A Note on Redundant Data

Redundant and/or Blocked data in cues is displayed like this:

Sometimes this is properly Blocked data. At other times it is just plain redundant. Having redundant data in a cue is not desirable. Understanding when and why you may want these symbols appearing in your Fixture Grid or Attribute Grid will make your life a lot easier.

Before you move on, if you're not fully familiar with the philosophy of tracking, you may want to read the topic called Tracking first.

DESIRABLE

When you write a Block cue at the top of Scene 2 so future editing session on cues in Scene 1 won't track through into Scene 2.
When you record a cue using the State option to collect the cumulative set of data used to reproduce a cue state. You may do this at the beginning of a scene in a linear cue list, or when you are Copying or Moving cues within a cue list or to the middle of another cue list.
When you have one attribute that doesn't necessarily change, but other attributes in the cue rely on it to be in a certain state. For example, in a CMY colour mix system, if you are fading from pure Cyan (100%, 0%, 0%) to pure Green (100%,0%,100%) the Cyan value does not change in the second cue. When running the second cue, you would see the Block Symbol. This is definitely not redundant date because having Cyan at 100% is a necessary condition to making Green. If it were not there with a Block Symbol, it would still produce Green, but the important thing to consider is what if we change the first cue such that is does not have Cyan at 100%. Then our second cue would not be Green. Marquee automatically marks co-dependant attributes with deltas when you are editing so you don't have to worry too much about this. Just don't get fussed if you do see block symbols in your attribute grid, even if you have just perform an Un-Blocked cue operation.

UNDESIRABLE

When you are running a show from top to bottom and attributes are marked with block symbols, it means that those attributes will get unnecessary and sometimes harmful fades initiated on them for no good reason. For example, in the Tracking topic, there is a detailed example of a long Sunrise cue followed by an actor's entrance cue. If the cyc channels that were involved in the sunrise were blocked in the second cue, the long sunrise would be quickly collapsed by the actor's entrance cue when it is executed.
When you are copying multiple cues from one section of a cue list to another and you use the Copy State option. This will result in many block symbols appearing because the entire cumulative state of the cue list is recorded into each and every copied cue. This means if you copy the sunrise/entrance cues from the example above, you will destroy the sunrise. If you are copying entire sections of the show within a cue list, it is best to copy the first cue in the range using the STATE option, then all the subsequent cues without that option. Alternatively, you can Unblock the section after you copy it.
Putting redundant data in a cue "Because you want to make sure that if you jump to the cue it will all be there" is not necessary. Marquee always maintains the state of the cue list during Goto's. (i.e., if you jump around in the cue list, it will make sure that what is on stage looks just like it would if you went to the first cue and pressed [GO] repeatedly until you got there). Some other tracking consoles are pure "Move-Fade" boards, meaning that if you jump cues, only the new fade information for the channels that are in the cue you are jumping to will be implemented. Marquee does not do this.
If you have redundant data in the cues, it makes it difficult to maintain the cues when you're editing them at a later date. It is much nicer knowing that the data you are examining is all 'useful' data and is necessary to get the looks on stage. If there is a lot of extra garbage in there, it makes it a lot tougher.

Note:

At times you may see the Block symbol in your cue list when you didn't expect to. This may happen because you just did a Goto Cue and the values just 'happened not' to change from their last state. To 'clean up' the display in this case, Assert the cue list by pressing [SHIFT] [GO]. Also note that there is a Cue List Option to Goto cues after they are recorded, so it may happen directly after a record operation.