A revised and updated timeline window

The Vista introduced a timeline window so you can actually see everything that‘s happening in your design in relation to time: when lights come on, when they go off, when they change colour, when they move, then jump in and edit anything. Vista 2 updates the Timeline window with a new layout and a host of new features.

Timeline (Click to enlarge)

Fast cue-list navigation

For a start, there‘s a cue-list scroll bar and mini cue icons in both the Fixture chooser and the Timeline window. With these you can easily move from one end of the cue-list to the other, no matter how big your cuelist, then click the selector tile representing the cue you want to edit:

Cue searching

You can also find individual cues instantly using ’as-you-type‘ searching:

Split fade times

A classic theatre technique is to have the lights that are getting brighter fade in more quickly than the lights that are getting darker fade out.
In Vista 2 you can apply split fade times for intensity and see both times in the Chooser and Timeline windows. Each cue also has a set of ’default‘ times so that you can change the fade times for the whole cue or event-by-event:

More event information

The Vista 2 timeline window provides a lot more visual feedback. For example:

• you can choose to show information that is being tracked through from previous cues – shown as half-tone event bars
• snap events (ones that have no time) used to be just a dot, now they have a flag so you can see the event name and details
• Vista 2 marks events that you‘ve edited but haven‘t saved yet with a cross-hatching (as shown below):