Hi.

Been quiet around here, huh? Six months since the last blahg update. Not much going on then, I guess? Sitting on the ol’ laurels, right?

Wroooooonggggg.

I’ll admit, it must look quiet from the outside. But if you come join me down here in the Figure 53 bunker you’d see a different story. Down here in the laboratory these last six months have been a maelstrom. Coding like Figure 53 has never coded before. Coding like gangbusters, if gangbusters could code. Coding that has been frenetically, obsessively focused on QLab version 2.

And it’s almost done.

When exactly will it be released? Well, software resists prediction. This summer I made noises on the QLab mailing list that I expected a late fall release. Then a last-minute architectural bottleneck arose and forced me to rewrite the entire video engine from scratch. It’s the nature of software; it doesn’t work until it works, and you just can’t predict exactly what it will take to make it work. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a manager.

“Great Chris. But when will it be released?”

Okay, okay. What I can say is that I’m back on track and coming down the final stretch. A small but devoted team of beta testers has been whacking away on the new code since mid-September. I really, really want to get it out before the end of the year. Right now I’m feeling confident I can achieve that goal.

And what will it cost? Prices are not yet finalized, but I will point you to the upgrade policy as described on the mailing list. Short version: the full cost of your Audio, Video, and MIDI licenses from v1 can be applied to a v2 upgrade.

Back into the bunker with me. I’ll be coming out again shortly with a new tool for you to try. I think you’re gonna like it.

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of traveling to New York as a sponsor for the 2008 Broadway Sound Master Classes. I had the honor of meeting so many amazing folks, from Scott Lehrer (a QLab user whose work on South Pacific was recently nominated for the first-ever Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Musical), to QLab users and class instructors Michael Bodeen, Rob Milburn and Chris Cronin who gave a fascinating class on moving a production to Broadway, to…well…I can see this list is going to get really long, so I’ll just suffice it to say that I finally got to put many many faces to names, and had a total blast.

And of course it was very fun to attend the award ceremony for 2008 Sound Products of the year. Live Design writes:

Mac users, vocally passionate bunch that they are, finally seem to have a show control product they can rally around, not just in the sound world, but across multiple disciplines. QLab allows you to control audio, video, and MIDI from a single workspace directly from your Mac. Built on Mac’s CoreAudio, every sound cue has its own matrix mixer, allowing you to mix multi-channel sound files to a variety of outputs. QLab supports up to eight channels per file and can route up to 16 channels per output device. “QLab is possibly the best new product in years for audio playback,” says one judge. “It is very intuitive, very affordable, glitch free — from our experience at three shows and counting — and it’s designed by a theatre artist! We think QLab has a wonderful future.”


    — Live Design Sound Awards Presented at BSMC

Ah shucks. I’m blushing. Well, here’s to many more great years to come!

Anthony Lynch writes:

The show hasn’t opened yet (it opens officially on 22nd May) but I will be using QLab for the sound playback of Lifecoach starring UK comedian Phil Juptitus at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End.

Having been introduced to QLab at Theatre South Carolina, where I’ve been for the last year, I am very excited to be using it in London. I will not arrive back in the UK until five nights before the preview on
the 20th May but I am confident that with QLab’s amazing flexibility I will be able to easily and quickly implement a design in the theatre that has been originally created thousands of miles away! Additionally, with QLab’s ease of use and non-intimidating interface, I have no doubt that our operator (who I will not meet until five days before opening night) will have no problems.

Thank you for an incredible piece of software!

Chris Moore writes:

Theatre in the Square located in Marietta, Georgia recently opened the last show of Main Stage season with Poetry of Pizza. I used QLab from start to scratch. It work flawlessly!! AS ALWAYS!! I used Digital Performer 5 to record and edit sound effects on one Mac Book Pro and used a shared file on a MacBook running QLab. It was great to be able to edit effects in DP5 and simply dump them into the shared file. No jump-drives needed! Once again QLab comes through!!

Thanks for everything you do!!

I’ve released a small update to the Video Cue. It fixes:

• at least one scenario in which an initial white frame could be displayed instead of the first video frame
• a bug that could lead to a crash when a Video Cue is first run

It is a small change and I recommend that you update. The new version of the cue is available from the update manager at “Cues” → “Install/Update Cues…”

I’m thrilled and honored to announce that QLab has been chosen as one of the Live Design 2008 Sound Products of the Year!

http://livedesignonline.com/news/2008_ld_products_of_the_year_announced_0407/

Expect to see a writeup in the May issue of Live Design. In addition, Live Design will be recognizing all the product winners at a reception during this year’s Broadway Sound Master Classes on Saturday, May 17 at 6:00 PM at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. I plan to attend, and I hope to see some of you there!

Last Thursday evening the first revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s masterpiece South Pacific opened at Lincoln Center with sound powered by QLab.  There hasn’t been a single Broadway revival of this landmark work since its original run ended in 1954.  Figure 53 is extremely proud to be part of this highly anticipated event.

South Pacific joins a growing list of recent Broadway productions that have chosen QLab, including David Mamet’s new play November and Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming.

Wunderkind Bobby Andersen gave an impromptu talk about creating the QLab icon at Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch’s C4. Check it:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/rentzsch/videos/9

It’s getting hard to track all the places QLab is used these days.

The McCarter Theatre in New Jersey just wrote up a blog post about their new QLab system that will run four projectors in an upcoming production of The Mad 7.

On Broadway we’ve seen David Mamet’s new play November, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, and a big name musical we’re not allowed to talk about yet.

Over in the West End there has been Ring Round The Moon at the Playhouse and Pygmalion at the Old Vic.

Then there is Anne Bogart’s production of Dead Man’s Cellphone at Playwrights Horizons, Uncle Vanya at the Rose, a tour across the UK on Blackbird, around Europe on Troilus and Cresseida, the tour of the Broadway show Defending the Caveman, Top Girls at the Biltmore, and the Noise Ensemble.

And those are just the shows people remembered to tell us about.

Not a bad way to start the year!

1.3.5 was released this morning. Among the changes are:

• Added a “Send MIDI Message” button to each kind of MIDI cue. Handy for previewing the message you’re building.
• Better error reporting if a bundle operation fails. Also gives the option to proceed with the bundle and skip the file(s) that had an error.
• Fixed a bug on 10.5 where clicking the up arrow in the target column would sometimes cause the target string to be selected, which then prevented the file chooser dialog from working correctly.