How Studio works
This page is the big picture: how a show is put together in Studio and how it reaches your lights. Each step has its own page.
A show, from rig to playback
Everything you build lives in one show. You patch your lights (fixtures) into universes, gather them into groups, give each group cues (scenes for looks, effects for movement), lay those cues out on chases that follow the music, and play it all from the group pool. Show structure defines each part, with the manual's demo show as the example.
A typical show comes together in this order:
- Patch your fixtures into a universe and give each one a position on stage. Patching fixtures
- Group the fixtures you want to control together. Groups
- Program cues for each group: scenes for looks, effects for movement. Scenes, Effects
- Sequence cues into chases if you want them to follow the music. Chases
- Play: set the tempo, trigger cues, chases and master rows. Playing a show
Every page uses the same demo rig: four moving heads, one group, four cues and an 8-bar chase. Its pages show Studio's real components live, and the floating visualizer card shows what they do to the rig. To try Studio with your own hands, open the live demo.
Time is counted in bars
Studio has one clock for the whole show, set in BPM. Fades, effects and chases are counted in bars of four beats, so when the tempo changes, everything stays in time. Timing and playback
From Studio to your lights
Studio computes DMX and hands it to a small program, the gateway, that sends it to your lights over Art-Net. The desktop app has the gateway built in; with the browser version you run it yourself. Without lights, Studio still works: the visualizer shows exactly what they would do. Outputs
Keeping your show
Studio doesn't save on its own: save to keep the show in Studio, export to keep a file you can back up, move or share. The same showfiles work in the web and desktop versions. Showfiles
Web or desktop
Both have the same interface. The browser version needs nothing installed; the desktop app has the gateway built in, for real lights. Installation