QLab converter v2 > v3 > v4 > v5

MacOS Tahoe can’t run QLab v2, v3, or v4. Whilst QLab v5 can open v4 workspaces, we can’t now open v2 or v3 workspaces anymore. The only way to make an old show run in V5 is to open it in V3, save it, open it in v4, save it, open it in v5 and save it, which is a boring process, especially if you have dozens of shows to convert. So, i made a little app (no AI coding!) to speed up this process and am making it available for everyone else to use too.

• Before you use it you’ll need a computer running something earlier than MacOS Tahoe, with the versions of QLab you need to convert between. eg you might need QLab v3, v4, and v5. They don’t need to have any licenses installed. You can find QLab v4 here on the Figure53 website. QLab v3 is here. You don’t need v2 as v3 can open v2.

• Rename them in the Applications foilder to be “QLab 3”, “QLab 4” and keep v5 as “QLab”

• Open a new workspace in QLab 5, select Save, and adjust the Save options to “Save only workspace file” (as otherwise you’ll get a duplicate of all your audio files when you’re converting the subsequent files).

Now, run the script, and chose the file you want to convert. The script will auto detect most files and convert accordingly. If you start with a V2 file, it will generate a V3, v4 and v5 version..

QLab can take a while to open big workspaces so you can set a delay time to stop the script erroring out whilst waiting for a workspace to load. 6 seconds works for most shows. 24 seconds works for shows with lots and lots of cues.

There’s not lots of error checking in the script, nor is it super fast. But it let me focus on watching Netflix whilst accomplishing an otherwise boring task!

It might error out the first time you run it whilst it requests permissions but should run fine after that.

Tested using macOS Ventura with QLab 5.5.10.