Feature Request: Child Events

[raffaeletani]

I'm using ontime to display the upcoming songs backstage to additional staff, dancers, artists ect.
When we change the setlist, i have to reorder all events by hand.
this would not be an issue, if i just had song 1, song 2, song 3 ect.

But every song has its cues for intro, verse chorus 1,2 and so on.

It would make life much easier if i could place these "in song" events under the main song, so i just need to reorder the songs and not all of its components.

Also, showing these child events indented in cuelist view would make things much more clear for the artists backstage, waiting for their cue.

[cpvalente]

There has been some work in the past on creating cues / subcues system which ended up complicating the consumption and control of the data. However the idea of a group sounds simpler and more maintainable / extendable.

I imagine that this could be a pure visual representation around a block of events. In data it would be something like

- GroupStart
- Event
- Delay
- Event n
- Block
- /GroupEnd

Meaning a group is a simple UI artifact to simplify organization.

In this way, group parameters would be something as simple as

Group: 
disable: boolean
name: string

I wonder if there are current workflows that could be restricted with this change.

• Do delays have influence outside their group?
• I feel the current views are not equipped to display this effectively. What happens in paginated views (public / backstage / pip / studio) to display events of different groups?

It would be great to have some thoughts here,

[je71175]

I think the simple groups you propose would be good first start, without having the code and logic complexity of nested cues affecting the parent's timing.
Perhaps this is a good first start for people to have hands on experience for some real world use cases...

But for a logical design of cues and sub cues, i think the tasks and task dependancies model used gant charts in project management is a great concept. https://hcp-consulting.com/dependencies-in-schedules/ (FF, SF, SS, etc)

thanks !

[ekordas]

Another View on this Issue: I run a Show where we used Excel Lists for the Coordinator/Director to give cues. If we would switch to ontime we would need some checklists to keep track of everything. I did a quick Draft in Gimp how that could look like:

Basically:

• Ability to add tasks for Setup before the Event starts
• (opt: Ability to associate a Duration for Setup Phase, usefull if the show gets retimed and maybe a Way to display Time in between Events)
• Add Groups inside an Event and associate a Timecode
• (opt: a play Button for Displaying the Task Group Backstage could be added)
• (opt: Add a Marker to the Event Progress Bar or add a Progress Bar with Marker above every Group to indicate when specified Timecode will be reached)
• Ability to mark tasks as Done

With an Implementation via Timecode no Delay handling inside an Event is needed

[bentodman]

I'd like to add to the group idea. It would be great to add templating to groups. I've been using Ontime to organise a busy festival stage over multiple days that doesn't stop. We were tracking Dock load in time, Soundcheck time, Changeover Time And Performance time with start and end. It would be great to have each band as a template i've made that has those sections ready to go and fill in with different colours etc.

[rob-fi]

Chiming in here. I've just started exploring ontime and this was the first feature I was missing. Well, not specifically child events/groups, but more the fact that events can't be of a type that's only for show running, and isn't part of the programme, e.g. cues for operators and so on. However, groups or child events would be one way to solve this. My only wish is that the child events don't show up (or can be configured not to show up) in the timer or public views, even if the parent event is public. If it is to work as groups, then those groups should be able to be treated as events that show up in the public view or in the timer.

For a practical example of why I'd like this feature, consider this scenario where a guest is to walk on stage, be greeted by a host, and sit down for an interview for a time period, then be let go for the host to introduce the next guest, and so on.

During the intro, walk-in, and walk out, there are various light and music cues that operators have to action. The stage timer for the host should be counting down from the moment the host introduces the guest, until the moment the guest walks out, but it should not include all of the lighting cues and such in-between, the host on stage is only interested in the time for the block and not lots of countdowns for everything in-between.

I've got various other thoughts and ideas that I'll add to other issues or discussions.

Thanks to all involved for what seems to be excellent software.