Data in and out

Printed documents, spreadsheet export, and the backup and restore system.

PDF documents

The application produces five printable documents. Each mirrors a layout and is generated from the PDF button on that layout's screen:

The documents are drawn programmatically rather than captured from the screen: text is sharp at any size, page breaks fall between rows, gel swatches are rendered from the gel database, and held values are computed with the same rules as the screen, so the printed sheet and the display always agree.

Settings, Formatting, PDF Page Size sets the paper size and orientation per layout. Available sizes are A5 through A2, plus US Letter, Legal, Tabloid and the larger US sizes, each labelled with its metric equivalent.

CSV export

Settings, Show Details, Export CSV writes the plot as one row per cue. Cue-level columns are SQ, console cue, page, when and scene; each spot then contributes frame, size, intensity, time, action, character, location and notes columns. Parked spots are written as OFF. The header row is in the format the import wizard recognises, so an exported file re-imports without adjustment. The file is named with the show title and the date.

Chapter 4 describes the import wizard.

Backup

A backup is a single self-contained file holding the entire production: the plot, its settings, its users, every character photograph, every custom graphic and the show logo. It also contains the recent portion of the application's own log, which is required for most support diagnoses. A backup taken on one machine restores completely onto another.

A backup can be taken from three places:

• Settings, Connections, Back Up Show, from any author-level device.
• The application icon on the host machine (the menu bar on macOS, the notification area on Windows).
• On quit, when the application offers a backup before closing.

Backups are consistent even while the show is open and being edited. Store them on any destination the host can write to: a local folder, removable media, a network volume, or cloud storage.

Recommended practice: back up at the end of every plotting session, before any Advanced operation, and before every restore.

Restore

Restore replaces the open show with the contents of a backup file. It is a two-step operation:

1. Choose the file. The application validates the file as a Spotlight Maestro show and displays its contents: title, cue count, creation date and image count. Nothing is changed at this step.
2. Confirm. The application first writes a safety copy of the current show, so the restore itself can be reversed. The backup then replaces the show, photographs included, and every connected device reloads. The confirmation dialog shows the safety copy's full location.

The safety copy is stored in the show's own data folder, beside the live show file, named after the show and the moment of the restore, for example My Show.before-restore-2026-09-02T10-15-30.db. On a Mac that folder is inside ~/Library/Application Support/Spotlight Maestro; on Windows it is inside %LOCALAPPDATA%\Spotlight Maestro, and the tray menu's Open Data Folder opens it directly. Each restore adds a new safety copy; none are overwritten. To reverse a restore, restore the safety copy itself.

Restoring requires Admin, Author or Touring Operator permissions.

Additional behaviour:

• The licence is re-applied after every restore. A backup cannot change the show title, the followspot count or the administrator account.
• The application log contained in a backup is not written over the host's own log. It is saved beside the show for reference, because it describes the machine the backup came from.
• On the demo licence, a backup containing more rows than the thirty-row limit is refused with an explanation, never silently truncated.

Moving the show between machines

To move a production from one computer to another, for example from a plotting laptop to the production's machine:

1. Back Up Show on the first machine.
2. Transfer the backup file.
3. On the second machine, open the same licence file, then Restore Show and select the backup.

The backup carries the production. It deliberately excludes machine-specific settings: the network port, the console connection and the video feed configuration describe a particular computer, and must be reviewed in Settings after a move.

Before confirming any restore, check the backup's creation date shown at the inspection step. Restoring an older file over newer work is the most common data-loss error in a two-machine workflow.

The demo row limit

The demo licence limits the plot to thirty rows, scene breaks included. The current count is displayed in the toolbar. At the limit, the add and insert controls are disabled with an explanation, a CSV import takes the file's first rows up to the limit and reports the number imported, and an over-limit restore is refused with the reason.