Welcome to Spotlight Maestro
Spotlight Maestro is a followspot cueing system for live production. It replaces the paper followspot plot with a live cue sheet on every operator's screen, tracking the production's lighting console cue by cue. Supported consoles are the ETC Eos family, grandMA2 and grandMA3, all over the network.
This manual is organised by role and by feature:
- Installation, the network and the licence: chapter 2.
- Connecting the console: chapter 3.
- Building and maintaining a plot: chapter 4.
- Calling the show: chapter 5.
- Operating a followspot: chapter 6.
- User accounts, data, printing and integrations: chapters 7 to 9.
- Troubleshooting and support: chapters 10 and 11.
- A reference map of every settings tab: the appendix.
The system
A Spotlight Maestro system has three parts.
The host machine. One computer, Mac or Windows, runs the Spotlight Maestro application. It holds the production's data and serves it to every other device. No other machine in the system runs any software.
The devices. Every operator, the caller and the production desk connect from a standard web browser: iPads, laptops, tablets and phones. Nothing is installed on any of them. All devices read and edit the same production, live.
The console. The application listens to the lighting console's own show control output. When the console fires a cue, every connected screen moves to the matching spot cue. The application also operates without a console: one person can drive every screen in the venue with Follow (chapter 5), by keyboard, footswitch or Stream Deck.
Five principles
One production, one file. Everything belonging to a production is stored in a single show file on the host machine: cues, users, settings, vocabulary and photographs. There is no save command; every edit is written to the file the moment it is made.
The SQ and the console cue. Every spot cue has its own sequence number, the SQ, which defines the running order of the plot. Independently, each cue may carry a console cue reference in free text, such as 287, LX42.5, w/ 18 or in 294.4. The SQ orders the plot; the console reference is what tracking matches against.
A blank cell means no change. A value is held from the last cue that stated it. These held values are displayed ghosted, so the current state of every spot is always visible without restating it.
Roles govern access. Every person signs in with an individual account. Operators read, authors edit, the administrator manages users, and every change is recorded with a name and a time.
The system is fully offline. The application makes no internet connections and requires none. It is designed for closed production networks, and works equally with fixed and DHCP-assigned addresses.
The demo
The demo is the standard application opened with the free demo licence. It provides three followspots, a plot of up to thirty rows, and full console tracking. A plotted sample show is available as a separate download and is loaded with the Restore function. The demo sign-in is username demo, password demo. This manual applies to the demo in full, except where the thirty-row limit is noted.