Generate Show
DJWhat it's for — Point CueSync at a prepared track and it drafts a whole cue stack for you: it reads the track's phrase structure and energy, and for each phrase it lays down a cue — a build, a drop hit, a breakdown wash — following a theme you pick. You review the draft, uncheck anything you don't want, and commit it to your Cue Stack as a single undoable group. It's the fastest way from a fresh track to a runnable show.
Generate Show is available in CueSync DJ and CueSync Production. CueSync Theatre does not have this dialog; its counterpart is Suggest Cues, with the one-click Generate Theatre Show button, in the Show Editor. They draft cues from a track's audio too, and they are different tools — see Generate Show or Suggest Cues? below.
Generating a show
Open File → Generate Show → Generate Show from Track…. The dialog walks four steps:
- Pick a theme. The dialog shows the track name, its source, and a summary of your connected rig, then a list of theme cards — six built-ins plus any custom themes you've made. Each card names the theme and describes its style; the one you used last is badged Last used. Click a card to start — picking the theme is the generate button.
- Analyzing. CueSync reads the track's structure (using cached analysis when it has it) and drafts the cues. You'll see the tempo and phrase count as it works.
- Review & commit. You get the draft: an energy sparkline of the show's arc, and a list of every proposed cue with its bar number, suggested name, phrase type, and a confidence bar. Each cue has a checkbox — untick any you don't want. From here you can:
- Regenerate — redraw the draft.
- Save as theme — keep this exact arrangement as a new custom theme. The name starts as the theme's name plus Remix (or the first free Remix 2, Remix 3 and so on); a name that is already taken is refused with the reason and Save waits, so a theme you saved earlier is never replaced by accident.
- Preview Audio — audition the show against the track's audio as a dry run. This fires nothing to your rig; it's a safe listen-through, and it's only offered when you're working from a local audio file (not a live Pioneer source).
- Commit — write the ticked cues into your Cue Stack.
- Commit. The cues are added as one group named Generated · <theme> · <time>, colored by confidence, each set to fire on its own phrase of this track — the second drop's cue on the second drop, not every drop, and none of them on the next track's phrases. The draft uses your corrected phrases if you have edited this track's phrase map. The whole group is a single undo — one Cmd+Z removes every generated cue if you change your mind. If the commit is refused — the cue stack is full, say — the dialog stays open with your draft as it was, so you can untick cues and commit again.
How many cues you get depends on the track: CueSync emits a cue per mapped phrase, so a richly-structured track yields more cues than a sparse one. A track with no analysis yields none.
Themes
A theme is the taste behind the generation — a set of rules that says what should happen on each kind of phrase (intro, build, drop, breakdown, outro…): raise intensity, throw a strobe burst, call a look, black out. Crucially, a theme is protocol-agnostic — it describes intent, not a specific console. When you commit, CueSync resolves each intent into concrete actions against whatever rig you have connected, so the same theme drives a GrandMA3 in one venue and a Resolume rig in another.
CueSync ships six built-in themes — Main-stage EDM, Club peak-time, Warm-up / cool-down, Minimal techno, Hip-hop / R&B, and Festival big-room. Built-ins are read-only; to make your own, duplicate one and edit the copy (the copy is a frozen snapshot — later app updates to the original won't change it).
The Themes editor
Custom themes live in Settings → Show Themes:
- Duplicate a built-in to start a custom theme, give it a name, and save it.
- Edit a custom theme in the mapping editor: for each phrase type you can Add Intent (raise intensity, strobe burst, set a look, blackout), reorder or remove intents. There is no chance setting here: Generate Show resolves every intent once, when you commit, so every intent in a theme's mapping for a phrase lands on that phrase's cue. A chance to fire lives on Auto Pilot moments — see Intents and Actions. To get a hit that does not land on every drop, untick that cue in the review list, or delete the cue after you commit.
- Delete custom themes you no longer want.
- Import / Export themes from the File menu (from a file or the clipboard) to share them between machines or with other operators.
The mapping editor is a focused, most-common-intents tool — new intents start from sensible defaults. For finer control, generate a show, tune the draft, and use Save as theme to capture exactly what you built.
Generate Show or Suggest Cues?
CueSync has two ways to draft cues from a track's audio, and which one you have follows your edition. Both read the track's phrases and energy. What they produce, and when it fires, differ.
| Generate Show | Suggest Cues and Generate Theatre Show | |
|---|---|---|
| Edition | DJ, CueSync Production | Theatre, CueSync Production |
| Find it | File → Generate Show → Generate Show from Track…, or Track Prep | In the Show Editor: Suggest in the cue list toolbar (Cmd+Shift+S), and the Generate Theatre Show button at the end of the status line |
| Works from | A prepared track in your queue or on a deck | The audio of the Part on screen |
| What you get | Cues in your Cue Stack, each with actions drawn from a theme and the rig you have connected | Cues at timecode positions on that Part's timeline. They carry no actions unless you choose a template in Suggest Cues, so you give each one its action afterwards |
| How you steer it | A theme: six built in, plus your own | A source you pick in Suggest Cues: phrase starts, bars, energy peaks, structural moments or silences. Generate Theatre Show takes phrase starts plus the strong energy peaks |
| Review | A draft with a confidence bar per cue, which you untick before you commit | Suggest Cues shows a preview you tick through. Generate Theatre Show adds its cues at once and marks each ✦ so you can review and disable them |
| Undo | One Cmd+Z removes the whole group | One Cmd+Z removes everything an Add or a Generate Theatre Show put in |
| When a cue fires | On the music: each fires on its own phrase of the track, whenever that phrase plays | On the show's clock: at its timecode, the same every night |
In CueSync Production you have both. Use Generate Show for a music-led set and Suggest Cues for a show that runs on timecode and GO. The Theatre side is described under Common tasks in the Show Editor page.
Related pages
- Auto Pilot — hands-off, continuous automation that drives cues live as the music plays
- Intents and Actions — what a theme's intents are, and how they become actions at commit
- Cues — the Cue Stack the generated cues land in
- Palette — the looks a theme's intents can call
- Track Prep — prepare a track's structure so generation has something to read
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