Cuelists are the meat and bones of HeadsUp.

A Cuelist is a single show moment, a timecode track or anything you’d like to monitor during performance. Each Cuelist will have several Cues, which are moments of importance during that particular show. A HeadsUp project typically consists of one or more Cuelists. It could be the single opening show to start the festival or maybe each artist has their own intro.

Nobody likes losing their hard work because they forgot to save so HeadsUp will always save each change you do immediately and automatically. It will pop up a little disk icon to indicate this next to the project name. If it wasn’t able to save your changes for whatever reason, it will let you know via an error message.

To start a new HeadsUp project, hit the New button on the right. To save a project under a new name, simply rename it in the top of the Project tab. To load a previously saved project, hit the Load button to open up a file dialog.

Importing

To import a Cuelist, drag the CSV file containing the Cues onto the Cuelists tab. HeadsUp supports CSVs created in Reaper and Cuepoints in the HH:MM:SS:FF format.

If HeadsUp was able to find useable data, you will see a list of all Cues with their name, color and time. You can scroll through the Cues in the inspector on the right to confirm everything came in as it should have.

HeadsUp will default to using the filename as the name for the Cuelist, but you can double click the name to remove clutter or just to rename it to something more recognizable. You can always see the original filename of the selected Cuelist in the inspector on the right.

Cueslists can be reordered by dragging them by the hamburger icon on the left. To remove a Cuelist, hit the red X on the right.

FPS

A CSV does not contain metadata about the Cuelist, so it’s important to set the FPS so HeadsUp can correctly interpret the Cue data. It’s perfectly fine to change this after import, but if you always use the same FPS, you can set that in the Defaults tab.

Tip! I really can’t overstate how important it is to correctly set the Cuelist FPS during import. Once you’ve set it, it’s perfectly fine to run a 25 FPS Cuelist with 30 FPS LTC audio. You can even mix and match different FPS Cuelists in the same show file. HeadsUp uses milliseconds for everything internally so it really doesn’t matter. The only way to really mess things up, is by not correctly setting the FPS when first importing the Cuelist.

Bonus Tip! (because the first tip wasn’t really a tip but more of a warning) You can quickly change the FPS for all imported Cuelists using the Action menu in the top of the Cuelists tab.

Offset

By default, HeadsUp assumes Cuelists start at 00:00:00:00. By changing the Offset, you can make each show start at a different LTC time. You can always see the LTC time that the show will start at in the inspector on the right.

Tip! Use the Action dropdown to quickly set the Offset for all imported Cuelists at the same time.

‘baked in offsets’

Both Reaper and CuePoints allow you to ‘bake in’ an offset to the CSV file. This can be helpful if you absolutely have to be 100% sure the starts at that particular LTC time. But HeadsUp has no way of knowing if you actually want to start your show at that particular time or if you just have your first cue somewhere a few seconds after the show has started. So we only interpret baked in offsets as Offsets if they’re exactly on 1 hour or exactly on 15 minutes.

If that sounds complicated, it’s because it is and we generally advise against using baking in offsets like this. Just set the Offset in HeadsUp and always set a first cue when the show is supposed to start. If you insist on using baked in offsets, keep in mind that the Offset value in HeadsUp is relative, so keep them at 00:00:00:00. If you realize that you do need to adjust them, you can also use negative values. So for instance, if a show has 04:00:00:00 baked in, setting the Offset to -01:00:00:00 will make it start at 03:00:00:00

Waveform

You can add the waveform of the corresponding show audio to a Cuelist by dragging it over the marker area in the top of the inspector. This won’t actually play back any audio, but seeing the waveform is very helpful when hitting your Cues. Each Cue also is shown on the timeline with a vertical line with its corresponding color.

You can zoom in and out and scroll through the timeline to double check everything lines up correctly.

Yes, I know you’re an experienced operator and you don’t need all this crap because you hit your cues on feeling. I also know you’re still only human and it’s okay to accept help. It’s okay. It’s okay. Yes, you’re still strong. You’re still a great operator. Everyone is proud of you. Now pay attention, the next drop is a double fake drop.