How to Fade a Video Cue in QLab

QLab is a great piece of software for playing back simple video cues. It has a straightforward user interface and a rich feature set. However, it does have one major downfall which is how to fade cues. At first when I started using QLab I was very confused on how to fade cues which is why I wanted to make this article to make it easier for you.

Step 1: Add Video Cue
The first thing we need to do is add a video cue to the cue stack. This can be done by either clicking on the video button or dragging a video/image clip into the cue stack.

Step 2: Add Fade Cue
After the video cue has been added to the stack we need to add a fade cue below the video cue we just added.

Step 3: Assign Fade Target
After adding the fade cue we need to tell QLab what cue we want to fade. To do this we select the fade cue and head over to the basics tab. Under target we type in the cue number of the video we want to fade. This will then show the cue name next to it if the target association was successful.

Step 4: Modify Geometry
Now that we have the fade cue targeting the video cue we can start to play around with the fade itself. To do this we need to make modifications in two sections the curved shapes section and the geometry section. First let's take a look at the curve shape section. In here you were able to change the duration of the fade as well as the fade shape. You can either pick from some pre-defined curves or make your own. If we were to try to play the fade queue now we would not see the video cue fade at all. This is because we need to tell QLab what property we want to fade on the video queue. This option can be found under the geometry tab. We simply need to check the checkbox next to opacity and change the percentage we want to transition to. If we want the video to end up at 100% we will leave it as is. If we want to feed the video to black we will manually type in 0%.

Step 5: Celebrate
Congratulations! You now have faded a video cue.