Terminology

Every trade has its words, and show control borrows from several. This is what each one means inside CueForge2 — worth a skim before the rest of the manual, and worth coming back to when a term in a dialog isn't obvious.

#The show

Show file — everything about your production in one document, saved as a .cueforge bundle. It is a folder that macOS treats as a single file, with your media inside it, so the show travels complete.
Cue list — an ordered list of cues. A show can hold several, shown as tabs.
Cue — one instruction: play this sound, show this video, send this lighting look, wait, or fire a command at another machine.
Cue number — the label in the first column. It is an address, not a position: numbers need not be whole, sequential, or present at all. Other cues target a cue by its number.
Subcue — a cue that lives inside a Group.

#Running it

GO — fire the armed cue. The space bar, the GO button, or a remote.
Armed / playhead — the cue GO will fire next, marked in the list. It advances by itself as the show runs.
Fire — to make a cue happen, whoever asked for it: you, a follow, a timer, timecode, or a control surface.
Trigger — how the NEXT cue starts. GO waits for you; Follow starts when this cue finishes; Time starts after a delay; Immediate starts with this one.
Pre-wait — a delay between a cue being fired and it doing anything.
Post-wait — a delay after a cue finishes before the chain continues.
Panic — Escape, or the PANIC button. Fades everything out and stops; press it again for an instant hard stop.
Show Mode — locks the editing surface so a stray click cannot change the show mid-performance.
Hot cue — a cue fired straight from a key or a button, out of list order.

#Audio words

Output — a named destination you send audio to, such as "Mains L/R" or "Foldback". It is bound to an audio device and a range of that device's channels.
Send — one cue feeding one output, at its own level. A cue can have several.
Patch — which hardware channels an output actually lands on.
Crosspoint matrix — a grid for the awkward cases: send channel 3 of a file to channel 1 of an output, at a level you choose.
Booth — an output that follows the mix, for the monitor speaker in the control position. It is fed automatically, without a send on every cue.
Devamp — release a cue that is vamping (looping a section) so it plays on rather than stopping dead.
Slice — a section of an audio file, which can repeat or vamp before the next one.
Ducking — a cue automatically pulling another cue's level down while it plays, then letting it back up.

#Video words

Video output — one screen, projector, virtual monitor, or network stream that cues can be routed to.
Surface — one canvas spanning several projectors, driven by a single cue. Each projector keeps its own correction.
Corner pin — dragging the four corners of the picture to fit a screen that isn't square-on.
Mesh warp — the same idea with a grid of points, for curved or irregular surfaces.
Edge blend — fading the overlapping edges of two projectors so the join disappears.
NDI / Syphon — sending video between applications and machines instead of down a cable. NDI travels over the network; Syphon stays on this Mac.

#Lighting and control words

DMX — the standard lighting control signal. One universe carries 512 channels.
Art-Net / sACN — two ways of carrying DMX over a network cable.
Instrument — a lighting fixture you have patched and named, so cues can say front-wash.intensity = 80 instead of counting channels.
MIDI — notes, control changes, and MIDI Show Control, for talking to consoles and other software.
OSC — a network control language, used both to drive CueForge2 and to drive other gear from it.
Timecode — a running clock shared between machines, as audio (LTC) or MIDI (MTC). CueForge2 can generate it, or chase someone else's.

#Two machines

Session — two or more Macs linked together, sharing one show.
Primary — the machine actually running the room.
Backup — a machine mirroring the primary: same cue list, same playhead, silent until it is needed.
Takeover — promoting the backup to primary, by a click or automatically if the primary stops answering.

#Licensing

Demo session — 30 minutes of the full application, free, with no account. Start another whenever one ends.
Seat — one Mac using your subscription. Seats are yours to move; free one from any machine or from your account page.