AV Production Industry Insights | Professional Technical Guide
The lighting designer in Los Angeles finishes programming at 2 AM and uploads a show file that the touring operator in Dallas must load six hours later for rehearsal. Somewhere between those two computers, something goes wrong—fixtures that worked perfectly in LA now respond to wrong addresses, effects that looked stunning on the designer’s monitors appear corrupted, and the first hour of rehearsal disappears into troubleshooting. Show file management has become the invisible infrastructure that determines whether modern productions succeed or collapse into chaos.
The Evolution from Floppy Disks to Cloud Sync
Early lighting consoles stored show data on floppy disks that held kilobytes of information—enough for simple cue stacks but laughably inadequate by current standards. The transition to USB drives improved capacity but introduced new failure modes as corrupted drives and incompatible file systems caused data losses at critical moments. Today’s show files for complex productions can exceed several gigabytes, containing not just cue data but fixture libraries, media content, and configuration information that defines entire production ecosystems.
The grandMA3 platform from MA Lighting revolutionized show file sharing through its integrated networking and session management capabilities. Multiple operators can work on different show elements simultaneously, with changes synchronized across connected consoles in real time. This collaborative approach, unthinkable a decade ago, has become standard practice for productions with separate programmers for main lights, video content, and special effects.
Version Control for Show Data
Software development teams have used version control systems like Git for decades, but the live event industry has been slow to adopt similar approaches. The consequences appear nightly: operators accidentally overwrite show improvements with older versions, changes made during technical rehearsals disappear when someone loads a “clean” file, and tracking which modifications solved versus caused problems becomes impossible.
Forward-thinking production teams now use cloud storage platforms with version history Dropbox Professional, Google Drive, or dedicated solutions like Filecamp—that maintain recoverable snapshots of every show file iteration. The discipline of naming conventions matters enormously: files labeled with dates, venue names, and version numbers allow rapid identification of specific show states. A file named “Show_2024-03-15_Dallas_v3_post-rehearsal” provides context that “ShowFinal2” never can.
Console Compatibility Nightmares
The assumption that show files transfer seamlessly between identical console models has destroyed countless load-ins. Software version differences between consoles can introduce subtle incompatibilities that manifest only under specific conditions. A show programmed on grandMA2 software version 3.9 might behave differently when loaded on 3.8—effects timing changes, executor behavior shifts, or network configurations reset unexpectedly.
The ETC Eos family maintains better backward compatibility than most platforms, but even ETC files can behave unexpectedly when transferred between consoles running different software branches. The only reliable approach is documenting exact software versions during programming and verifying version matches before show file transfers. Production riders increasingly specify not just console models but specific software versions required for compatibility.
Media Server Complications
Show files for media servers like disguise, Watchout, or Resolume involve complexity that lighting consoles cannot match. These files reference external media content that must be present on the receiving system and absent media produces black screens rather than error messages. A single renamed folder or missing codec can render an elaborate video show completely non-functional.
The disguise platform addresses this through project archiving that bundles media content with show files, but the resulting archives can be enormous. Transferring multi-gigabyte show archives over hotel WiFi connections the night before a corporate presentation tests both patience and bandwidth. Productions increasingly travel with duplicate NVMe drives containing complete media packages, providing physical backup when network transfers fail.
Documentation That Accompanies the Data
A show file without documentation is a puzzle missing half its pieces. Operators receiving files must understand fixture patch assignments, network configurations, control surface mappings, and any venue-specific modifications that affect playback. The best programmers create show documentation that includes patch lists, network diagrams, and notes explaining programming logic that might not be obvious from the data alone.
Standardized formats for show documentation remain elusive—everyone develops their own approaches, creating translation challenges when files pass between production teams. The emerging practice of embedding documentation within show file structures, using comment fields and naming conventions, ensures that critical information travels with the data rather than getting lost in separate documents that never reach their intended recipients.
