Notes & queries
Good to know.
The things crews ask before a real job.
Three separate tools. QuantPlot draws and patches a lighting rig. QuantCrew runs the schedule, the crews and the labour-days for a production. QuantRecce records a recce on site and, if you want it to, turns your shorthand into an order list. They share a look and a way of working — but they are three products, not three parts of one.
QuantPlot is the specialist: it is a lighting tool and makes no apology for it. QuantCrew and QuantRecce are not specialist tools: a first AD, a grip, a stunt coordinator, an art department coordinator or a location manager can use either one exactly as it is. Most people will use one of the three and never open the others, and that is the intended way round.
No — and most people won't. Each app works on its own: QuantCrew has its own account, and QuantPlot and QuantRecce share one optional sign-in. Nothing is forced, and nothing breaks if you only ever use one.
QuantPlot is — it plots lighting. The other two aren't. QuantCrew's departments, crews and units are yours to name, so it runs whichever department you run. QuantRecce reads the Excel order form you upload: it works the layout out from the file, and the code column is optional, so a rigging sheet, a grip sheet or a camera sheet fills just like a lighting one — though its built-in shorthand and automatic extras are tuned for lighting kit. The suite started in lighting because that is where we work — it did not stay there.
The apps themselves — what they read, what they need.
Upload it and see — it reads Excel workbooks (.xlsx and .xlsm). The reader works the layout out from the file itself: it reads every sheet, works out which columns are names, codes and quantities, and pairs them up. The header row can be anywhere, some forms have no header text at all, and the code column is optional — plenty of forms are just quantity and name. It refuses rather than guesses when the shape isn't a line-item list, because a wrongly-read form would quietly produce a wrong order.
Yes. Import your own custom fixture library straight from a grandMA2 export, set each fixture to the right mode, and the real channel footprints drive the patch. A full export keeps some manufacturer types encrypted — those are flagged by number so you can bring them in one at a time from a single-fixture export.
QuantPlot and QuantRecce do — there's rarely signal on a location or a stage. Once they've been opened online they keep working without it, and catch up when you're back online: your QuantRecce library follows your account whenever you're signed in, and plots and recces sync only if you turn sync on. QuantCrew is different: it's a hosted service, so it needs a connection.
Contact us for pricing and quotation details — e-mail contact@quant-suite.com, or send us a message from the Contact page. Tell us your department and roughly how much you'd use each app, and we'll come back to you.
Quant Suite is built by working Film & TV crew — made on the floor, not in a boardroom. It began in the lighting department because that is the job we do, and the habits it was built around turned out to be everyone's: a schedule nobody can read, a recce written on the back of a call sheet, paperwork retyped three times. That is why only one of the three tools is still department-specific.