FocusTrack is the heart of the system, the place that keeps track of what all of your moving lights are doing through the show.
From the show import, it will list every position used by every moving light in the show (we call these ‘lamp-focuses’), and will tell you every cue where a light comes on in a position. It does this automatically, with no need to pre-configure anything or to spend hours adapting the database for each new show.
If you’ve told Cue List where scenes and scenery start, FocusTrack can figure out which positions correspond to which scenes and scenery.
You can then add as much other information as you like: grid focuses, written descriptions, checkmarks on a set plan and more.
Ideally, you’ll get a chance to photograph each light in each position - here a picture really is worth a thousand words. FocusTrack can help with this, as you’ll see in a second...
Immediately, though, you have ‘x-ray vision’ into a show: you might be about to change a position in cue 1, but FocusTrack will let you see that it’s also used in cue 301. Do you really want to make a change that will also affect that later cue, or might you need to make a new preset?
Or if you’re focussing a light and thinking ‘I’m sure I’ve set this light here before’, tell FocusTrack the pan-tilt values from your screen and have it list existing positions very like that one.
And you can search and sort in any way you like. Swapped a light out? List all the focuses of that light so you can check them. Scenery set on stage? List the focuses corresponding to that scenery so you can check them.
Or even follow along with the show - FocusTrack can list lights cue by cue so you know exactly what each light is doing in each state.
You can use FocusTrack once your show is made. Or you can use it as you’re making it - keep importing a show and FocusTrack will merge in new data, flagging focuses that are new, no longer used or which have changed position since the last import, even highlighting cues that are new or have been deleted.
And if you prefer to have someone manually tracking the show as you plot, you can do that too (perhaps using FocusTrack’s QuickFocus cue focus grid) - then, when you get a chance, merge in the information from the console.