In this article:
Introduction
Adding Media to your Act
Sharing Media
Supported File Formats
Compression Tips
Introduction
The purpose of adding Media to a Timeline is for reference. You might want to add a video of the choreography rehearsal, or screens content renders so you can plan your camera coverage. Add an audio track to see when the artists sing, for reference. Once you are in production you might want to add a video of the first dress rehearsal so that camera operators can refer back and review their camera angles for the performance. CuePilot's S6 Studio Server supports recording and adding a performance so that it can be immediately reviewed in CuePilot as well as by camera operators using CueApp.
Adding Media to your Act
To get started on working on an act, it first makes sense to add a song as a reference track, then line up the lyrics that are sung with the reference song track.
- Select the Act you want to add work on, or create a new one.
By default, new acts include a Control Track, Vision Track and Lyrics Track.
Select the Show Media icon
- Select the Add File icon and choose a file from your computer to add.
CuePilot will ask whether you want to use the media Locally only, or Share it. Using locally only means that it is on your computer only and not accessible by other Users of the Project. Sharing the Media will optimise and upload the Media, so other Users of the Project can access it.
See also: Sharing Media
Tip: CuePilot supports many different video and audio types. Supported audio file formats include .wav, .aiff, .mp3. It is recommended to use 48kHz files. See below for Supported Media File Formats.
- By default the media added will have been placed at start of the Timeline in its own Media Track. You can see a waveform of the audio. If you need to adjust the start, because the song doesn't play right away, you can reposition it. Select the media by clicking on it, (it will become highlighted), then hold down shift and click to drag the media along the Timeline.
You can use the waveform as a guide to help position the media.
Sharing Media
When Media is added to the Timeline you can choose to Share it. If you choose to Share Media it will be uploaded to the Cloud Server for download access in CuePilot by other Users of the Project, or streaming access by Users of CueApp. To ensure efficient transferring and streaming of Media files, Video Media added to CuePilot is optimised and then uploaded. In the Transfers view you can see the status of files that are converting, uploading or downloading. When Media is shared, the first 50% of transfer is the converting to a 720p H.264 file, the second 50% of the transfer is the upload to the Cloud Server.
Supported File Formats
CuePilot supports adding video and audio Media to the Timeline. Common video and audio media formats are supported such as MOV, MP4, MP3, WAV.
We find the best formats to use are a balance of file size and quality. 720p files are more than high enough resolution and are easy to work with. Compress your video files with H.264 encoding to create efficient reference files for syncing and streaming. Uncompressed files straight from EVS or even an iPhone's camera are unnecessarily large and take time to move around. iPhone's HEVC codec is not supported.
Compression Tips
Tip: Compress Video. A quick way to convert and these files in macOS is to use the built in encoder. In Finder, right click on the video file, and select 'Encode Selected Video Files'. Choose the setting H.264 720p or 1080p. A new MOV file will be created in the same location with H.264 encoding. You can then add that media file to CuePilot.
Tip: Compress Audio. A quick way to compress audio, and to ensure that the sample rate is 48kHz, is using Apple Music for Mac or iTunes for Windows to convert the files. We suggest an MP3 with custom settings, setting the sample rate to 48kHz. See Apples support article: Convert a song to a different file format with the Apple Music app or iTunes for Windows.... Once converted, right click on the item and 'Reveal in Finder' or 'Show in Windows Explorer' to see where the media is on your computer.