You run a show by arming the next cue and pressing GO, and you end it with STOP. This page explains the three states that a cue can have, the two buttons, and the rules for what changes and when. If you read only one page of this part, read this one, because the other pages assume that you know it.
The three states
During a show, the colours in the list tell you which cue is in which state:
| State | Colour and label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| On air | Red, ON AIR | The cue is being broadcast now. |
| Armed | Green, NEXT | The next GO starts this cue. |
| Automatic | Amber, AUTO | The cue starts by itself when the cue on air ends. |
A cue that has been played turns grey, and all other cues keep the normal colour of the list.
Arming
Arming a cue only sets what the next GO does. It does not affect what is on air, not even when nothing is on air, because an armed cue never reaches the output. The armed cue appears in the next-cue picture beside the preview.
You can arm a cue in two ways:
- Click a line. The line turns green.
- Use the arrow keys to move the green line up and down without the mouse.
Because the green line moves while the red line stays where it is, you can look through the whole list during a broadcast to see what is coming, and the picture on air does not change.
After a GO, the program arms the next line by itself. In a simple show, you therefore only press GO for each cue, and you do not need to arm anything by hand.
GO
GO puts the armed cue on air. The cue turns red, its transition runs, and the next line is armed.
You can give a GO in three ways, and they all do the same thing: the GO button on the panel of the playout, the space bar, and the Enter key.
GO applies to the active playout, which is the playout whose panel you clicked last. When you work with two playouts, check which panel is highlighted before you use the keyboard.
GO skips lines that are not part of the running order. It skips everything in the archive, and at a go-to cue it follows the jump instead of playing the line itself.
Stop
To stop, press STOP on the panel, or the Esc key. The cue ends and the playout goes to black.
Stop and pause are different. Stop ends the cue, while pause only holds the picture, so that you can continue afterwards. When you need a moment to deal with a problem, use pause, because a frozen picture almost always looks better on air than a black screen.
A stop uses the setting Fade out at stop under Settings → Cue list, so the picture fades out in the way you chose instead of disappearing at once.
What GO does not do
- It does not affect another playout, unless the cue has a link.
- It does not skip ahead when you are behind schedule. The list plays the armed cue.
- It cannot be undone, and there is no button that goes back one cue. To go back, arm the previous line and start it again. The result is the same, and you can see what you are doing.
The next page, Warm-up, explains what the program does between the moment you arm a cue and the moment you press GO.