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Recording Modes — Propagate, Isolated & Backtrack

The Controls window toolbar carries a three-way selector that sets the programmer’s recording mode: Propagate, Isolated, or Backtrack. The active mode is highlighted, and the selection is stored with the programmer state.

The selected mode is recorded with each cue (and the attributes it “moves”, in Propagate mode).

Not yet available: mode-dependent edit behavior. The mode is stored on the cue, but forward-propagating an edit through later cues (Propagate) and Backtrack’s find-and-edit of the originating cue are not yet implemented.

How values carry forward

Cues use soft tracking: a cue stores only the attributes you explicitly programmed, and at playback time, any attribute a cue does not set inherits from the most recent earlier cue in the sequence. That inheritance is what keeps later cues consistent with earlier ones.

Propagate (Default)

Propagate is the default recording mode. Intended: a cue recorded in this mode marks the attribute families it “moves,” so later cues inherit from it until a later cue sets the same attribute itself.

Isolated

Intended: records only the current cue with no forward propagation — a contained change that doesn’t affect other cues.

Backtrack

Intended: a backward-propagating edit tool. Backtrack finds each channel’s “move instruction” — the last cue that explicitly set a value for that channel — and edits that cue instead, which is useful for tracing where a value originates.

Switching Modes

Tap one of the three chips (Propagate / Isolated / Backtrack) in the Controls window toolbar — the programmer surface. The current mode is highlighted there.

Editing Cue Timings

Open a cue from the Sequences window (tap the cue in a sequence’s cue list) to see its details. The Timing card shows the cue’s Fade In, Fade Out, and Wait; unset values show “—”. Tap the edit icon to change them:

FieldMeaning
Fade In (seconds)How long the cue takes to fade in when it is played
Fade Out (seconds)How long the cue takes to fade out
Wait (seconds)Hold after the fade completes, before the sequence advances to the next cue in auto-advance modes
Fade CurveOptional. “easeinout” (or its aliases “smooth”, “smoothstep”, “sine”) applies an ease-in/ease-out shape; anything else — or an empty field — fades linearly

Times are entered in seconds. A field left empty is stored as unset: fades are instant and the cue takes no wait. Saving updates only the timing fields — the cue’s name and attribute values are untouched.

  • Playback Control — How recorded cues run, and soft tracking at playback time