It's built. It's running shows.
It needs its next cue.
VideoCue is a macOS show-control app: one continuous timeline, named cues an operator fires live, up to sixteen simultaneous projector outputs with real quad-mask projection mapping. It already runs real performances. This campaign funds the next stretch of development so it keeps shipping.
A cue marker sits at a fixed timecode; the operator's playhead moves toward it and waits for GO.
Two tools. Neither fits the operator.
Clip-based players treat every video as its own tile you fire by hand — fine for a simple cue list, painful the moment you need overlays, audio, and precise timing between moments.
Traditional editors and compositors produce a finished, locked video — no room for an operator to pause, wait, loop, or read the room.
VideoCue sits between them: one global timeline that plays itself, with named cues planted at exact times that pause, stop-and-wait, loop, or cross-fade. The operator presses GO. The same project runs identically every night, and still bends to what's happening in the room.
Clip players
- Simple, tile-per-clip
- No shared timeline
- Overlays and audio bolted on
- Timing drifts operator to operator
NLEs & compositors
- Frame-accurate finished cut
- Locked once rendered
- No live pause / wait / loop
- Not built for a human at the desk
VideoCue
- One continuous timeline
- Play Through, Pause, Stop & Wait, Loop cues
- Up to 16 live outputs, projection-mapped
- Repeats every night, bends to the room
Not a pitch deck. A shipping app.
VideoCue is in active production use for live shows — theater, worship, installations, lecture halls. Everything below is built, not roadmapped.
Timeline & cues
- One continuous timeline with cross-fades
- Play Through, Pause, Stop & Wait, Loop
- Fire from keyboard, cue list, or key bindings
Overlays & live cameras
- Independent fade, opacity, position, blend mode
- PNG, video, or any AVCaptureDevice on any layer
- Multi-camera PIP, auto-start / auto-stop capture
Audio engine
- Per-clip gain, fade, end-behavior, looping
- Trim, split, waveform display
- Pause / seek / loop wrap with no drift
Multi-output projection
- Per-output layer routing, tile-mosaic presets
- Draggable quad mask with edge-blend feathering
- Open Cube preset for CAVE-style rooms
Export
- MOV / MP4 or ProRes, 24–60 fps
- Standalone audio bounce, frame stills
- Hidden layers and mutes honored on export
Live-frame timeline scrubbing fix, the Open Cube five-output CAVE preset, and fit-to-output quad masking — shipped this cycle, notarized and out to licensees.
Built solo by Chris Bass, with Claude (Anthropic) as pair-programmer on the playback engine, compositor, audio engine, and export pipeline.
$15,000 keeps the operator at the desk.
VideoCue has been built and maintained as a one-person effort, and that has a real cost: development went quiet for six straight weeks this summer — July 20 to September 3 — with nothing shipped, because paid contract work had to come first. $15,000 buys back that time: a stretch of development not competing against other work, so the gaps stop happening.
This campaign is built for a small, specific audience — venues, integrators, and production shops, not a mass crowd — so it leans on fewer, larger pledges rather than volume. The Studio / OEM tier below is the one that gets it there.
Part of it also buys something concrete: a machine that can drive five real displays at once, plus a handful of test monitors. Open Cube — the five-output CAVE preset shipped in b18 — has been live for months and never once run on real hardware, because nothing in the current toolkit drives more than one external display.
CAMPAIGN NOT YET LIVE — PLEDGE TIERS BELOW ARE A PREVIEW
Rough split, not a locked budget — shown here instead of left out.
No license attached — a thank-you and your name in the build credits.
One commercial license, single machine, all 1.x updates. Priced below the post-campaign rate.
Up to three seats for one venue or organization, priority bug-fix queue.
Source-available license, a direct support line, and a seat at the roadmap table for embedding VideoCue in a larger system. Twenty backers at this tier alone reaches goal.
This page is a preview of the campaign, not a live pledge form — no payment is collected here, and tier prices are drafts pending final numbers before launch.
Press GO.
Follow along and get the beta directly, or check back here when the campaign opens for pledges.