File Structure/names of Shows and Scenes

[Don]

According to the manual, 1 show at a time is available on the CQ. Each show stores 100 Scenes. I understand that multiple shows can be stored on a thumb (USB) drive. Where are the scenes stored for each show? On the USB drive? When I put my USB drive into my computer, I see scenes that are stored, but they don’t have the names that I gave them on the CQ. It appears that the custom names for both shows and scenes are not stored to the USB drive. Am I missing something? This is very confusing…

[Simon]

Hi Don

I looked into this on my USB drive. Shows are saved here:
E:\AHCQ\SHOWS

Instead of “E” it will be your drive letter, the computer assignes to it when the USB drive is inserted.

In this directory it will save all your shows named like “SHOW####” (#### for the numbering) e.g. “SHOW0000”, “SHOW0001”, etc. as directories.

In the Shows directory you will find the following files:
SHOW.DAT
SCENE000.DAT
SCENE001.DAT
…
NVDATA.DAT

Opening SHOW.DAT shows by the first characters of the filecontent the name of the show (“CQ18t” in my case).
Opening SCENE###.DAT – files shows the name of the scene beginning with the 21th character. All the naming of the channels can be found further down.

So far for the naming. I dont know how exact all the other data is stored.

Therefore: clearly the custom names for both, shows and scenes are stored to the USB drive. They are not stored as filennames, but as contents in the file and you can extract them from there.

Best regards,
Simon

[Simon]

Hi Don

In SQ-MixPad I use Shows and Scenes offline. You only need to set the “working directory” under “utility”. You also can use Push and Pull shows there, when connected to a SQ-Mixer. I did not found this yet on the CQ-MixPad. May be, this is not yet implemented in CQ-MixPad.

But, how it looks like from your post, you only need the names for the show and the scenes as a overlook. For this, I just implemented a quick and dirty script in a AutoHotKey. If you like, you can use this and change it to your needs (copy-past the text beetween the dashes “——–“:

;—————————————————————–
; Note: tested to work for firmware version 1.2.0 CQ-Scene-files

whichFolder := DirSelect(“*” A_InitialWorkingDir,2)

writeFilename := whichFolder “\sceneNames.txt”
if FileExist(writeFilename) {
MsgBox “sceneNames.txt file already exists!”
ExitApp 1
}

; Read/Extract SHOW-Name:
readFilename := whichFolder “\SHOW.DAT”
buf := FileRead(readFilename, “RAW”)
firstByte := 0
showName := “”
chrCode := NumGet(buf, firstByte, “UChar”)
while chrCode != 0 {
showName := showName . Chr(chrCode)
showByteIndex := firstByte + A_Index
chrCode := NumGet(buf, showByteIndex, “UChar”)
}
FileAppend “Reading Show-Name and all Scene-Names in the following directory: `n” whichFolder, writeFilename
FileAppend “nnName of this SHOW: ” showName “nn”, writeFilename

; Read/Extract all SCENE-Names of this show:
Loop Files, whichFolder “\SCENE*.DAT” {

readFilename := A_LoopFileFullPath
buf := FileRead(readFilename, “RAW”)

firstByte := 20
sceneName := “”
chrCode := NumGet(buf, firstByte, “UChar”)
while chrCode != 0 {
sceneName := sceneName . Chr(chrCode)
sceneByteIndex := firstByte + A_Index
chrCode := NumGet(buf, sceneByteIndex, “UChar”)
}
; Msgbox “Name of Show ‘” showName “‘`nName of Scene ‘” A_LoopFileName “‘ is: ” sceneName
FileAppend “Name of Scene ‘” A_LoopFileName “‘ is: ” sceneName “`n”, writeFilename

}
;—————————————————————–

This will write a text-file “sceneNames.txt” (when it does not exist) into the choosen directory with, for example, the following content:

*************************************************************************
Reading Show-Name and all Scene-Names in the following directory:
C:\Users\usna\Documents\_Daten\FFF\Mischpult\CQ\AHCQ\SHOWS\SHOW0000

Name of this SHOW: CQ18t

Name of Scene ‘SCENE000.DAT’ is: FFF_UA
Name of Scene ‘SCENE001.DAT’ is: CQ_UA_Record_1-8
Name of Scene ‘SCENE002.DAT’ is: CQ_UA_Play_1-8
Name of Scene ‘SCENE003.DAT’ is: Rec_2-7+11-13
*************************************************************************

You can do this for all the shows.

Best regards
Simon

[Author]

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