What are Columns in Cuez?
Before we can dive into how to send information from the Automator into a Column in your Cuez Episode, let's briefly review what Columns in Cuez are and how you can manage them.
As explained in What are Columns in an Episode and how do I manage them?, Columns in Cuez offer a way to add important information to your Episode, and users can choose which Columns to show or hide in the layout on their screen.
Columns in Cuez can be about Timings, they can be text-based notes or they can even be Label Columns. It is mostly the latter that we will be focusing on in this article.
Linking the Automator and Column(s) in Cuez
Seeing that you can customize the type of information you want to enter/see in Columns in your Cuez Episode, this would normally mean that, as a Cuez user, you would enter or select this information within the Episode itself.
When using the Automator, you have an extra way to get information into your Columns. A couple examples:
If you uploaded media in your Cuez Episode, Automator will download this media to your download folder. Once the media has been downloaded, you can send that status to a Column in Cuez for your team to see.
When your Automator operator triggers a clip or graphic to play, you can again send that status to a Column in Cuez for your team to see.
Preparing your Columns in Cuez
Before you can send information from the Automator to Cuez, you first need to prepare your Columns on the Cuez side. As mentioned at the top of this article, you can create any Column you want, so you can go ahead and create a Column (or multiple) to use with the Automator.
An example use case would be to view the Automator's status of media (downloaded, playing,...) in your Episode. In this case, you could create a Column called 'Status' or 'Playback Status' for example. The Column would (ideally) be a Label Column and can have as many options as you'd want or need.
In our example, we added options for when a clip is put in preview, when it is playing, when it is paused or stopped, and a final option for when the clip has finished playing.
Configuring your automations in the Automator
Now that your Column is ready in Cuez, you can switch to the Automator to start configuring your automations. Depending on how you have your clips, graphics,... configured, your Column automations can be done via an 'On Cue', via 'Steps', 'Timecodes', 'Media Downloaded', and more.
The principle is always the same:
Select the device called 'Rundown'
Select the function called 'RUNDOWN.Update Column'
Select the Column you want to update
Select the Label option you want to set in the Column, based on the action you are performing
Example configuration
You can create any type of automation and have a Column update on any of your automations, but let's have a look at a specific example for a Clip.
On Cue: If we have our Clip configured to go into preview when clicking the main trigger (On Cue), then we want to reflect that status in our Column in Cuez by setting the 'LABEL.Preview' option, based on the options we created.
Steps - Play: If we start playing our Clip in our output by using Step buttons, we can set our Column Label option using the same Step button by using our 'LABEL.Playing' option.
Steps - Pause / Stop: If we pause or stop our Clip by using Step buttons, we can set our Column Label option using the same Step button by using our 'LABEL.Paused' or 'LABEL.Stopped' option accordingly.
Timecode: We can use a timecode listener to know when our Clip has (almost) finished playing, which in return can set the status to 'LABEL.Playback - DONE'.
Bringing this all together, you will see the information in your Cuez Episode update according to your automations in the Automator.
If your Automator does not show the option to configure 'Rundown' automations, make sure to update to one of the latest Next builds, or a Stable build once available.