Questions technical teams ask
The short answers first. If yours isn't here — or the answer depends on how your house is set up — ask directly and you'll get a straight reply.
What it is
- What does Maestro Console do?
- It is a control surface for live surtitles. The operator loads the surtitle script once, then presses Space for each cue. That one keypress sends the line to your surtitle projection, to your YouTube livestream as closed captions, and to the phones of anyone in the audience who has opened the surtitle page — each in the languages you have set up.
- Does it translate or write the surtitles?
- No. You bring the surtitle script with a translation per language, prepared the way you prepare it today. Maestro Console does not generate or translate text, and it never decides by itself when a line appears. The operator does.
Setting it up
- Which surtitle projection systems does it work with?
- Glypheo, over OSC. For every cue Maestro sends Glypheo the absolute cue number rather than a "next" command, so the projection cannot end up a line behind the stream. If your house runs a different system, get in touch — that is exactly the kind of integration worth a conversation.
- Can it prepare the Glypheo file for us?
- Yes. From the script you load, Maestro exports a Glypheo-ready text file: either the chosen languages stacked together cue by cue in a single file, or one file per language.
- What format does the script need to be in?
- Excel (.xlsx or .xls), CSV, plain text, SRT or PowerPoint (.pptx). A spreadsheet is the most robust: one row per cue and one column per language, so the languages cannot drift apart. A column headed Notes, Cue or Stage is read as operator notes rather than as a language. With text, SRT or PowerPoint you load one file per language.
- Do we need a caption encoder or a capture card for YouTube?
- No. Maestro posts each caption over the internet to the caption ingestion URL that YouTube Live provides for your stream, so nothing is added to the video path: no caption encoder, no capture card, no extra rack unit. Viewers get CEA-608 closed captions, switched on with the player's CC button.How posting captions to YouTube works →
- Can it caption more than one stream at once?
- Yes. Add as many YouTube ingestion URLs as you run, each with its own label. Every cue goes to all of them at the same moment.
- How many languages can it handle?
- The phones receive every language in the script, and each reader picks their own. The YouTube stream shows one or two languages at a time, optionally tagged [FR], [NL] and so on. The projection shows whatever your Glypheo show is set up to display.
- Does it need an internet connection?
- Only for the YouTube captions. The link to the projection and the audience page run on the local network in the building, so the house surtitles and the phones keep going even if the internet connection drops.
During the performance
- What if the operator fires the wrong cue?
- Undo (⌘Z) steps back and immediately re-sends the previous line to the stream, the projection and the phones, so the mistake is overwritten everywhere rather than left up. Undo on the very first cue clears the screens.
- What happens if one destination stops responding?
- The others carry on. The stream and the projection are sent to independently, in the background, so a YouTube request that hangs or a projection machine that drops off the network does not hold up the cue anywhere else. The console shows the status of each connection, so the operator can see which one is in trouble.
- Can the captions be delayed to match the livestream?
- Yes. A livestream reaches viewers some seconds after the live action, so an adjustable delay — 0 to 30 seconds, in half-second steps — holds the YouTube captions back until they land with the picture viewers see. The projection and the phones are never delayed: the house is watching the live stage.
- What happens during an instrumental passage or a scene without text?
- Escape clears the livestream captions and the phones in one go. Glypheo does not accept a blackout command over OSC, so the projection is blacked out with Glypheo's own blackout control.
- Can we send a message to the audience?
- Yes. Next to the surtitles the operator can send a short message — ready-made ones such as "Interval", "Resuming shortly", "Silence your devices" and "Technical difficulties", or anything typed — to the phones, to the livestream, or to both. Messages never go to the projection, so the stage picture is not interrupted.
For the audience
- Does the audience need to install an app?
- No. The surtitles open as an ordinary web page in the phone's browser. Each reader chooses a language from a menu, and the page remembers the choice.
- How does the audience connect?
- The surtitle page is served on the venue's local network, so phones need to be on the house Wi-Fi. Maestro shows the page address for you to share — in the programme, on signage, or however your front of house prefers.
- What if a phone loses its connection?
- The page reconnects by itself within a couple of seconds, and again when the reader comes back to it after switching apps. It shows the current line as soon as it is back.
After the show
- Do we get subtitle files afterwards?
- Yes. Recording writes an SRT subtitle file for each language on the stream, timed from what actually happened during the performance — a starting point for the on-demand video. A performance log of every cue, undo, blackout and message can be exported alongside it.
Trying it
- How can we try it?
- Ask for a technical demonstration or an evaluation build on the contact page. It is most useful with a scene from your own script and the languages you actually run.
Didn't find your question?
Technical questions are welcome before anything else — if it cannot do what you need, it is faster for both of us to find out now.
Ask directly