Departments

Departments are routing tags that indicate which crew members or systems a cue is intended for — for example, Lighting, Audio, Video, or Pyro. A single cue can target multiple departments. The department list belongs to the show and is saved in the .ltcast file; a new show starts with Lighting, SFX, Audio, Stage, Video and VJ, and you can rename, recolor or delete any of them.

Managing the department list

The list lives in its own tab, DEPARTMENTS, in the right-hand panel. It is hidden by default: turn it on from the View menu in the title bar, under Panels. The tab is part of Pro, and the trial includes it. In it you can:

• Add a new department by typing a name in New department name… and clicking Add.
• Rename a department by editing its name. Only the name changes: cues keep their tag.
• Recolor a department by clicking its color swatch.
• Give it a short abbreviation (up to 8 characters) in the Abbr. box; it is used where space is tight.
• Delete a department with the × button, after confirming. This only removes it from the list. Cues that were routed to it keep their tag, and it reappears under Unregistered tags (see below).

Assigning departments to a cue

In the CUES tab, each cue row has a — targets — dropdown (it appears once the show has departments). Click one or more departments to tick them. When several cues are selected and you change the dropdown on one of them, that department is added to (or removed from) every selected cue. On the waveform, right-click a marker and use Role instead: that menu picks a single department and replaces whatever was there, and No role clears it.

A cue takes the color of its first department, unless it has a color of its own. Colors set from a quick-cue slot, the color swatch or a batch edit win over the department color.

Departments in the Viewer

Crew members opening the Viewer URL choose their role (or several roles) and see the cues tagged for them. A Lighting operator sees the Lighting cues; an Audio operator sees the Audio cues. Cues with no department at all are public: they are shown to everyone unless the viewer turns off the public-cues checkbox on its role screen (that screen is currently written in Traditional Chinese). The NEXT CUE panel has a department filter too, so the operator at the desk can focus on one department.

Unregistered department tags

If a cue has a department tag that is not in the department list — for example, after you deleted the department, or after importing a show from another computer — the tag appears under Unregistered tags in the DEPARTMENTS tab. Click Register to turn it into a real department, or use Remove from all cues to strip it from every cue that carries it. Removing it cannot be undone.