Assigning Audio to a Cuelist

You can assign an audio track to a cuelist or cue and play it in Vista. This can be useful if you want to programme for a particular piece of music or dialogue.

To assign an audio file to a Cuelist

1. With the cuelist open in the editor select the ‘Cuelist properties’ option from the Edit menu or, right click on the Cuelist icon in a Quick picker and select the‘Properties’ option from the popup menu. Vista displays the Cuelist properties window:



2. If it’s not already open click the arrow to open the Audio Playback’ section.
3. Click the browse button and navigate to the folder containing your audio files, select a track and click the Open button. Vista copies the audio file to the ‘Audio’ folder inside your Vista Data showfile folder.
4. Click OK to close the Cuelist properties window.

When you play this cuelist Vista plays the selected audio track with it but will only continue playing for the overall time of the Cuelist. To be able to hear the entire track you may need to add or lengthen cues.

To assign an audio file to a specific Cue

You can also assign audio to a single cue in Vista. This can be useful to play sound effects or or short pieces of audio. To do this

1. With the cuelist open in the editor select the Cue then select ‘Cue properties’ option from the Edit menu or, right click on the Cue tile and select the ‘Cue Properties’ option from the popup menu.
2. Follow steps 2 – 4 as above.

Using Learn Timing to adjust cue timing

You can programme a Cuelist then use the ‘Learn timing’ window to adjust the Cue start times based on your actions. This can be useful if you want to fine-tune Cue timing to an audio or video track.

Using Learn Timing

1. Open the Cuelist you want to use.
2. Select the ‘Learn timing…’ option from the Tools menu. Vista opens the Learn Timing window:



3. To keep the existing timing for cues tick the ‘maintain Cue Duration’ checkbox. If this box is not ticked all cues (and their events) will be stretched or shrunk to match the time between cue start times.

Adjusting cues to timecode

4. If you want to learn timing based on a Timecode source tick the ‘Enable Timecode’ checkbox. Vista will then display the Timecode viewer (and controls if you are using internal timecode). If you are not using timecode leave this box unchecked.

Adjusting cues based on audio or video

You can adjust cue timing to match the audio in a cuelist or while you are listing to or watching a recording. To do this:

5. Click the skip to start button , in the Learn Timing window, twice to ensure you are at the start of your first cue
6. When you are ready click the play button , in the Learn Timing window to set the start time of the first cue. If you have enabled timecode the timing field of the first cue will be automatically changed to a timecode type. If you are not using timecode the start of the first cue will be set to Halt.
7. Continue to press the play button whenever you want the next cue to start. All subsequent cues are automatically set to ‘Follow’ mode with their start time adjusted in relation to the previous cue.
8. When you are finished click the Done button to close the learn timing window.

Vista automatically changes the cues start action to ‘Follow’ and adjusts the start time in relation to the previous cue. To see how your cues will playback in relation to the timeline and each other, click the ‘View cues in layout mode’ button

• Tip: When you use ‘Learn timing’ with Timecode, Vista sets the first cue to start at a Timecode and then uses Vista’s internal clock to start the following cues. If you want every cue to be set to timecode mode you can change all the Follow cues convert their start times to Timecode. To do this:

1. Select all the ‘follow’ cues by shift clicking in the cue tile view
2. Select the ‘cue properties’ option from the Edit menu
3. If it’s not already open click the triangle button beside the Timing option
4. Click on the green Follow icon and change it to Timecode