One application, the whole rig
There are no tiers and no add-ons. Everything on this page is in the build you download today, and in every subscription.
Cue list
The list is the show. Everything else hangs off it.
- One list, every department. Audio, video, image, text, camera, lighting, MIDI, OSC, HTTP, serial, script and control cues in the same list.
- Multiple cue lists in one show file, with tabs, and cues that can start or load a cue on another list.
- Groups and sub-groups that run as a timeline, fire the first cue only, or pick one at random.
- Triggers: GO, follow, timed, immediate, hotkey, time of day, MIDI, OSC, DMX and timecode.
- Pre-wait, post-wait, auto-follow and chained immediates, so a sequence runs itself once it is started.
- Show Mode locks the editing surface so a stray click cannot change the show mid-performance.
- Undo forty levels deep, cue templates, duplicate, renumber, bulk trim and filters.
- Show files are document bundles: your media travels with the show, and the file stays readable whether or not you are subscribed.
Audio
A three-layer output model: hardware device, named output channel, per-cue send.
- As many named outputs as the rig needs, each one bound to a device and a range of hardware channels, running at whatever rate the interface is set to.
- Crosspoint patch matrix at both levels: output channel onto hardware channels, and file channel onto output channels, with gain on every crosspoint.
- Per-cue effects racks using Audio Units, with the plugin’s own interface and presets saved into the show.
- Fades on real curves: linear, S-curve, exponential, logarithmic, or one you draw yourself.
- Slices: split a file into sections, repeat or vamp any of them, and release the vamp with a devamp cue.
- Trim, rate and pitch per cue, with clocks that read wall-clock time.
- Live mixer with output groups, a grand master, mute-all and per-output metering.
- Booth monitor feed that follows the mix, and a dedicated LTC timecode output.
- Mic and line input cues, playlists, and a noise/tone generator cue with an output walk for ringing out a system.
Video
Every screen output is rendered on the GPU through a Metal compositor.
- Per-projector geometry: lens correction, edge blending and mesh warp, calibrated live while content plays.
- Composite surfaces: one canvas spanning several projectors, driven by a single cue, with each output keeping its own calibration.
- Corner pin, per-cue position and size, and a test pattern that goes through the same correction.
- Colour and effects per cue: brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, blur, and a chain of effects on top.
- Blend modes on image cues, so a logo or lower third composites over playing video.
- NDI and Syphon output and input, taken after correction when you want it.
- Camera cues from any connected camera, routed like any other video.
- Virtual monitor for previewing every output on one screen, plus per-output backdrops.
- Text and image cues that stack and fade independently over video.
Lighting
A patch, a stage plan and a programmer, not just a DMX sender.
- Light Designer: your rig drawn as a stage plan. Select fixtures on the picture, set level, colour and position, and record the look straight into a cue.
- Blind mode builds the next look without touching what is currently on stage.
- Moving heads with 16-bit pan and tilt on an XY pad, and wash and spot profiles built in.
- GDTF fixture profiles: import a manufacturer file, or search the online GDTF library from inside the app.
- Groups and submasters: name a set of fixtures and ride them all on one fader.
- Effects: chase, swell, strobe, twinkle, rainbow and ballyhoo, each with rate, size, spread and phase.
- Presets for colour, position and beam. Edit the preset and every cue referencing it follows.
- Tracking, with Block cues, so jumping into the middle of a show reproduces the look that should be on stage.
- Art-Net and sACN E1.31 output, multiple universes.
- Fixture patch with named parameters: instruments, profiles, and plain-language cues such as
front-wash.intensity = 80. - Per-parameter merging, so two cues touching different attributes of the same fixture both hold.
- Raw DMX scene cues with a console-style keypad, when you would rather address channels directly.
- Fade times per cue, ramped at 30 Hz from the last frame sent.
- DMX input triggering, so a lighting console can fire CueStudio cues.
Timecode and integration
CueStudio is usually not the only machine in the room.
- LTC and MTC generation and chase, so cues fire as the incoming timecode crosses them.
- MIDI in and out: notes, control change, program change and MIDI Show Control.
- OSC in and out, with a documented address space and a two-way subscribe protocol.
- HTTP, serial and AppleScript cues for everything else in the rack.
- A full AppleScript dictionary, including a cue object graph.
- Bonjour advertising, so control surfaces find the machine without you typing an address.
Before the house opens
The failures that cost you are the quiet ones. These go looking for them.
- Pre-Flight Check walks the whole show and lists what is broken, by cue number: missing media, control cues pointing at cues that no longer exist, audio cues with no output routed.
- Status window: the same scan, live while you edit, plus a log of every MIDI, OSC and DMX message arriving, so you can prove a console is reaching the machine.
- Rotating backups on every save, with a browser to restore any earlier version. Restoring backs up where you are first.
- Manage Media audits the show bundle: what nothing references any more, what has gone missing, and a relink for anything that moved.
- Crash recovery from an autosave that keeps the media bundle it was working in.
Getting your show in
Nobody starts from an empty list.
- Import a workspace from other cue-playback software: cues, names, file references, levels, pre-waits, and Fade, Stop and Start targets resolved to the right cue.
- Drag media straight in: a folder of files becomes a group of cues, one per file, in name order.
- Cue templates so a cue you have set up once can be dropped into any show.
- Archive a show with its media into a single file to hand to a venue or another operator.
Redundancy
A second Mac that is genuinely running the show, not holding a copy of the file.
- Live mirroring: edits, transport and the playhead all arrive on the backup as they happen.
- Silent by default, so nothing double-triggers. Or give the backup its own outputs for a fully redundant rig.
- Drift correction: a control loop nudges playback rate so both machines stay locked to the same clock.
- Tight-sync GO schedules the samples themselves against one shared deadline, so two machines feeding the same room start together rather than merely at the same moment.
- A shared key on the session, so a machine on the same network cannot join a show it should not be in.
- Media sync over the network, so the backup ends up with the files as well as the show.
- Takeover in one click, or automatically when the primary stops answering.
- Three or more machines in one session, each with its own local device patch.
Control surfaces
However you like to drive a show.
- Stream Deck over direct USB: no Companion and no bridge software. Custom key mapping, labels, colours, clocks and progress bars.
- Web remote on any phone or tablet on the network, with nothing to install.
- Presenter View: a confidence monitor you lay out yourself, on a second display.
- Presenter remotes and keyboard control, including a fade-to-stop panic.
- Hot cues and a cart page for the cues you fire out of order.
- Command cues: write show commands (go list 2 cue 5, stop list 'Foldback') with highlighting and completion as you type.
What it runs on
- macOS
- 15.6 Sequoia or later
- Mac
- Any Apple silicon or Intel Mac, one universal build
- Audio
- Any Core Audio device, including aggregate and multi-output devices
- Video
- Any display or projector macOS can see, plus NDI and Syphon
- Network
- Art-Net and sACN, OSC, and the session link over standard interfaces
There is no separate minimum-spec chart because there is nothing useful to put on it: if the Mac runs macOS 15.6, CueStudio runs. How much video and audio you can push at once is a question about your machine and your interfaces, and the free demo answers it faster than we can.
Run it against your own show
Try all of it, free, in 30-minute sessions. The only things held back until you subscribe are the outputs that drive a rig.