Definition
The timeline, called conducteur in French after the live-show trade, is the chronological representation of the display: a time axis on which every shot is placed to the second, alongside the music, voice-overs, lighting effects or staging marks. Where the firing plan answers “what, where, on which cue”, the timeline answers “when”, and lets you read at a glance the density, the pauses, the build-ups and the finale. In a pyromusical it is aligned with the waveform of the track and accounts for rise times so that bursts, not launches, land on the beats. The timeline exports to the firing system as a list of time-stamped cues, and it serves as the score for the control desk on show night.
In practice, for the display company
The timeline is PyroDesk's “show thread” window: every product in the firing plan appears there at its burst instant, over the music waveform, and moves with the mouse. PyroSimulator plays the timeline in real time, with sound, to verify synchronisation; the export to the firing system carries the cues and the corrected launch times.