From working draft
to a crew-ready copy.
A small event has enough moving parts. Give every department the same cue IDs, clock times and approved version.
Your first three minutes
- Set the show clock. Open Show settings. Enter your date, venue timezone label, show-day UTC offset, start and target finish. Day offset 0 is the show date; 1 is the next day.
- Build the running order. The example is fully editable. Add a cue or edit an existing one. Enter duration as
2:30or2.5minutes. Decimal minutes round to the nearest whole second. Save cue commits your edits. - Keep anchors explicit. Choose Fixed clock time for a hard start. Reordering never moves that anchor. Any overlap stays visible until you deliberately resolve it.
- Write each department’s instruction. AV, Lighting and Host each have a field. Blank fields leave the cue off that department’s sheet. Enter the exact approved media filename, including extension and revision.
- Freeze, compare, deliver. In Version handoff, name a version. Make later changes in the working draft and compare with that frozen copy. Open its department sheets and choose Print / PDF or CSV.
- Keep a recovery pack. Save recovery JSON includes the working draft and every frozen version. To recover, select it in Restore JSON, read the validation summary and apply it. Your previous draft and frozen originals are retained.
Try the complete example
Harbor Makers is a fictional one-hour showcase with an opening film, speakers, Q&A, buffers and exact media filenames. It begins at 19:00 with Q-006 fixed to 19:40. Extend Maker stories to 30 minutes to see the anchor conflict. Reorder that cue to see why the cue ID stays attached. Freeze a revision, then remove a cue and compare the changes.
Download the example recovery pack. A second midnight example is included in the source package.
Timing you can audit
All durations are integer seconds. Automatic cues start after the latest occupied end time. A fixed cue starts at its declared clock time even when an earlier cue overlaps it; following automatic cues wait until the overlapping block has ended. Empty time before an anchor is shown as a gap.
Buffers are explicit reserved cues, counted in the scheduled finish. They are never silently consumed or shortened. Over target is the scheduled finish minus the target finish when positive. This is planning arithmetic, not a live countdown or an actual-vs-plan timer.
The timezone label is descriptive. The numeric UTC offset is authoritative and is included in exports. The app does not infer daylight saving. Split shows that cross a daylight-saving clock change into separate offset periods. A +1d label always means the next calendar day relative to the show date.
Paper and exports
Print / PDF opens the browser print dialog. Choose A4 portrait, 100% scale, and Save as PDF; turn browser headers/footers off if desired. The print layout is black and white with 17-point cue titles and 13-point instructions. Cue cards stay together on a page, and repeat the version and cue ID. PDF output depends on the browser print engine.
CSV is a distribution format, with local and UTC start times, fixed anchors, references and conflict seconds. Formula-like fields receive a leading apostrophe for spreadsheet safety. Import accepts Cuefold recovery JSON only; CSV does not preserve frozen versions. JSON holds filenames and instructions, not the audio/video files themselves.
Questions before doors open
Does my team see changes live?
No. This is a single-browser planning and handoff tool. Export and distribute the approved version yourself. There is no multiplayer sync, desk control, media playback, messaging or show-calling connection.
Where is the save button?
Save cue and Save settings commit the editor. Freezing, reordering and confirmed restores save immediately on this browser. Closing or cancelling an editor discards its unsaved fields. A refresh keeps committed work; an open unsaved editor prompts before leaving when the browser supports it.
Can I edit on a second device?
Export recovery JSON, then import it on the second device. The hosted URL does not carry your local show. The same export-and-import step is needed when moving to a different website address: each address has separate browser storage. Avoid editing one show in multiple tabs; detected concurrent changes pause saving until reload.
Can I recover a deleted cue?
Frozen versions retain the original cue. Use as draft copies a frozen show into the working draft and preserves the previous working draft as another version. Related cue references are removed only after the delete confirmation.
What are the limits?
Up to 200 cues, 20 retained versions, 4 MB per recovery import, and fixed anchor offsets from day 0 through day 6. Field limits keep paper cards readable. Browser storage quotas vary; a failed save leaves the last saved state unchanged and reports the error. Export backups regularly.
Which browsers are supported?
This release is tested in desktop Chromium with a 375 px responsive viewport and A4 PDF output. Safari, Firefox, mobile Safari and other print engines have not been verified and are not supported for production use in this release. There is no offline installation or offline reload guarantee.
Do I need an account or payment?
Cuefold is publicly accessible without a Cuefold account, subscription, payment or API key.
Is this public release indexed by search engines?
The public pages at run-show.cueandframe.com allow search-engine crawling. A search listing is not guaranteed, and no actual indexing is claimed. Your browser-local shows and downloaded exports are not published as web pages.