The cue files and documention for all our show packages were created using SPICE 3.

SPICE 4 LE (Legacy Edition) was created to ensure that all our (and your) hard work of programming shows will not be in vain when and if you convert to SPICE 4. We can report that -- sure enough -- SPICE 4 imported our SPICE 3 cue files, and the shows run as they did before. But there are two specific issues of concern for those wishing to use our SPICE/SMPTE package.

TIMEs and WAITs

SPICE 4.0 works differently in that every cue now has a specific time attached to it. When importing our file, what presently happens is that every TIME and WAIT cue is converted to a time value -- and the actual line itself is then discarded. This means you no longer see, for example, "WAIT 3.5 seconds" as a separate line in the cue file. It's incorporated in the next event's assigned time instead.

However, when you manually type in TIME and WAIT cues, SPICE 4 incorporates the value in the Time field -- and converts the rest of the line that you typed into a comment. We think this is what should happen when you import a SPICE 3 file, but doesn't. We've asked Sky-Skan to change this import behavior, and the response was that it could easily be made to work that way. We hope that future releases will; unfortunately, they don't as of this writing. So the printouts of our cue files, in their SPICE 3 form, will not resemble the cue list in SPICE 4 very much, the latter appearing much more "condensed". The show still runs as before.

Device Names

It has always been the case that what we call our devices (PROJ:A, for example), undoubtedly will be different from what the projectors are named in your specific theater (DISS:A, ANIM:D, EKTA:G, etc.)

In SPICE 3, the user would need to edit our cue file saved in .TXT form, using a text editor to change the device names using Find-and-Replace, then import the edited .TXT file. SPICE 4 at present does not import SPICE 3 .TXT cue files. However, since it does import .CUE files directly, there is a workaround.

Immediately after importing our .CUE file as a "Legacy Cue File" -- and before doing anything else, like scrolling up and down through the cue list -- you save it as a SPICE 4 .SHOW file. Unlike binary .CUE files, .SHOW files are vanilla ASCII by default, so you can edit them directly in any text editor to make the necessary changes in device names. You then load the revised file as you would any other .SHOW file. The reason why you must not scroll through the imported cue file is that when the program comes to an unknown device, such as our PROJ:A, it will convert it (and any others) to whatever device happens to be in the first slot of your equipment config list. This would obviously not be useful.

If the situation improves in the future, we'll revise this page. We've added SPICE 4 LE here in our studios, so we can answer specific questions about how our cue files work with it.