the addresses it reaches ("Venue '…' fires 3 raw console command(s) or raw OSC address(es) and names …"), then "Review it before you switch it on." with a Dismiss button. It is a banner, never a dialog. A venue with the same id as one already on this machine opens Venue Already Exists: Replace Local overwrites the local venue (its outputs, mappings and look bindings, and it cannot be undone), Import as Copy keeps both, and Cancel writes nothing. Replacing refreshes the editor when it has no unsaved edits.

A venue installed from a tour pack stays off until you choose it. The import notice says the venues are "not switched on — choose one in Settings ▸ Venues" and describes what each can do, in the same words as the banner above. A venue with the same id as one you already have is kept as it is. A show that names such a venue opens on the venue you have now and offers it in a notice that stays up ("This show was made for venue '…', installed from the tour pack but not switched on — the show runs on the venue you have now. Review it in Settings ▸ Venues, or use it now.") with a Use venue button. The button switches the venue on only while that show is still open. The hold lasts until you activate the venue or restart CueSync. A show whose venue is not on this computer leaves your active venue as it is, and says so.

What a profile holds

The editor is organized into sections:

• Info — the venue's Name and Location, and an optional Inherits from parent so one profile can build on another (a house rig everyone shares, extended per-room). A child takes the parent's intent mappings (its own entries win, key by key), adds the parent's capabilities to its own, and takes the parent's Resolume effect layer when it names none. It does not inherit outputs or look bindings: each venue keeps its own, because a look binding names a cue on this venue's console.
• Outputs — the connections for this venue: each has a name, protocol, host, and port, with a live health dot so you can see at a glance what's reachable. Add Output seeds a new preset; Apply Outputs pushes the outputs on screen — new and edited ones included, not only the saved copy — into your live connections, behind a confirmation that says how many it will add and how many are already configured ("Add N Outputs"). New outputs try to connect at once, so cancel it mid-show. The result reads "Added N, skipped N duplicates".
• Capabilities — what the rig can physically do, as toggle chips: moving heads, LED wash, strobe, haze, LED wall, projection, laser, fog, pyro, confetti. These drive capability-guarded routing (below).
• Let automation drive lasers — off by default. CueSync's generic automatic verbs (the Blackout pad and blackout intent, the rig-wide master level, generic effects) and the laser steps of this venue's House state (below) never reach a laser unless this venue says so here; the panic and any laser cue, pad or Look you fire yourself always do. The switch also gates AutoPilot's pick of Looks: with it off, AutoPilot skips a laser Look that has an affinity, leaves a skipped entry in Recent Fires and raises one toast per Look per track; with it on, AutoPilot can fire that Look with no operator cue. A venue that has no active profile counts as off.
• Intent Mappings — how CueSync's cue intents map to this rig (below).
• Look Bindings — binds a look name used in a show (say "stage wash blue") to a cue on this venue's own console. Each binding has a Look name, a Console cue # and a Protocol taken from this venue's outputs. When a cue fires a look by name, the active venue's binding is used first, then an enabled grandMA3 Look of the same name in the Palette; a name with neither resolves to nothing (it never falls back to a look number), and the Run Mode pre-start advisory lists the names the active venue leaves unbound.
• House state — what this room is put back to when a show stops: the house look on the desk, the idle loop on the media server (below). Empty by default, and an empty house state sends nothing.
• Output policy — what this ROOM permits on its DMX output: a maximum level because of the neighbours or the curfew, a floor level because a route may not go dark, and a strobe cap in flashes per second for the pixel wall and your Followers. The level limits apply to everything CueSync sends over Art-Net and sACN — a cue, a fade, a Look, an energy scale, the pixel wall — and not to other outputs such as a console over OSC. The one exception is an emergency blackout, which always reaches zero (see below). See Output policy below.

Footer actions cover Activate / Deactivate, Save (enabled once you've made a change; it validates your outputs and name), Export (to the clipboard as JSON), and Delete. Leaving the editor with unsaved edits asks first ("Discard Unsaved Changes?"), whether you pick another venue, change Settings section or go to another screen. Going to Run Mode or Performance during a live show never stops to ask: the edits are discarded, with a notice ("Unsaved venue edits were discarded to open …"). The setup wizard and the OSC Schema Manager ask before they close with work in them (Esc, ✕ or a click outside).

Intent mappings

CueSync cues are written in terms of intent — "set a look," "raise intensity," "strobe burst," "black out," "go to a show cue," "set a visual," and so on — not in terms of a specific console. A venue profile's intent mappings say how each of those intents should be realized on this rig, so the same cue does the right thing in every room.

Each mapping can carry a capability guard: set it to Any rig, or tie it to one of the capabilities above (say, laser). When the venue is active, a guarded mapping only fires on a rig that has that capability: an entry the rig cannot satisfy is dropped rather than fired into nothing. If another entry in the same mapping still fires, the drop is silent. If nothing in the mapping can fire, the intent goes dark at this venue and CueSync shows a warning — This venue can't perform "…" — no compatible output. Cue skipped. — because a guarded mapping is authoritative and never falls back to the built-in default.

A mapping replaces the built-in default for its whole intent type, not only for the outputs it names: if a venue maps blackout to one grandMA3 action, blackout fires only that action in this room, whatever else is connected. Regenerate re-derives a mapping's actions from your current outputs; for fine per-action edits, use the Export / Import JSON round-trip.

Output policy

Output policy sets the limits a venue's rules require.

Name the channels it governs as universe: channels, one universe per line — 1: 1-4, 21. Then set the maximum level every governed channel is held below, and the floor level every governed channel is written above.

Universes are numbered the way each wire numbers them. On Art-Net a line names a Port-Address, and the first is 0 — CueSync's default Art-Net output and the pixel wall's first universe. On sACN the first universe is 1. A line governs its number on every wire, so on a rig running both, 1: caps Art-Net Port-Address 1 and sACN universe 1, while 0: reaches Art-Net only.

⛔ Name your INTENSITY channels and nothing else. DMX channels are not all brightness: a ceiling on a pan channel restricts movement, a floor on a colour channel tints the rig, and a gobo channel held above a floor selects a pattern you did not choose. Your patch sheet is the authority, and an empty field governs nothing.

A typo refuses the whole field rather than applying the part that parsed — a policy governing fewer channels than you wrote is one you cannot check, and the channels it dropped would be the ones you meant to cap.

⛔ The floor is applied to writes; it is not held. An emergency blackout still reaches zero — CueSync will never be the thing standing between you and a dark rig — and a channel nothing writes stays where the panic left it. What the floor guarantees is that no cue in this show puts those channels below it.

Strobe cap. The third limit is not a level. Set a strobe cap in flashes per second and, in this room, it holds two things. The pixel wall's Strobe look is held at that rate: a cue asking for more runs at the cap, at live tempo, and both the wall HUD and the cue editor's rate hint say what it is being held to. Every Follower's output is held too, so a Follower cannot swing a light up and down faster than the cap; a held Follower stays where it is rather than going dark, and a slow swell or a small ripple passes untouched. Public photosensitivity guidance is written around 3 flashes per second. On the wall it applies to strobes only — a chase or a scroll is motion, not a flash. It holds nothing else: a strobe channel on a conventional fixture is a level, and the bounds above are what govern it.

⛔ Raw DMX strobe and blinder channels are not rate-capped by CueSync. A cue that writes a strobe channel, a blinder or a shutter on a conventional fixture sends the level you wrote, at the rate you wrote it, and the strobe cap does not apply to it, nor does the Auto drop payoff setting or the Crowd ceiling. The level limits above can hold a channel to a maximum or a floor; none of them counts flashes. If the room has a photosensitivity limit, that fixture's own strobe-rate channel, or your console, is where it is enforced. Blank means no cap, which is the default: CueSync does not cap flash rate globally, a venue can. See Safety and responsibility.

The policy binds only while its venue is active. Authoring one on an inactive venue changes nothing on the wire, and the editor says so.

House state

A show ends in whatever look its last cue left. For a room that stays open between shows, that is a desk sitting on the last cue's look with nobody watching. House state is what this room goes back to: one ordered cue of actions, sent when a show stops.

Authoring it. Open House state in the venue editor and use Add Action exactly as in a cue: a grandMA3 cue on the desk, a Resolume column for the idle loop, whatever the room needs. Put a Wait between two steps that must not land together; the steps between Waits go out together, in the order listed. Send when a show stops is on by default and can be switched off, which leaves the house state to the Send now button. Send now sends what is on screen, saved or not, so you can try it before you save.

When it sends. When a Stop ends a run: the Stop button, Escape, a MIDI or Stream Deck Stop, or loading another show over a running one (which stops the first). A show that is paused counts as running. A Stop on a show that is not running is a reset and sends nothing. A show whose audio has finished is still playing until it is stopped, so the house state follows the Stop, not the end of the audio.

Sending it by hand. For a room whose work lights have to come back between sets, with no show to stop, the Command Palette (Cmd+K) has House Look: Send to the Room. It sends the active venue's house state through the same guarded sender as Send now — a Blackout, a Freeze, a manual override or a dry run refuse it exactly as below, and laser steps are held back unless the venue allows automation — and it is offered only while the active venue has a house state. While something is playing (a deck, Auto Pilot, a show, a local set, or Performance mode) it asks first — Send the House Look?, then Send House Look — because the room changes at once, under whatever is on air; the show is not stopped. With nothing playing it goes straight out. If nothing went out it says so, and the room is unchanged. CueSync never sends it by itself at a track change, a lost beat or the end of a set.

When it does not send, and what you see instead.

• Over a Blackout, a Freeze or a manual override. You killed the rig on purpose; the house look would undo it. The send is refused and an error says why.
• Into a running show. This covers Send now, and it also covers a Play pressed while a Wait is pending: the steps after the Wait are dropped instead of landing on the new show.
• During a rehearsal or a demo project. The Rehearsal toggle, the Show Editor's DRY mode and a demo project all keep output off, so nothing would reach the rig: a Stop in a rehearsal stays quiet and Send now says it was not sent. It never reports "sent" over a send that went nowhere.
• Lasers, unless the venue allows it. A house state fires without an operator's cue, which is the case Let automation drive lasers exists for. With it off, laser steps are held back and the editor and the error say so; the rest of the list still goes.
• When a step fails. The error names each failed step and the reason (for example No GMA3 output connected), and counts what did go out. A step that does not answer within 10 seconds counts as failed. A whole send that went out is recorded in the notification history rather than interrupting you.

A newer send replaces an older one still waiting, so the room never receives two interleaved copies.

It is not inherited. A house state names cues on this building's console, so a venue that inherits from a template does not take the template's.

Not covered. It does not send when CueSync is quit or crashes: nothing in a dead process can. It does not decide when a show ends. If you need the desk to fall back to a safe look when CueSync disappears mid-show, that is the desk's own job.

What has been checked, and on what. The rules are tested against fakes, and a Stop reaching the wire is tested on a real UDP socket with a stand-in desk. It has not been run against a physical grandMA3 or against Resolume Arena. Run Send now against your own rig before you rely on it.

Activating a venue

Activate a profile from the editor, from the venue chip in the Performance header, or from a recognition prompt. Once active:

• Your cues route through the venue's intent mappings — capability-guarded mappings first, then your plain mappings, then CueSync's built-in defaults.
• The active venue's name shows as a tappable chip in the Performance header; tap it to switch or deactivate.
• The active venue is remembered between sessions and saved into your project file, so a show re-opens in the venue you left it in.

CueSync never changes your routing on its own — activation is always something you do.

Venue recognition

When you arrive somewhere, CueSync watches the devices on the network and compares them to your saved venues' fingerprints. If it's confident it recognizes the room, it raises an unobtrusive "Recognized venue" notification with an Activate button — a suggestion only. It never switches venues behind your back, and it stays quiet if you're already on the matching venue or dismissed the suggestion for the session. (Older profiles are skipped until you re-save them.)

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Related pages

• Network Outputs — the connections a venue's output presets configure
• Devices — the network device panel the setup wizard scans
• Looks and Scenes — the looks a venue's intent mappings can call