Lloyd Stewart

Very cool!!! As one who started out with Watchout when there were only 4 tweens, but who hasn't really kept up. Those tutorials may be very helpful. Thanks so much for doing that!

Sad news indeed! Such a terrible loss. All that accumulated knowledge and understanding gone, and about something we care about and he cared about so much. Absolutely tragic. He will be sorely missed.

Thanks Jim!

I took the USA Watchout training near Detroit some years back. I think we were using Watchout 3 back then. Anyway, I believe I remember David Branson, our instructor, saying that all the production computer does when running a show is send out simple cues to the display computers. That sounds like something that even the most basic/cheapest of laptops could do. Is that still the case? I do production/creation of shows on a rather high end desktop and of course my display computer is top notch. So, just for running the show, can I just buy a $300 cheapy laptop to do so? I didn't know whether, as we progress in ever increasing versions of Watchout, whether I need to purchase something more robust to use as a simple laptop to run the show, or if I can be a cheapskate and buy something simple. Thanks!

Wait a minute. A separate graphics card is connected directly to a display, right? That video doesn't get rerouted to a processor's GPU, does it? So, unless we are thinking of using a processor's onboard graphics, we don't have to worry about resolution, refresh rate, resizing, and dropped frames, unless, of course, the video card itself is having those problems, right?

Thanks for the update Miro! Interesting. I thought that with a separate graphics card (I recently purchased the WX7100) that the processor's onboard GPU's would be disabled. But apparently all video data still passes through the Intel processor's GPU on its way to the display such that resolution, refresh rate, and resizing via Watchout fails for some reason, as well as having a lower fill rate and increased possibility of dropped frames? Therefore, I am putting on hold my decision to buy the Kaby Lake i7-7700k processor which does indeed have the low end 630 Intel Graphics. Your post was a huge piece of information that I had been missing Your help in understanding is most appreciated! Thanks! Lloyd...............who may cave and just go with Windows 7, but who hopes that everything will soon be settled as far as Watchout and Windows 10 goes to where I can make the best decisions on display computer rebuilds.

I'm about to totally commit to computer rebuilds, so it'd be nice to get a little insight into the Windows 10 testing timeline so I can make some final decisions as whether to choose more advanced components or stick with the older stuff. So three questions: 1. How's the Windows 10 testing coming along? 2. Is there any chance Watchout will be tested with the new KabyLake (Windows 10 only) motherboards and i7-7700k processor? 3. I think I already know the answer to this last question, but I gotta ask: Is there any significant chance that Watchout 5.5.2 will ever work with Windows 10? (and yes, I did read jfk's post just 3 posts above and realize that I might be able to get 5.5.2 to work with Windows 10, but thought there might be an outside chance that, as MS finally gets Windows 10 where it should be, that WO 5.5.2 might be just fine to use with Windows 10. Yes?) Thanks! Lloyd

Thanks guys! I bought what Jonas suggested. I sure appreciate the input! Lloyd

12/30/16 Just purchased the AMD WX7100, whose 4 display output connectors are all DP. My 3 projectors are all HDMI. So would this be a reasonable choice? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0ZX3747617&cm_re=active_display_port_to_HDMI-_-12-607-073-_-Product Thanks! Lloyd

12/29/16 Hi again Thomas, i wanted to thank you so much for your input! Also wanted to clear up some stuff. 1. You said, "Firstly, where in a SSD or M.2 does the 'USB 3.0 Hub' come from?" Well, I shouldn't have included that in the description (I was just copying and pasting the Newegg description). The "3.0 Hub" was simply something that Newegg threw in if you bought that particular M.2 drive. Took me a while to figure that out myself. 2. But thanks to your advice, I bought the Samsung 850 Pro 250 SSD for the OS. Initially I thought, "Why not buy two M.2 drives", but then I realized that there was only one slot for one M.2 drive on that particular Asus Z170-A motherboard and also realized that there would likely be little benefit for the OS to be on an M.2 drive anyway. 3. But then I did try to buy a 500 GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 drive to use exclusively for Watchout, but everyone is currently sold out with the exception of some questionable sources who have jacked their prices due to the demand. Some of those sources, even some selling on Newegg, don't seem very reliable either. I checked ResellerRatings and found a ton of complaints for at least one of those resellers. So, I'll wait as long as I can, hoping Samsung will release more of those 500GB 960 Pro M.2 drives. I did read about the older 950 Pro M.2 drives and it seems there may be problems with throttling under heavy loads. See here, where it says, "Overall, the Samsung 960 Pro is an excellent improvement over the 950 Pro. Not only is the raw performance of the drive better, but Samsung has greatly improved how long the drive can handle heavy loads before throttling. It is still certainly possible to cause the drive to throttle eventually, but it takes long enough to do so that the vast majority of users would never encounter it." https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Samsung-960-Pro-vs-950-Pro-Performance-Thermal-Throttling-868/ 4. I did stick with the 1200 watt power supply, not knowing what demands the WX7100 graphics card and other capture cards that I sometimes use might put on the power. I figured, "What can it hurt, and there happened to be a sale and rebate reducing the price to about the same as the 1000 watt. My experience with Watchout is that the moment one says that he/she will never need/use something, it's not a week later before you hit on an idea that requires what you thought you'd never need. Anyway, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. I just wanted you to see that your advice wasn't wasted, but was duly acted upon. And if I've erred in my thinking on anything, please feel free to correct me. See ya! Lloyd

Wow! What a wealth of info in this thread! I hope my post doesn't count as a thread hijacking, but since the original asker's question seems to be answered, and the thread is heading in a certain direction, may I request a little similar info? I've been out of the game for a while, but now have a show coming soon and need to rebuild computers. So I was scouring the forum for recommendations. (still need to upgrade Watchout as well) But there seems to be a pretty good sale at a site I'm looking at (think "the most common fresh breakfast food") and I'm starting with the graphics card and the AMD WX 7100 looked most inviting at $548.99. So Thomas Leong, might I ask what you meant when you said, "As for graphics cards, the AMD Firepro WX series is out?" Does that mean that they are out, as in "now available for purchase"? Or does it mean that they are "out" as in "something that doesn't work with Watchout"? Or perhaps something else? Your posts, by the way, are wonderful! I was just a little unsure about that one comment. Here's what I'm seriously considering so far for my display computer. Yeah, I know judging a prospective system gets old, but if there is someone who wouldn't mind taking a look to see if something is off, I'd sure appreciate it! (many items gleaned from Thomas' and jfk's posts) 1. AMD WX 7100 graphics card 2. ASRock X99 Motherboard, Extreme 4, LGA 2011-v.3 (Originally, I had chosen the Asus Z270-A LGA 1151 motherboard. But upon doing a little more research, I came to realize that more cores, available with the X99 platform, was more significant than the newest chipset. However, if one can wait, the new X299 chipset/motherboard and processors are likely to be released some time in the first half of 2017. Also, a word of warning regarding this Z270 motherboard: These new X270 (sometimes called KabyLake) motherboards are not supported by Windows 7!!! 3. Intel Core i7-6800k 15M Broadwell-E 6-core 3.4 GHz LGA2011-v3 Processor (Originally I had chosen the Intel i7-7700k 4 core LGA 1151 processor. But upon doing a little more research, I came to realize that more cores, available with the X99 platform, was more significant than the newest processor and chipset. However, if one can wait, the new X299 processors and motherboards are likely to be released some time in the latter half of 2017 Also, a word of warning: The new Intel i7-7700k processor (sometimes called KabyLake) is not supported by Windows 7!!!) 4. Samsung 960 Pro M.2 2280 PCI-Express 3.0 x4 500G SSD MZ-V6E500BW (changed from EVO after reading Tom's advice below) 5. Samsung 850 Pro SATA3, 3-D Vertical Internal SSD, MZ-7KE256BW (added after reading Thomas advice below) 6. Storm Scout 2 Advanced case (I like that handle!) 7. FSP Group Aurum PT Series 1200w ATX 12V modular Power Supply 8. G.Skill Ripjaws V Series Memory 16GB (2x8GB) 288-pin DDR4 2400 SDRAM (PC4 19200), Model F4-2400C15D-16GVR 9. Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler

All of my shows have been the more common, straight on, "front projected onto a white screen" shows, all done after dark usually in medium sized venues. But videowalls, and especially "seemless" video walls, like this one here that I found doing a quick Google search: http://www.pallaslcd.com/products/7-series-seamless-lcd-overlapping-bezel.aspx .......look quite appealing to me and I sense that that could be a direction that some may move in. For me, the ability to do a show in daylight is the most appealing aspect, not to mention eliminating the hassles of using projectors. We once had a client who suddenly insisted on doing a show at Noon outdoors under a covered basketball court. Can you imagine? Well, we warned him that because of the sunlight washing out the projector images, they only way we could do that on such short notice was to rent large screen televisions, or else use the largest computer monitors that we owned, a suggestion that I thought was ludicrous, and only offered the idea hoping that he would think it ludicrous too and would abandon the idea. He opted for the computer monitors! And, against my better judgement, that is what we used. Amazingly, about 100 people crowded around three 27" monitors, like folks crowding around a bride when she opens presents. Shockingly, they all loved the show and I even had two gentlemen come up to me wanting to invest in our business! So anyway, I was wondering if anyone else was considering switching away from projectors to videowalls, and what downsides there might be, as compared to the upsides? (Yeah, I know it would be nice to have both, or just use a rental house depending on the circumstances. But I'm small potatoes and I try and make my shows low cost, so owing my own stuff makes sense for me) So has anyone given this any thought, or are we just sticking with projectors?

This is just a shot in the dark, but Google Voice Recognition (GVR) has gotten to be quite good. In fact I can't recall that it has ever gotten anything wrong for me. So now I wonder if there is any way a "Cookbook" connection could be written between GVR and Watchout, like was written between Kinect and Watchout? Consider: If I can ask Google via GVR where the best hamburger in Linköping, Sweden is and it tells me Stangebro Gatukok, then why can't I use GVR to start a timeline or conditional layer? Ultimately, what I want to do is record responses to oft asked questions, put those responses into Watchout, and then have those responses run based on what someone says or asks, as interpreted by GVR. We tried using Kinect and got it working to a degree. But it is no where near as accurate in understanding human speech as GVR is. So that led me to wonder if somehow we could use the GVR engine to initiate responses in Watchout?

Big loss. I always loved your frank answers and the way you perceived what the "real" problem might be when we might have been focusing on something else. Best wishes to you at Barco, but we'll definitely be missing you.

Most enlightening Jim. As always, thanks for your illuminating response! Lloyd

We use Watchout 5.5.1. But in the description of Watchout 5.5.1, on the Dataton site it says, "Windows 7 required for full functionality." On the other hand, in Version 5.3, it said that Watchout was now compatible with Windows 8. Well, we're working with the new "Kinect for Windows" (just received ours yesterday) coupled with Watchout, but unfortunately this new Kinect requires Windows 8 or 8.1, and is NOT compatible with Windows 7, believe it or not. So, as far as Watchout goes, we're wondering what we'll lose if we "upgrade" everything to Windows 8.1? I know there is not a benefit to using Windows 8.1 with Watchout, but what will we lose? Thanks!

So if we want 6 outputs that can handle 6 same size 1080P videos, it's just a matter of finding a powerful enough Eyefinity graphics card with two mini-Display ports and then plugging 2 MST hubs (that have 3 ports each) into the mini-display ports? Any down side to using the MST Hubs? Any particular ones recommended? I saw where jfk and Showsage were doing some testing back in March, but I wasn't sure how conclusive the situation was at the moment.

What a sweet gig Sir Alex. Very well done! I'm not much of a sport's fan. But the rather odd thing is that while the entire world seems to come together for the World Cup, or maybe the Olympics, or whatever event might be capturing the world's attention for the moment, I feel more drawn together to people all over the earth by my association here with those doing Watchout shows, because we all know what that is about. To me, borders disappear when we come together to discuss how a show or event might be produced. No matter your country, political persuasion, religion, language, favorite sports team or whatever, if you are producing a Watchout show, please consider me as your friend who wishes and hopes for the very best for you. OK, I suppose that's kind of corny, but maybe it's nice to know that we are all cheering for you, and admiring the work you've done. Once again, a job well done!

Can I replace the SSD with a bigger one in either Watchpax1 or 2?

Congrats on the new place. That is one cool looking building!

Most encouraging Jim and NNinja. Thanks so much! We begin this little journey tomorrow. Lloyd

I would like to put together a way for video characters, rear projected onto a screen via Watchout, to interact with real people. I found this helpful thread relating to sensors: http://forum.dataton.com/topic/994-wo-sensor/?hl=sensor And I found this thread dealing a bit with Kinect: http://forum.dataton.com/topic/436-watchout-kinect/ Kinect, and other motion controllers, like the ones for Wii and Playstation, according to the Wikipedia entry, seem to be more versatile and even include speech recognition, though, not being a gamer, I have no idea how well they do what they do. But what I was envisioning was having certain human movements or even human speech be interpreted by Kinect and then, using "glue code" that takes what Kinect has recognized, "adapts the data, and forwards relevant information to Watchout using its network protocol" (Mike's words) which would then trigger an auxiliary timeline in Watchout where a video character's response would be played back accordingly.. Once the "video character" responded, the video would continue with that video character just standing there waiting for a response until a human actually did respond, at which point another auxiliary time line would be triggered in the same way, replacing the running one, as a response to the human, etc, etc. So I'd film perhaps hundreds, or maybe eventually thousands, of possible responses that might possibly be triggered. So my questions are: 1. In general, is this reasonable, or have I, as usual, strayed far off base again? 2. Is there a limit to auxiliary time lines? 3. Has anyone tried this who might suggest any pointers? Perhaps a better way? 4. Does the use of auxiliary time lines seem like a reasonable way for a video character to respond? (Confession: I've never needed to use auxiliary timelines or even Midi so all I know about them is what I've read in the manual and on the forum) Input is most appreciated. Thanks! Lloyd

Thanks Jonas! Such a simple and elegant solution. I should have known you guys already had this figured out.

In a wedding environment, I've always wanted to be able to set up a camera(s) that could wirelessly send the live video somehow into Watchout to be projected onto the same screen, using the same projectors which also would be used for the final Watchout show, normally at the end of the event. But before the show, folks could watch the cake cutting or whatever I had the camera pointed at, on the screen before my official Watchout show. Or, even a better idea now that I think about it, perhaps the live video could even be incorporated into my Watchout show. Anyway, dragging around wires attached to video cameras so I could input the live video into a capture card is not an elegant solution. So I checked out various wireless solutions which were either way too expensive (think live video cams on the field at a sport's events) or their range was too short (like the wireless solutions used in the home). But today I was reading about a camera that was a hit at the recently completed 2014 CES show in the US called FlirFX See here: http://www.flirsecurity.com/?gclid=CK2Rpe3n8bsCFSEV7AodHwMACg That camera provides full HD and a personal Wi-Fi hotspot that, according to their advertising, is "accessible by smartphones and tablets within range of the camera’s internal Wi-Fi access point - 250ft / 80m." So I'm wondering if and how that Wi-fi signal of live video could be input into Watchout? Latency, in this case, would not be a problem. I saw from an earlier jfk post that the dynamic image server is for still images only. So would anyone have any suggestions? Or am I missing some obvious solution? Thanks! Lloyd

I recently received an email from the good folks at LDI about what looks to be some pretty amazing training courses in the field of "Projection and Content Creation" Thurs-Sun, Jan 9-12, 2014 in Tempe Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Training includes Watchout, and other systems that can be used in conjunction with Watchout such as QLab3, Isadora, Touch Designer by Derivative, and Projection Mapping Techniques using various software and techniques. Can't afford it right now myself, but for those looking to expand their capabilities, this looks like a pretty good deal at $695.00 for all 4 days, and there are hotels right across the street from the campus. Just thought some folks might want to know. http://livedesignonline.com/news/ldi-and-asu-announce-immersive-training-projection-and-content-creation Lloyd