Most show failures are not hardware failures. They are skipped steps. A cable that was not tested. A gain setting from soundcheck that never got updated. A backup drive that was charged two weeks ago and has been sitting in a bag since. Here are five checks that take ten minutes combined and prevent ninety percent of on-night emergencies.

None of these are complicated. All of them have been skipped by experienced operators under time pressure. Make them a ritual, not a decision — something you do automatically before every show regardless of how familiar you are with the venue or the setup.

01 — Test your output path end-to-end

Plug in exactly as you will on the night. Laptop → interface → cable → wall. Not just “laptop works”. The full chain. HDMI cables die. Adapters fail at the worst moment. USB-C hubs develop intermittent faults that only show up under load. A Thunderbolt dock that has been working for six months can decide tonight is the night it stops.

Specifically: play a video clip with full-white frames. Look at the output. Look at the output. Not the preview on your laptop — the actual output surface. Confirm the signal is clean, the resolution is correct, and there is no overscan cutting off the edges. Overscan is silent and invisible on your laptop and will cut off titles, logos and carefully composed edges on the display.

02 — Check your resolution and frame rate

Ask the venue: what resolution does the wall or projector want? What frame rate? 1080p50 and 1080p60 look identical in Resolume and produce very different results on some LED processors. Match the output to the spec. If no one knows the spec, default to 1080p50 in Europe, 1080p60 in the US.

Frame rate mismatches often go unnoticed until there is motion — a fast-moving clip will judder at a 20% frame rate mismatch because the display is trying to show 50 frames that were built for 60. On a static or slow-moving clip, nobody notices. On a strobe or beat-sync effect, it looks broken. Check before the show, not after.

If the venue is running an LED processor (Novastar, Brompton, Linsn etc.), ask the LED tech what the processor’s input spec is — this overrides the wall’s native resolution and can be set to anything. A 4K wall being fed 1080p through a processor is not uncommon and is perfectly fine as long as Resolume is outputting 1080p, not trying to output 4K.

03 — Set your audio input gain

Audio-reactive visuals built at soundcheck gain will behave completely differently at show volume. Either use a fixed BPM/MIDI trigger approach, or go back to the audio source at full volume before doors open and re-set your input gain. The difference between soundcheck and show levels can be 20 dB.

The practical technique: ask the DJ or sound engineer to hit the system hard for 30 seconds — a known reference track at show level. Watch your audio input meter in Resolume. You want peaks hitting 80–90% of the meter, not clipping, not sitting in the bottom 20%. Dial the gain until you have that, then lock it and do not touch it again unless the whole system gain changes.

04 — Check your backup

Where is your backup? Is it on? Is it charged? Is it loaded with the same content? A backup drive that takes three minutes to mount is not a backup — it is theatre. If you cannot switch to it in under 30 seconds, it does not count.

The definition of a real backup: a second machine with Resolume open, the same composition loaded, the same output resolution set, and a cable ready to swap into the output chain. Not “my other laptop is in the bag”. Not “I can rebuild it from the drive in about five minutes”. A live backup is one that is already running and requires a cable swap and a key press to take over — nothing else.

If you are doing shows that do not justify a second laptop, at minimum: carry your composition on two separate drives. Know which clips are essential — the opener, the headliner sync points, any branded content — and keep those on a USB drive in your pocket. A phone playing a single fullscreen video via HDMI adapter is a worse show than your main rig. It is still a show.

05 — Dimmer check

Confirm with lighting that they will not accidentally patch your video signal through a dimmer. It has happened. It produces a very memorable flicker effect that nobody wanted. A two-sentence conversation with the LD before the show takes care of it permanently.

The broader point behind this check: know who else is touching the signal path. The video wall is probably controlled by a separate LED tech. The projector might go through a matrix switcher managed by house AV. The cabling between your output and the surface passes through hands that are not yours. Introduce yourself to each of those people before the show. Know their name. Know their number. If something goes wrong mid-show, you need to reach them in ten seconds, not spend two minutes finding out who controls what.

Ten minutes. Every time. No exceptions.