I wanted to address three criticisms I've received, some just genuinely inquisitive and one actually quite hostile accusing me of 'ripping off' another's work (something I'm no stranger to being on the receiving end of with lxkey!) – so apologies for the length of this!

There is an app that has some similar features to CueCam, Vor. But that's a far larger piece of software aimed (I feel) at a different market. And indeed I've used it, and recommended it to others, and will continue to do so!

Vor is a fantastic 'whole production' tool, it allows capture of multiple streams of video, twelve channels of audio, integration with media servers, PSN, QLab, automation systems, cue lights, and much more. It's infinitely customisable (but takes time to set up accordingly) and supports incredibly complex workflows like 40+ cue lists and custom elements for shows like The Twenty Sided Tavern.

CueCam, on the other hand, is decided to allow lighting designers and programmers to quickly record a show (open CueCam, select your desk, point at stage, done) with cues, make some notes, and revisit it later to fix them - something I do a lot after everyone else has gone home and scrolling through an iPad with a recording of it.

It's generally aimed at smaller scale productions, amateur companies, small regional touring etc - the world I know (and built it for) - and exclusively for ETC Eos (because that's what I know and use)

They are priced differently accordingly too, Vor is a subscription costing £250/year on mac or £100/year on iPhone. CueCam costs £35 (one off) - they are not competing in the same world or with the same budgets.

So, anyway...

AI ...  

The other elephant in the room, when people appear with new software today it's always AI that wrote it, apparently. Often rightly so, but there's usually more to it.

Ok, I use 'agentic coding' a bit, but so does any developer today. Auto completion in editors has become so good it's scary, and AI agents can really help identifying odd race conditions and such like and weird language syntax (I'll admit I'm new to Swift!)

AI (Specifically Claude if anyone cares) was also used in the creation of the UI of CueCam Play (I don't do web GUIs!), for example, based on the Mac application which it had access to and gave me a great starting point to work from in TypeScript.

But I did not fire up ChatGPT and say "build me this" – try it if you want, I've got various views about AI in software development. In summary, that it is empowering people to build something for their own needs is a good thing, but that generally it doesn't make code good enough for wider use - I've seen lots of 'web apps' pop up that are clearly AI generated and process personal data with huge vulnerabilities.

But, equally, there's great examples out there of people with a particularly complex problem to solve that historically might have required some convoluted Excel sheet  or Filemaker DB or similar that can now build a single page tool that runs locally that does exactly where they need, and i've seen some where parents (albeit tech-savvy ones already) are using it to build things for their kids for specific things and tailored to their abilities - and that's awesome.

In some ways AI generated applications are the HyperCard of today. And the fact that I know what HyperCard is (and used it a lot) should give you a clue of my own background!

The bottom line is CueCam was not written by AI, but AI tools did help me write CueCam.

Who am I?

(... 2 4 6 0 1 ! ... sorry, wrong show)

Did I just wake up and decide I'm a developer now because of AI?

No, I've worked in software development for 20+ years, if I'm impersonating anything it's being a lighting professional too - I get paid for that much less (both in terms of money and frequency sadly)

My first app on the App Store was in 2007. And I had a much bigger one in 2008 (people even wrote articles about it at the time here, and here being the only ones I can find still online... and O2 threatened to sue me... :D)

Sure, I haven't kept up with app development - my focus has been elsewhere and I didn't really have any great ideas for apps after the first couple - but friends encouraged me to release CueCam.

I've been developing software for other people since 1999 and lighting shows using Eos since 2009 (and the Strand 500 before that, and GSX/LBX Genius 125 before that)

Although I don't do much professional lighting work these days (sadly), I still have many friends in that industry full-time and remain a member of the ALPD. It's a big part of my life, and I wrote CueCam for me first and foremost.

CueCam's origin and evolution

Did CueCam copy Vor (or anything else)? No.

CueCam has its roots in my really imaginatively named showcap which ran on a Raspberry Pi back in 2018 (or thereabouts) when I started using OSC more extensively.  (I think this predates Vor, but I'm not sure to be honest)

showcap was a command line application that recorded a video stream with ffmpeg, and opened a text file. As OSC messages were received it wrote them with a timestamp to the text file.  When a stop command was received another script ran (using php+gd of all things!) that generated an overlay and merged the two together, it was cumbersome and looked awful but it worked and gave me a nice record of old shows. The "markers" of the time were a massive magenta dot at the top right but it served a purpose (I could find them quickly scrubbing the footage)

Fast forward a number of years and it was adapted to use nodejs, mainly as an exercise to myself to learn node better (I also wrote an NDI pixel mapper around the same time). Again, no public audience, just a tool for me, and it now ran on a Pi or my mac (in a browser)

Unrelated, I was asked to help with a simple OSC programming thing, log the up/down time of a show (linked to the theatre website so that tickets went off sale when the show started) and that got me talking to others about things I've done with OSC in the past. Being able to mark a recording from the desk was the 'killer feature' that they thought worthy of an app – and something that was unique.

So, CueCam v1 was built based on concepts from showcap, and moved to iPhone because everyone has one in their pocket and the camera is actually pretty good at recording shows for this purpose.  

the app today...

CueCam bears little resemblance to the hacked together solution of the past. It's a much more polished app, and we're adding more features to it all the time.

The magenta dot became more streamlined markers, with text that could be sent from OSC. The plain text overlay of the Eos cue update got stylised, we thought about how to provide a GUI on the console and started with just passing the screen over NDI (later RTSP, thanks Vizrt (Grr!)) and then evolved to a small status display inspired by what you'd see on a typical camera.

Then the feedback from users in the real world helped improve it immensely;

"Can the overlays be optional?"
 - added clean copy

"We put this FOH, is there any way to stop people poking at it?"
- added OSC lock.

"Would be great to be able to add markers from elsewhere?"
- added Apple Watch support, UDP OSC for QLab / Companion

"Could you support Chapter Markers?"
 - added chapter markers, then went down a rabbit hole of a custom metadata track, created CueCam Play...

All of this happened before it hit the store, hence why a 'fully featured' app was available at launch. It's thanks to extensive testing and a feedback loop of both a few close friends, and a wider public beta we carried out for a few months.

So, hopefully that puts to rest a few things.

CueCam is not copying Vor. I love Vor (even got a Vor sticker on one of my cases!), but it's a different app with a different audience. The two happily coexist and I will continue to subscribe to Vor Production if I need it, but for quickly reviewing lighting from rehearsals, I use CueCam.

CueCam for Eos App - App Store

Standby for cue clarity. Capture your productions with detail. CueCam for Eos records video with live lighting cue data from your ETC Eos lighting controller (console or ETCnomad) embedded directly into the footage - making rehearsal reviews, show documentation, and collaboration faster and more ef…

Ross HendersonApp Store

Recently, I've revisited this app and made it more powerful. It updates your Eos showfile in near real-time based on CuePoints data.

Essentially, this turns CuePoints into a live timeline editor for Eos and has made it much easier for me to produce timecode-locked lighting for shows.

I've provided it here in case someone else finds it useful, but please note the following important caveats;

There is no way to get the Cue List or Timecode Offset from the XML file CuePoints produces, so I pull these from the track name, simply add them to the end of your track name e.g. 6/ 01:20:00:00 would be Cue List 6 with a timecode offset of 01:20:00:00

• If a cue doesn't exist with the provided number, it will be created.
• You can only reference one cue list per track
• Labels do not support non-standard characters
• Changing Cue List or Timecode Offset is unsupported, it might work but the behaviour is not guaranteed.
• If you enable delete cues it will delete a cue if you delete the corresponding marker and there is no other Cue Points marker that references the same cue. This can be handy if quickly building cues for a new sequence but I would strongly recommend turning it off as soon as you have scene data in those cues.

Unlike my previous version it does support multiple events with the same timecode. It does not support multiple timecodes for the same cue (even though Eos does and it's really useful, so I will probably add this in the future!)

I wrote this as a tool for myself first and foremost. It's hastily thrown together and is neither designed to be efficient nor well written, just to work. This is provided as-is and without warranty. save your show file first!

This one is macOS only, and is 5Mb instead of the 180Mb Electron app last time... but a consequence of this is it will only ever be macOS only!

You can download it here, let me know what you think and if you find it useful!

In an ideal world a direct OSC integration will appear in a future version of CuePoints completely negating the need for this little app :-)

Shameless self promotion, but if you're reading this then you use Eos and work on shows where timing matters so you might also like CueCam - capture your shows with your Eos cue data and annotate your recordings in realtime.  

CueCam for Eos App - App Store

Standby for cue clarity. Capture your productions with detail. CueCam for Eos records video with live lighting cue data from your ETC Eos lighting controller (console or ETCnomad) embedded directly into the footage - making rehearsal reviews, show documentation, and collaboration faster and more ef…

Ross HendersonApp Store

It is not, and doesn't try to be, an alternative to Disguise, Hippotizer, Avolites Ai, MediaMaster or anything similar. Think of it as a simple digital slide projector with control by sACN, with a few bells and whistles designed for 'digital backdrops' rather than full-featured media presentations.

The user interface is as simple as it can be, there is a library of up to 255 'slides' - these can be either videos or photos that can be selected from the lighting desk later by sACN.

Just drag your media into the appropriate pigeonhole. Right click to remove any of them.

Zoe Media Server has four layers of content, you can load any of the media to any of the four layers and apply some transformations on a per-layer basis.

It works at HD (1920x1080). It'll scale that to fit any output display you provide, but internally everything is processed at 1920x1080. Why? Because that's what I needed at the time. It may evolve in the future.

Also, it supports a single output. If you want another one just now, use another Mac ;-)

Layers

There are four layers of content, for each of them you can select an image and then adjust the following parameters and transformations over sACN that allow for adjusting the image, as well as some colour and transformation effects.  

• Intensity
• Red, Green, and Blue Levels individually
• Playback Speed and Looping
• Hue, Saturation, Contrast, and Blur (Defocus)
• Scale/Zoom (from 0% to 200%)
• X/Y Position
• Crop and Rotate

Master Control

In addition to the controls per video layer, the master controls include

• Intensity
• Scale and Position
• Crop and Rotate
• Full four-point keystone adjustment

Anyway, it's freely available, you might find it useful, you might not, but if you do - let me know!

It's now available on the App Store for download. The app is a free download, with a one-off purchase via in-app purchase (I don't really like this, but it's the only way to make a demo version available in the store!)

This is what I use to record all the shows I light.

CueCam for Eos records two videos simultaneously - a video overlayed with Eos show data (the show name, current scene, cue number, timings, cue name, completion state etc) and a clean copy for archival purposes. It uploads these to Dropbox automatically for every show.

The resulting video is a simple video file, it doesn't require anything more than a standard video player to watch, so it's easily shared with other members of the production team – additionally it adds Chapter Markers to make it easy to jump to a specific scene or cue.

I can control every aspect of the app from my Eos console over OSC, and it uses (somewhat uniquely I believe) an RTSP stream provided by an integrated server to provide a 'video' stream that's effectively a status display, which gives a good confidence indicator that the recording is working as well as visual confirmation that other features are enabled. The actual iPhone is Front of House and locked with the display dimmed.

Another unique feature is Markers. Markers are one of the reasons we built CueCam! By tapping on the screen (or over OSC, or even with an Apple Watch!) you can add brightly coloured annotations on the recorded footage, which are easy to spot when scrubbing through footage. I use these to keep notes of where there are unintentional live moves, poor timing, or colour transition issues with simple Direct Selects on the console burning the mark onto the video in realtime.

Everyone's workflow is different, and in beta testing I've heard so many ways people use these that are different to how I originally envisioned them, including a stage manager who thought it was a great idea even without using it for LX!

Ultimately, I've found this a really useful tool, and I hope others do too.

Available on the App Store Now.

CueCam for Eos App - App Store

Standby for cue clarity. Capture your productions with detail. CueCam for Eos records video with live lighting cue data from your ETC Eos lighting controller (console or ETCnomad) embedded directly into the footage - making rehearsal reviews, show documentation, and collaboration faster and more ef…

Ross HendersonApp Store

I don’t know who needs to read this - and it’s probably not anyone I know - but having seen so many clips from the tragic accident at Crans-Montana in Switzerland this new year…

IF THERE IS A FIRE — GET OUT. EVACUATE. IMMEDIATELY.

Ignoring that the circumstances are so reminiscent of The Station nightclub fire, and the venue operator could have done a lot more to prevent it (and indeed is probably ultimately responsible for the deaths and injuries of so many) - I cannot believe the number of people still dancing, and watching and recording the fire as molten plastics drip from the ceiling.

GET OUT. that’s all.

Even in venues I’ve been responsible for, our own staff fire procedures are always to evacuate when there’s a confirmed fire. If it’s later extinguished people can maybe be readmitted but also unless you’re confident and have had some training to assess the likelihood of success - don’t attempt to fight it.

Buildings are insured, sure it would be annoying to see a space I care about whether it be a temporary venue, hotel function suite, exhibition hall, or theatre burn to the ground but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. We can rebuild any of them.

We seem to have got to some point in humanity’s history where social media or the obsession to record everything and every experience has somehow overrode the basic instinct to get the hell away from a fire! - and that’s terrifying.

And please, if you find yourself in this situation and everyone around you is an inept idiot, take control of the moment. If you start barking instructions like “everyone this way, get out, follow me” everyone will, even if you don’t work there and have no authority. They probably won’t realise and by the time they do, they’ll be safe.

A few people have asked about my ETCnomad setup, so I thought i'd put a little list here (together with, shamelessly, links that may earn me a tiny amount in referrals if you buy anything you see here!)

Firstly, I do still really prefer a console (ideally an ETC Gio @5 or Eos Ti!) and will hire one if the budget permits, but I don't always have that luxury available to me and my nomad setup is finally about as close as I can get without one and still lets me control 12 universes which is (usually) more than I need unless i'm getting carried away with pixels.

Computer

The main computer is now an Asus ZenBook Duo, I'm still not 100% sold on this solution compared to my Intel Nuc, but the OLED displays are nice and, for smaller shows, I use just that and the fader wing and it all fits comfortably in a laptop bag. However, of concern it briefly froze a couple of times in plotting the last show, something my Nuc has never done, so I will be paying close attention to this.

The external display is a HANNspree HT225HPB (now discontinued, the HT220CUA seems to be the closest now) - this is one of two monitors I used to use with my Nuc-based setup. Seeing it next to the ZenBook Duo's OLED really makes me want to replace this, the contrast is petty poor by comparison.

lxkey|eos

Now, the fun bits... the keyboard (not the Apple one at the front, I was labelling cues with that!) is the original keyboard for Nomad - lxkey|eos. I designed this over 10 years ago, and it's still going strong. In the US there's a similar product which I view as a bit of a rip-off of our own (the distributor previously sold lxkey, before working with my suppliers to make their own competing product!) but ultimately it's a reliable 128 key programmable keyboard with nice Cherry MX keys.

Faders

The fader wing is a Novation LaunchControl XL3, I've written up how I use this with Eos here but ultimately it provides rotary encoders of most of the attributes of the movers I use, along with eight faders (sadly non-motorised) and corresponding buttons.

Encoders (well, encoder)

The single rotary encoder you can see is a Contour Shuttle Pro, which replaced my ShuttleXpress this year, again I've written up how I use this with Eos here but ultimately it serves as a very good encoder for one attribute at a time, with the buttons offering quick selection of different attributes and the 'jog dial' shuttle function allowing quick flicking between fixtures

MIDI

Not visible in the photo, but another magic box that lives in this setup is a DOREMIDI LTC-MIDI MTC-20. This versatile little box of tricks converts LTC timecode to MIDI (and also displays the current timecode) as well as providing a MIDI interface for MTC or MSC if required.

If you work with MIDI or timcode, get one.

Stream Deck?

Those who've worked with me or seen previous posts may wonder where the Stream Decks are, after all they're the defacto standard 'buttons' in this world...

I used to use both a Stream Deck XL and a Stream Deck Plus with encoders, neither of which tend to make it into my current rig.

The Stream Deck Plus was my previous solution for encoders, the LaunchControl has replaced that entirely, and I don't miss it at all (even if it did, in theory, provide more control because every attribute was available)

The Stream Deck XL is a trickier one. I previously used it for my Direct Selects and Macros but they had to be configured manually in Companion and it was time consuming, the horizontal touch screen on the ZenBook and an iPad running iRFR both handle it better so although I miss the physical clicky buttons, it didn't actually improve my workflow at all. I still use one for QLab a lot.

So, although I like the Stream Deck, it doesn't live in the case any more.

CueCam

And, of course, I use CueCam to capture shows and my rough notes around timing.

Still not quite a console

In summary, it's still not a console. And I've got my eye open for a reasonably priced Gio @5 which I'd snap up in a heartbeat.

What it is however is the most powerful lighting control that can fit in a laptop bag and for that I am very grateful to ETC. When they introduced ETCnomad it completely changed my theatrical life, and has brought professional tools to some of the smallest performance spaces across the world.

My Nomad setup evolves year on year, it's almost unrecognisable from what I was using in 2021, so I'll revisit this every now and then I think!

I've been dabbling in automatic followspots for a while, trying to make my own hacky solution as I don't have the budget for the likes of ZacTrack, Blacktrax, Follow-ME etc.

Indeed, I've got a little iPad based followspot tool, but that requires lots of time to set up in Augment3d, it's a bit of a work in progres that I hope to release some day.

For a recent show I found a much simpler solution with a couple of faders to cater for a little movement along a horizontal axis that I was actually quite surprised works.

Note that it can't replace a true followspot, but for this particular show a solo singer who started in a centre stage spot moves about the stage a little left and right, and it works perfectly for that (and that isn't an uncommon situation!)

First, record your cue as normal (whether the actor's position is in a palette or not doesn't matter for this although in my example this is preset 100 DSC) with the initial point of the actor. For convenience, i've put all the lights that are used to point at this actor in Group 10 in the examples below.

Secondly, have the actor move to the extreme stage right of their original position, and move any lights focussed on them to this position, record this (focus attribute only) as a focus palette (in my example this is FP 100.1 SR) e.g.

[Group 10] [Record] [Focus] [Preset] 100.1 [Label] SR

Next, have the actor move to the extreme stage left of their original position, do the same again, and record (Focus attribute only again) this as focus palette 100.2 SL

[Group 10] [Record] [Focus] [Preset] 100.2 [Label] SL

In Fader Config (Tab 36) select a pair of spare faders and set these to target your new Presets as follows with the options shown (you may also want to set Param filter here to Pan/Tilt);

Now you have a pair of faders that allow you to 'pull' the focus of these fixtures left and right as appropriate. You can even use the 'other' fader without resetting the first one (although this does result in a bit of a drift compared to lowering one fully before raising the other)

The example below was captured using ETCnomad offline, obviously this works a lot better with physical faders or a real console.

There you have it, a simple primitive followspot in seconds on any stage.

Shameless self promotion, but this is my website so what do you expect ;-), but if you're reading this you might like CueCam - capture your shows with your Eos cue data and annotate your recordings in realtime.  

CueCam for Eos App - App Store

Standby for cue clarity. Capture your productions with detail. CueCam for Eos records video with live lighting cue data from your ETC Eos lighting controller (console or ETCnomad) embedded directly into the footage - making rehearsal reviews, show documentation, and collaboration faster and more ef…

Ross HendersonApp Store

(Arguably, offering ~50% APR credit terms on low value 'luxury' items is irresponsible, but here we are.)

I'd recommend you stay well clear of them based on my experience.

Firstly, I should add that I recognise I write this from a position of good fortune, and that I do not need to rely on credit, but when they offer a substantial discount on a high value item only if you take their credit (which in this case was 0% APR) then it's worth it (sort of) just to get the discount.

Or so I thought, as Very have damaged my previously perfect credit score, but that's not the point of this post.

At the time of writing they owe me £968.98. Most of which is for goods never sent.

DJI Offer

So, what tempted me into this mess? The DJI Pro 5 Mini "Fly More Combo" which retails at £979 (a pretty awesome drone I must admit, very impressed with it, but that's for another post)

Very were offering 20% off your first order but only if you took out their credit account. (I also wonder the legality of this with respect to the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, but that's one for Trading Standards to look into)

This represents an almost £200 saving in this case, so I thought it would be worth it (how wrong I was)

So on the 18th September I was instantly approved (providing almost no details compare to a typical credit application), placed the order, and it was accepted.

As an aside, there's a bit of a dark pattern here. Why does it take 15 minutes to show a recent order and update an available balance? The suspicious part of me might think - especially combined with a Return to Shop call to action - it's designed to mislead the consumer as to their current balance, and make them think they can afford to spend more than they can?

No Communication

With no communication at all (no eMail updating the order, or any attempt to contact me) I visited the website again to discover my order had been "Declined"

Let's try this again...

I was able to place the order again, this time paying in full using a card (but somehow still getting the discount) - and it went into a processing state.

Then, later the same day it also showed as 'Declined'. The difference this time? They had charged my card for a product they had no intention of delivering and, almost a month later, have not refunded.

Very frustrating call

I called them (I hate telephone support, but having eMailed three times I got not reply) and spoke to Jenny who was - prima facie - very helpful but I'm very glad I insisted on an eMail.

She apologised and said my account had 'failed additional security checks' and someone called me after I placed the first order (this call didn't get through to me) but instead of communicating this in any other way, they just blocked the account - but in a way that still let me spend money, even if they wouldn't send anything.

Jenny explained that my credit account was 'closed' (despite the CRAs showing it as an open account) and nothing could be done about it unless I wanted to submit a new application - and another search.

She did, however, agree to honour the original price (and offered free shipping) but only if I place ANOTHER full price order with a card and she'd refund the difference.

Naturally, I have a recording of this call, but I ask for confirmation by eMail;

Firstly, they've now opened the account they closed. And they confirm, on the 22nd of September, that two refunds are 'on their way to me' of £783.20 and £199.79

Here we are, a month from the initial order, and not a penny has been received from Very.

Additionally, my online account still invites me to apply for a credit account I already have.

I've sent SEVEN follow-up eMails to Very, with no response to any of them other than automated responses, and have now escalated this to PayPal and Curve who processed the transactions.

Very annoying.  

Projection is alien to me, a dark (or bright?) art form that is used to great effect in professional shows but never looks great in any small scale amateur productions I've seen.

I think one of the reasons for this is the propensity to assume you have to project onto a screen, which then ends up a boring flat changing backdrop that tries to emulate a painted cloth whilst simultaneously being lower quality, poorer colour, and dim grey in a blackout.

I was asked to support this method in two productions recently - a pantomime and an adult pantomime - and both looked, well, a bit rubbish compared to painted sets and cloths. The colours were washed out, any stage lighting hitting the projection screen (which is designed as a high gain surface) instantly obliterated any projected content leaving a harsh white backdrop and removing any depth or backlight effect.

Compared to a painted set, this looks terrible.

Everyone thinks that small-scale theatre is easier, but actually small venues have a number of problems that make projection harder that larger theatre spaces don't struggle with;

• Cheap projectors. Good (bright) projectors are expensive, affordable projectors are usually designed for offices or home cinema and aren't bright enough to compete with stage lighting.
• Limited width. The cast are usually right at the stage edge. Side light is your friend when projecting, the stage and wings here are too small for most side light to work effectively.
• Limited depth. Distance between the screen and the actors helps (if you don't need to light upstage next to the screen then you can keep light off it easily), but when you only have a depth of 5m to play with you end up with actors almost against the surface.

One of the ways to improve contrast in projection is to use a grey screen, which we unfortunately didn't have access to, but for another show in the same venue (using the same projectors) we were a little more adventurous and tried projecting onto black serge flats. Yes, black, a material designed to absorb light and the result was, surprisingly, rather fantastic.

Here, we see projection adding texture to an abstract and irregular surface of flats, they became part of the production in a way 'actors performing in front of a cinema screen' can't (we also backlit them at times, and suggested a window with LED tape)

The overall visual effect was very different.

So, experiment! Don't assume you should project onto a screen - if you're showing a movie, absolutely, but if you're wanting to use projection to enhance a piece of theatre then consider different surfaces, materials, shapes, texture etc.

I've got an upcoming show where the plan is to use wooden pallets painted grey as my projection surface, and I can't wait to see how it looks.

Firstly, this is a slightly more expensive product (about £80 on Amazon, 2025) however the encoder itself is much nicer than the ShuttleXpress, with a higher resolution and made of - much more pleasing to the touch - metal rather than plastic.

Ergonomically, personally, I think the smaller one has an edge in the button placement but there's no denying this is a better built product and feels much more like a real encoder should.

Script Changes

I've adapted the script, again a simple NodejS script, and it can be found here https://github.com/rsmck/shuttleXpress-eos (although the repository is now a bit of a misnomer)

There's also now support of a config file which, if present, will override the default button mapping.  It's fairly self-explanatory.

I just want to use it!

For those of you who just want to use this with your ETCnomad, you can find compiled ready-to-run apps for Mac and Windows here - there's no user interface of configuration, just run the app and leave it running alongisde Eos.  You will need to enable OSC UDP Rx on Port 8000 in Eos.

You should also not have the normal Contour drivers installed.

The default mapping is shown below, but you're welcome to adjust this in the file provided.

As before the 'jog dial' function will execute Last and Next when flicked left or right accordingly, this is good for flicking through fixtures in Hilight mode - if you can think of a better use of this function, please let me know!

Shameless self promotion (but heh, it's my website!) - if you're reading this then you use Eos and work on shows where timing matters so you might also like CueCam - capture your shows with your Eos cue data and real-time annotations.  

CueCam for Eos App - App Store

Standby for cue clarity. Capture your productions with detail. CueCam for Eos records video with live lighting cue data from your ETC Eos lighting controller (console or ETCnomad) embedded directly into the footage - making rehearsal reviews, show documentation, and collaboration faster and more ef…

Ross HendersonApp Store

If you have money you probably use a media server - the de facto industry standard has become Disguise, but it's not cheap. There's also Green Hippo's wonderful animal-themed products, Avolites Ai, Hive and many more.

My own media server

This is worthy of another post some day, but I've previously built an sACN/ArtNet controlled media server that runs on a Raspberry Pi, this works great and allows easy control of projected images from the lighting console, and the projector fades with lighting cues etc.  

However, it has its limitations - notably only one output, no masking, and only I have it (for now) so it doesn't help when giving someone else tips.

Therefore, I turned to another industry-standard friend... QLab.

Before we begin, Figure53 already has an excellent guide to preparing QLab and disabling a lot of things that could cause distractions or interruption to your projections, follow it!  

You might also want to try Zoe Media Server, although that wasn't complete at the time this was orignally written.

QLab as a Media Server

QLab is perfectly capable of doing most things a traditional media server can do, but not quite as elegantly, especially when it comes to control from a lighting desk however it does everything we needed.  

QLab makes preparing the surfaces, and adjusting keystoning etc, easy. There's also an excellent tool by Richard Williamson, Maskerator, that makes creating masks for QLab really simple. You can simply export the Surface Grid from QLab and import into Maskerator, then create a Video cue in QLab to show the NDI feed from Maskerator allowing you to adjust the mask live, we used this to mask the areas we wanted to project onto.

In order to keep it as simple as possible for the operator, we kept all projection cues in their own cue list in QLab and simply triggered these from the lighting desk by OSC, this meant that things like fade times had to be manually kept in sync (if you change the fade time on the desk, you'd need to change it in QLab but otherwise it just works™)

Triggering QLab from Eos

We use ETC Eos (well, specifically an Element at this venue) which has a simple OSC integration, but most other consoles will provide this as well. If your console doesn't support this then it's simple enough to have your operator hit GO for the proejction cues too.

The easiest way to make QLab trigger from Eos is to set the OSC Cue Send String in Eos to /cue/LX%1/start

Thereafter, Eos will send a message telling QLab to fire LXnn (where nn is your Eos cue) for every cue. If that doesn't exist in QLab, it's ignored, so that makes it easy to manage your projected cues - simply number them the same as Eos, so whatever projection you want to appear in cue 6.2 (for example) you'd simply number LX6.2 and it would run together.  

Why QLab?

Using QLab, and following Figure53's guide linked above, greatly reduces the chance of anything other than your projections appearing on stage.

It's also very fairly priced, compared to a lot of other solutions. Indeed if you only need one 'surface' then it's completely free! And if you do have to rent a license, every penny you spend renting it goes towards your future purchase, so once you've rented it a lot, you own it outright.

There's always the temptation to use 'things you know' in the amateur world particularly - but even in small scale touring -  I've seen people use PowerPoint for projections on stage - but I wouldn't recommend it.

So you've got your 7000 lumen laser projector - brilliant. That's a lot... until you remember that a single Source Four Jr HPL575 outputs almost 15,000 lumens, over a smaller area.  

Stage lighting can easily wash out most projectors, and it's more of a problem in smaller stages as you can't usually get the actors (and therefore light) far away from your projection surface physically.

Lighting with Projection

Projection is, after all, just more light with a different purpose and it all has to compete when it falls on your projection surface and bounces back to your audiences' eyes.

The reality is there will there will always be some compromises here unless you have a huge budget for bright projectors or a huge stage to achieve the impossible level of separation that is needed (if you can, keep your actors a few metres from the projection surface and most of these problems go away - but I was working on a stage a little under 5m in depth)

I speak from recent experience when I say how disappointing it is to see your beautiful colourful imagery end up washed out the second you turn on even the slightest stage wash!

So, let's accept the limitations here and discuss what we can do about it. Light only has a few properties that we can control (brightness, angle, colour, shape) and they can all be manipulated in our favour.

A (not so) bright idea

Let's start with brightness. Turn the lights down if you can. When competing with projection every bit of light that hits the screen or whatever you're projecting on that didn't come from the projector will dilute the brilliance of your projected art, so the first thing to do is reduce it.

Again, a common 'problem' with amateur lighting in my experience is the desire to turn them 'on' and 'off' resulting in lots of fixtures at, or near, 100% intensity. With modern retina-burning LEDs and even the humble HPL575 this is rarely neccessary.

The eye perceives differences in light, and adjust to lower levels well. A show that is lit with a maximum intensity of 30% might feel 'dark' at first if you've just walked in from outside, but if you let the house lights fade out slowly and keep the audience in the dark for just a little longer when the lights fade up then you can achieve a 'bright' day on stage with far less light than you might expect, and this will help your projections 'pop'

We are fortunate enough to have LED fixtures, so there's no issue with the colour temperature shift which can cause dim scenes to feel overly 'warm' even with cooler gels. In my recent show/experiment, no front light fixture went over 40%, and the play didn't feel 'too dark'.

Sidelight is your Friend

This cannot be understated, and unfortunately I wasn't able to incorporate it much in the finished design for the show I was working on due to other constraints, but it makes a huge difference if it works in your space.

If you light entirely from the front, you hit your projection surface. From above, even with a matt black dancefloor, the reflections still hit the projection surface, whatever you do it seems, light will hit the projection surface.

If you can put some wide profiles or fresnels on booms in the wings far enough off-stage then these can provide most of your general lighting, but you'll still need some light from other angles of course.

Barndoors, Shutters, and Foil Tape...

Focus fixtures to keep as much light off the projection surface as possible - profiles (with shutters) and fresnels (with barn doors) are a lot more useful in this respect than pars or floods which offer little in the way of shaping controls.

Start by trying to keep all the light off the projection surface, and see if your cast can remain lit (work with the director and adjust blocking as required). If you can't, then open up shutters and barn doors just enough to light the tallest actor at the furthest upstage point and soften the edges.

A: The brightest projector possible

Ok, it's more nuanced than that, but it's a simple answer and a good starting point. Use the brightest projector you can find / borrow / afford. 7000 lumens sounds a lot, and it is... until you remember that a single Source Four Jr HPL575 outputs almost 15,000 lumens, over a smaller area.  

Stage lighting can easily wash out most projectors, and it's more of a problem in smaller stages as you can't usually get the actors (and therefore light) far away from your projection surface physically.

Resolution doesn't really matter

Some people will vehemently disagree here (or you might be reading it in 2035 when the cheapest projectors you can buy are 4K UHD - although hopefully by then LED wall is cheap!), and that's fine, but the reality is that since the audience are usually a reasonable distance from the upstage wall 1080p or WUXGA (1920x1200) will usually be absolutely fine for this sort of application.

The great thing about this is that older 1080/WUXGA projectors are readily available cheaply as people upgrade to 4K.

Short Throw Projectors

Short Throw or 'Ultra Short' projectors have their problems (typically lower quality than a 'traditional' projector, slight image distortion and inconsitency etc...) but on the small stage they are incredibly useful and the only realistic way to not have your scenery and backdrops projected onto your actors themselves (unless that's what you're going for) with limited depth.

There are now some 4000-5000 lm UST Laser Projectors designed for office home cinema use that are surprisingly good, but still quite expensive (£1800-2300)

I've done a few shows with the much older Epson EH-320UST. This isn't really bright enough (it's claimed 4000 lm, but appears dimmer than a 4000 lm laser projector perhaps due to optical losses, or just the age of the lamp), but the throw ratio of 0.25:1 is fantastic. You can pick these up for a few hundred these days.

Which leads me to the next point...

Use Multiple Projectors

In professional theatre when you see projection it's rarely being driven by one projector, multiple techniques such as 'stacking' and 'edge blending' are used, and you can too.

If you've got two 3000 lumen projectors, overlay them and you've now got a 6000 lumen projector. It's worth noting, however, that we perceive brightness on a logarithmic scale. So a 6000 lumen projector will look around 20-30% brighter than a 3000 lumen projector, to get one that's truly 'twice as bright' would need 12,000 lumens.

Similarly if you have a large wide surface to project onto, consider using multiple short throw projectors closer to the screen rather than one large one further away. Edge blending can help in this scenario, or use a functional vertical design element of your set (for example a pillar, window frame, street light etc) to hide the edge of each projection. This is especially helpful with non-matching projectors.

The image shown below uses two projectors - one 6000 lumen from front of house, and a short throw 4000 lumen lighting the bottom of the projection. This combination allowed the actors to get very close to the projected image (thanks to the short throw) but still allowing us to take advantage of the vivid colour and contrast from the brighter unit out front usually used for film screenings.

(The difference was far less noticeable to the eye than is shown here!)

Feeding Multiple Projectors

You need to think about how you'll control this, just passing the image into an HDMI splitter will never work if you're trying to overlay the projections.

Software like QLab makes it easy to set up projector blending and, if you're only working with 1080 HD (rather than 4k) you can drive four (or even eight!) projectors out the lowest end of macs with hardware that splits the image.

These clever little boxes present to the mac as a single 4K monitor, and then output 4x 1080 feeds to the projectors by splitting the input into four quarters.

The defacto 'industry standard' for this is the Datapath FX4, but it's expensive. There's a variety of extremely cheap and cheerful options marketed as 'video wall controllers' and some are actually pretty good if all you need is a simple 2x2 splitter, I've had success with both of these;

• PORTTA Image Processor (£80, Amazon UK)
• NINGKANGSHENG Video Wall Controller 2x2 (£60, Amazon UK)

Within QLab you can treat each of the four sections as individual displays, for a fraction of the cost of external graphics cards etc and whilst it might not be suitable for Broadway or the West End, it's certainly more than adequate for most community and small-scale theatres!

Projection is alien to me, a dark (or bright?) art form that is used to great effect in professional shows but never looks great in any small scale amateur productions I've seen.

I've luckily had the opportunity to experiment with them recently in a small venue, and on a tiny budget, and thought I'd share what I learned along the way and perhaps help make projection work for you in a small or an amateur theatre space.

Everyone thinks that small-scale theatre is easier, but actually small venues have a number of problems that make projection harder that larger theatre spaces don't struggle with;

• Cheap projectors. Good (bright) projectors are expensive, affordable projectors are usually designed for offices or home cinema and aren't bright enough to compete with stage lighting.
• Small Stages and the Fight with Light. The cast are usually right at the stage edge, and almost against the upstage wall / screen / cyc, which limits how well you can keep light off the screen.
• Poor Control. Professional venues have media servers (that cost many £1000s in most cases) that make integrating projection easier and limit the chance of embarrassing mistakes like a mouse pointer or other computer interface element showing up in your show!
• Design Variety. This is a bugbear of mine in many (but not all!) amateur productions - a lack of creativity. Often projection becomes a 'digital backdrop' - a white screen behind the actors with flat scenery projected onto it in an attempt to replace a painted cloth or flat but usually looking worse than either.

Will tackle each of these over a few posts. This is not expert advice (I am most definitely not an expert in projection) but my own musings and what I've discovered when playing with this exciting 'new' (to me) medium.

I usually use ETC Eos consoles and ETCnomad when out and about, but the same techniques and widgets can be applied to a wide range of consoles and controllers as long as they support OSC or similar.

I recently discovered the Novation LaunchControl XL 3 and, seeing the huge array of endless encoders, LEDs, and faders, immediately saw what could be a perfect compact, lightweight, (and cheap!) lighting controller.

Hardware

The third iteration of Novation's LaunchControl XL is streets ahead of what has gone before, it's a slick professional looking minimal piece of kit that feels well manufactured and is really affordable (Currently £189, Amazon UK)

There are eight faders (non-motorised, but smooth movement) with two buttons beneath each, twenty-four rotary encoders (all quite small designed more like a  sound desk of course), eleven additional buttons, a small OLED display, and (almost) every button and encoder has an LED.

Control Interface

ETCnomad supports MIDI fader wings, however using this as a MIDI device in Eos was never going to allow us to take advantage of the full potential this unit offers. Thankfully, Novation publishes their DAW Programmers Guide designed for developers of Digital Audio Workstations to interface with this device.

Well, who's to say it can only be used for audio...

Faders

The faders are easy, I want them to behave exactly as Eos faders would. They should be configurable in Eos, including assigning masters etc and actions to the buttons.

Frustratingly, OSC doesn't allow you to determine if a sub is Inhibitive or not, so i've hacked around this by always just including "Inhib" in my labels, but for the most part. you can determine the fader's intended colour from the name (e.g. S xx is a Sub, Man Time, GM etc have fixed names)

Given faders can be manipulated by other sources (e.g. the remote app, touch screens etc) the simple fix was to manage this like Element and other consoles, simply flash the LED when it doesn't match what the console sees and then 'catch' the value when it matches, we augment this a little by using the screen to show the current value and the direction in which the fader should be moved.

I plan to add pagination in the future, but eight faders is usually enough for my application.

Encoders

Firstly, the elephant in the room, these are not the right type of encoders for positioning moving lights imho - for that, get a programming wing!

However, in a pinch, they work pretty well, and I like them for adjusting other attributes such as framing shutters (even the newer ETC consoles do include some 'mini encoders')

With 24 to pick from, I've simply hardcoded the features I use most in a grouping that makes sense to me, this is something I intend to make a little GUI around at some point;

To explain some decisions here;

• Colours are broadly used to group functions (blue are framing shutters, magenta for beam, green for position etc..)
• I haven't included Gobos, I always like selecting them from a magic sheet or the picker in the UI, not an encoder. Also, too many different fixtures with different options here.
• The colours have mint/lime on the same encoder as no fixtures have both!

There's lots more possibilties here too. By default, I only illuminate the encoders applicable to the current selection of fixtures.

The display is used as a 'pop up' that shows the current value when adjusting any attribute.

Stop/Go

The Record/Play buttons lended themselves well to Stop/Go, so are mapped accordingly. The display shows the cue transition.

Other Buttons

The "Track" < > buttons are mapped to Prev/Next which is handy when using Hilight to page through fixtures for focussing etc

The 'hidden' Novation button next to Solo/Arm is mapped to Select Last.

The Software

This is very hacky at the moment, the prototype proof-of-concept NodeJS software can be found here https://github.com/rsmck/lcxl-eos and there's a download of a pre-made binary available here

It's worth noting that this was intended for my own use, it's not a finished software product although I do know at least four other people are using it at the time of writing, and I thank them for the feedback!

To use the 'out of the box version' you need to run it from the command line, see the README.txt in the above link.

Future Development

I'm hoping to make the config a little more user friendly, initially with a more friendly config file and perhaps eventually with a GUI tool.

A bit of shameless self promotion, but take a look at CueCam - capture your shows with your Eos cue data and annotate your recordings in realtime. I use it on pretty much everything I work on these days and it makes reviewing notes so much easier (if I do say so myeslf)

CueCam for Eos App - App Store

Standby for cue clarity. Capture your productions with detail. CueCam for Eos records video with live lighting cue data from your ETC Eos lighting controller (console or ETCnomad) embedded directly into the footage - making rehearsal reviews, show documentation, and collaboration faster and more ef…

Ross HendersonApp Store