Hyperlists — a queue of playlists

A hyperlist is a queue of playlists: as soon as one finishes, the next starts. Handy for an evening of several songs — each song stays its own playlist with its own music, and the hyperlist plays them back to back.

📍 Where: in the PROG bottom panel — a narrow tab with a queue icon (hover to see its name). Clicking it opens the queues as a full-height block on the right — exactly the way scene editing opens: the 3D view stays on the left, the whole running order on the right. Close it with the cross in its header or with Esc; the queue keeps playing. In LIVE and in “No visualiser” mode there is no room for the block, so the queues open as a separate centred window — the contents are the same.

Everything runs top to bottom: first the “now playing” block (it only appears during a show), below it the queues and the running order, and further down the list of playlists you take them from. The running order is a table: number, playlist name, length and the time the queue reaches it; at the bottom, how many playlists there are and the total running time. The search box in the header filters the playlist list. The wider the block, the more it shows: every queue displays its length, and the running order and the playlist list gain the music file name, the number of cues and the mode (timer or GO). On a narrow panel the extra columns hide themselves.

Building a queue

  • Create: the «+» button in the row of queue cards. The queue name is edited in the row below them.
  • Add a playlist: click it in the list on the right — it is appended to the queue. Or drag it — from that list or straight from the Playlists tab: drag the card onto the narrow queue-icon tab, it opens by itself, and drop the playlist where you want it in the table. The same playlist may be added several times.
  • Order: hover a row and the ▲▼ arrows and the bin appear on its right; or simply drag the row to a new place. The bin removes the item from the queue (the playlist itself stays).
  • ↻ Loop: after the last playlist the queue starts over.
  • The 🎵 mark on a row means that playlist has music.

Running the evening

Stopped mid-evening? It picks up where you left off. After “Stop” the start button reads “Continue · 5/7” and resumes from the very second of the playlist where the queue was stopped (stopped at 0:10 of the track — that is where it picks up); a “From start” button appears next to it if you need to begin the evening again. This memory lasts until the program closes or another project is opened — at a new event you always start from the first playlist. A queue that finished on its own also starts from the beginning.

Starting and stopping is done with one button in the header (top right in the queue window, in its toolbar in the panel tab). Before the start it reads «Start» plus the name of the selected queue; while the queue plays it turns into a reddish «Stop». Clicking the queue card itself only selects it and shows its running order, starting nothing. Queue cards are in LIVE too, and the active one shows which playlist is currently playing.

While the queue plays, a playback block appears at the very top: which playlist is running and which number it is, a progress bar, how much has passed and how much is left, what comes next. The «Next» button skips the current playlist — for the queue that is an ordinary end, so it simply moves on. The ˄ arrow folds the block into a single line; click that line to unfold it again.

💡 The colour of the time in the table tells you the story: green — the time is known exactly, amber «on GO» — the playlist waits for your command, red «∞» — the playlist is looped and never ends on its own.
💡 Tip: playlists can be reordered and removed during the evening as well — it is never too late to change what has not been played yet.

Saving and timing

Saving: there is no separate button — queues are saved together with the project (Ctrl+S) and restored on the next launch.

Times are honest. For a playlist with music it is the end of the show tape — the later of the end of the track and of the last cue (light can run both before the music comes in and after it ends). For a timed playlist it is the sum of the cue times. If a playlist waits for GO, the program does not invent a number and shows «on GO», and the total gets a «+»: the exact length of the evening cannot be known in advance. While the track length is being read from disk the row shows «…». A looped playlist without music is marked «∞» — it never ends on its own, so the queue stops there.

  • ⚠️ Stopping a playlist by hand also stops the queue — the program will not carry on by itself. That is deliberate: Stop means «stop», not «move on». To simply go to the next one, use «Next».
  • Deleting a playlist that is in a queue does not break the hyperlist — it simply steps over it.