Preview, then Take
Click a clip or type its number and it cues paused at its In point, so the Take is instant. Auto-cue loads the next one as you go.
BetaPreview → Program
Show playback
for live events.
Cue it in Preview, take it to Program. Cueball plays a playlist of clips with dissolves, loops and links, out to displays, SDI and NDI at once, and takes its cues from the keyboard, a lighting console or the network.
Download for Mac
Windows · coming soon
Public beta · macOS on Apple silicon · Windows coming soon
Built the way show playback runs.
A switcher-style workflow that anyone who's run playback at a show already knows, with nothing in the way between the cue and the output.
Signed transitions
One number for every transition: −2.00 dissolves for two seconds, 0.00 cuts, +2.00 holds black then cuts. Dissolves start before the Out point, so joins are seamless.
Loop, Freeze or Link
Each clip knows what to do at its end: play again, hold its last frame, or take the next clip. Link from the last clip goes round to the top, for walk-in and sponsor reels.
Countdowns, built in
A clock Cueball draws itself, with no file to render: a duration, a time of day, or a stopwatch, with overtime in red. It's drawn on transparent, so it keys over anything.
Clip settings, live
In, Out and Slate points, fades, fit and crop, and black, gain, gamma, saturation and hue. Edit several clips at once, and see changes to the clip on air on the output.
Shows that travel
A .cueball file holds the playlist, every setting and the output setup. Media paths are kept relative too, so a show folder moves between machines, and Locate relinks a whole folder at once.
One Program. Every output.
Program is composed on a canvas of any size, such as an 8064×1536 LED wall or three HD screens side by side. Each output takes its slices of it, pixel for pixel or scaled.
Displays
Fullscreen on every screen
Each display gets its slices, copied on the GPU from one composite, so a file is decoded once however many outputs show it. Every display shows the same frame.
SDI
DeckLink and AJA
Every format the card offers, from SD to UHD, including true interlaced motion. The card's clock paces it and follows genlock. Embedded audio is drift-locked. Key and fill come out on two connectors, frame-aligned.
NDI
On the network, with alpha
Each NDI output is its own source, up to 2160p. With alpha on, the background is transparent where nothing is on air, so vMix or OBS can lay it straight over other sources.
Drawn on the GPU, not the window
SDI and NDI frames are composited by Cueball's own output engine, on Metal on a Mac and Direct3D 11 on Windows, straight into the card's frame memory. A busy or stalled operator window never touches the output, and cuts land on the frame the audio switches.
- 3×keyed 1080p59.94 at full rate on one PC
- 60 fps4K HAP across an 8064×1536 canvas, six outputs, on an M2 Max
- <1 frameaudio-to-video on AJA SDI, measured on a loopback
Run it from anywhere.
The operator, the lighting desk and a Stream Deck can all drive the same show.
DMX
Art-Net and sACN
Patch Cueball as one 9-channel fixture: clip, bank, control (cue, take, end all and so on), master intensity and volume, transition time, and Loop, Freeze and Link. Lock the app's own controls to put the console fully in charge.
| 1–2 | Clip and bank |
| 3 | Control: Cue · Take · End all · Play · Pause … |
| 4–5 | Master intensity, master volume |
| 6 | Transition: cut or mix 0.1–25.4 s |
| 7–9 | Loop · Freeze · Link |
Network
HTTP and WebSocket API
Simple GETs for Bitfocus Companion, Stream Deck or curl, and a WebSocket that pushes state as it changes.
// cue clip 12 and take it
GET http://host:7700/api/cueAndTake?number=12
// live state, pushed up to 10 times a second
ws://host:7700
→ {"cmd":"take"}
← {"event":"state","state":{…}}
Return Take
Esc End all
12 Type a clip number to cue it
↑ ↓ Previous / next clip
⌥1 Goto 10 s from the end
⇧⌘O Outputs off
What it plays.
Pro codecs
ProRes 422 and 4444, HAP, HAP Q and HAP Alpha, DXV, NotchLC, DNxHD and DNxHR, QuickTime Animation
Delivery codecs
H.264, HEVC, VP9 and AV1, in MOV, MP4, MKV, WebM, MXF and more, plus stills (PNG, JPEG) and audio files
Alpha
ProRes 4444, HAP Alpha, QuickTime Animation, PNG and VP9 WebM, keyed over Program or sent as key and fill
Mac
macOS on Apple silicon. Hardware ProRes and H.264/HEVC decode. Blackmagic Desktop Video 14 or newer for DeckLink.
Windows
Windows 10 or 11, x64, with a Direct3D 11 GPU. AJA driver 15 or newer for Corvid and Kona cards, Desktop Video for DeckLink.
Network
Wired gigabit or better for NDI (about 130 Mbit/s per 1080p59.94 stream). Art-Net, sACN unicast or multicast.
Download Cueball
Signed and notarized for macOS, so it installs with no Gatekeeper prompts.
Beta
Cueball is still in beta: features are still landing, and things will change between versions. Try it with your own media, outputs and hardware before you take it to a show. Without a license key it’s fully working, with a “Cueball · Unlicensed” band across its outputs. Crashes and errors are reported to us automatically, with file and folder names left out, and Help → Report a Problem sends us anything else.
macOS
Windows Coming soon