What the Programmer Is (“Prog” mode)

“Prog” is the program’s main workroom. Here you “paint” the light by hand: you select fixtures, set their color, brightness and positions — and save the result as scenes and chases, so you can play them back later in Live. If Live is the “concert”, then Prog is the “rehearsal and studio”.

📍 Where: the mode switch at the top of the window → “Prog” (the first button) or Alt+1.

How the screen is laid out:

Area What’s there
Left The visualizer (3D/2D), the sound monitor, and below them the channel faders of the selected fixtures
Right The fixture list: cards, group chips, search and filters
Bottom A panel with tabs: Faders · Scenes · Chases · Presets · Effects · Playlists · Hyperlists — the channel faders and the controls of the selected fixture

Selecting fixtures — where it all starts. Every adjustment applies to whatever is selected:

  • Click a fixture card — select it (click again — deselect); you can select several.
  • An amber on the card means the fixture’s colour wheel sits on a value missing from its slot table. The fixture still receives the value you set, but the program does not know which colour that is, so the beam in the visualizer stays neutral. Hover the mark for an explanation; add the slot in the fixture settings to make the colour appear on screen. The same mark sits next to the value of that channel’s fader — in the bottom panel, in the channel bar and under the visualizer.
  • The group chips above the list — the “By type” filter (Pars, Heads…) and “My groups”: clicking a chip selects the whole group at once.
  • Keys 1–4 — quick group selection (1 = All).
  • Right-click a fixture — context menu (select only this one / add / exclude, enable/disable, reset faders, rename, duplicate).
  • If you right-click one of the selected fixtures, the action applies to the whole selection — menu items show the count in brackets, e.g. “Duplicate (4)”. Right-clicking an unselected fixture affects only that one.
  • The list order is set by the drop-down next to the search box: by address (default), by placement (the way fixtures stand on stage: rows front to back, left to right within a row), by name or as added. The choice is remembered and also applies to the patch table and the fixture editor window. The project itself is not reordered — only the display.
💡 Tip: with nothing selected, the faders show for the current group or all fixtures, so you can tweak “everything at once” without selecting anything.
💡 “Reset faders” (and “Reset all” in the Fixtures menu) zeroes every value but leaves the shutter open: on most moving heads zero on the shutter means “closed”, and after a reset the fixture would answer neither to brightness nor to presets. The menu item goes further: it also stops everything that was running — the scene, the chase, the effects, the submasters and the crossfader (see Reset / Panic).

Layout without the visualizer. If you don’t need the 3D scene (or your screen is small), press Ctrl+Shift+V — Prog rearranges into three vertical blocks: Fixtures → Faders → Scenes/Chases/Effects. Pressing again brings back the classic view; your choice is remembered.

In this layout the controls for the selected fixture live on the “Fixture” tab at the bottom: the same blocks as in the bottom panel of the classic view — Colour, Position, Beam / Gobo and Effects. If there is enough width, all the blocks are visible in a row at once; if not (a narrow window or a large interface scale), a strip of tabs appears above them and the blocks are shown one at a time, each across the full width. Blocks a fixture physically does not have are not shown: a PAR without pan and tilt gets no “Position” and no “Effects”.

⚠️ Note: edits in the Programmer go straight to the real fixtures (if DMX is connected). Preparing light “secretly” during a performance is the job of Blind mode.
Fig. 03.01.1 — The “Prog” screen: visualizer, fixtures, fader panel
Fig. 03.01.1 — The “Prog” screen: visualizer, fixtures, fader panel