Neil Stratton

A shot in the dark - my upgrade method from WO 5 to WO6 would be to uninstall WO5 and QuickTime from production and display.Then reinstall 6 with no Quicktime I've delivered 3 shows on 6.4 in Windows 7 so far, one of which had an enormous amount of content all in HAP and HAP Q.

This article has some decent information on rendering with chunks.I have followed the advice of no more chunks than cores with success. https://hap.video/using-hap.html

I am saddened to hear this news.Thomas has been posting since I first joined the Watchout community many moons ago and I always admired his straightforward approach to explaining sometimes complex issues and his willingness to admit what he didn't know. His posts helped me a lot over the years. Thanks Thomas.

I agree with Benoit- I have also had trouble using custom resolutions with framelock in S400 cards. I never managed to overcome it and my solution has been to go to standard resolutions

Hi all - just found this great tool, AfterCodecs plugin, which allows HAP and many other encoding flavours from After Effects and Adobe Media Encoder, using ffmpeg.I have tried the trial version, and I like the fact I can encode HAP chunks in AME, and there are a plethora of user options. Just wanted to share this find with fellow users and ask if anyone else is using it?

I'm over the moon to see folders in the task window. What a difference this will make for me. Thank you so much! Neil

I would have done the same but the matrix switcher we are using is limited to 1920 x 1080 inputs so I had to go this way. Thanks for all your help. Neil

Thanks Zack - you have really helped me out here. I was kinda stuck! and confused.... The LED team were using Hippo just to show me how they would lay it out. After your helpful suggestions we have arrived at the layout below. I now have 16 virtual displays, and everything seems to run fine, so I'm in the dark as to what is considered a large amount of virtual displays. Thanks for your help.I really appreciate it! Neil

Hi again.So I have hit a brick wall with this. My led contact wants something that looks like this but I can't imagine how I would do this without creating 110 virtual displays.The image shows 3 led drops on the left mapped to one output on the right. Can anyone advise how they would do this? Thanks in advance

Thanks Zack. This is how I have decided to set up my stage. I have 3 x 1920 x 1080 outputs and 9 virtual displays.I have arranged the virtual displays in such a way as to give me the outputs as shown. It makes sense to me. Can anyone confirm if this is the correct way to do this?Thanks in advance. Neil

Hi all - until now I have been able to use virtual displays within a 1920 x 1080 output constraint to deal with multiple led screens. My way of approcahing this would be to arrange the virtual displays horizontally until I exceed the horizontal pixel constraint of 1920. Then I would add another output. Until now I was able to fit the vertical dimensions within 1080. I now have a project where I have 9 led drops ranging from 384 x 960 px, to 384 x 1344. So I can no longer arrange them as 9 virtual displays left to right on 1920 x 1080 outputs. I could make each led panel a separate virtual display, but I would then have 110 virtual displays. Which would give me great flexibility, but Dataton say that large numbers of virtual displays may degrade performance. So my question is - how would you approach this? Looking forward to realising what I have missed. Thanks Neil

Jim is spot on ( as usual) Have seen this when Aux Timelines are triggered without a stop command first. When using a midi controller I put a pause cue before the video cue. To trigger the video from the midi controller it is 1 cue to move to the pause cue, then a 2nd to run to the video.

Hi Don - the Codemeter program is the dongle software that you need to run Watchout. The reason you are getting this message I believe is de to your UAC settings. Try this: From the Start menu, Select Control Panel Navigate to System and Security > Action Center From the left pane, Select Change User Account Control settings Drag the scroll button to Never notify Click on OK to save your settings You might also want to go through the Windows 7 Tweak list helpfully provided by Dataton which covers this and much more. Hope this helps Neil http://forum.dataton.com/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=155

First thing you need to establish is can you see a clear image using the capture card but not using Watchout? Using Datapath and Blackmagic cards this is my first port of call when fault finding. What card are you using for capture?

Having reread your post I second Jim's suggestion .This looks more like a processor demand issue, not an encoding one. Good luck!

Hi Rick - I had a similar problem years back and Jonas Dannert advised to render MPEG-2 files with all I-frames (key-frames on every frame), And it worked. Here is the thread http://forum.dataton.com/topic/100-pause-a-movie-file/?hl=frame&do=findComment&comment=1747

I am guessing you have a monitor attached to the display computer? Therefore Watchout is seeing the monitor as 1 and the projector as 2

My rule of thumb when using V5 is never stray from the original encoding guidelines: http://forum.dataton.com/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=146 On Page 2 you will see (in red!) ProRes/PhotoJPEG/M-JPEG is NOT recommended for WATCHOUT playback A lot of files will play on the production side, sometimes as a consequence of extra codecs installed along the way.So you can spend time programming in production then find when you connect to displays that they will not play the files, or will crash. But if you follow the encoding guidelines you can be sure of avoiding this.

I second that. No more wondering for me. Thanks Mike.

These are great questions that I have often wonderd about too. One more thing - is there any advantage in placing media in the Main Timeline as opposed to running from aux timelines?I remember another operator saying they always put large media items on the Main Timeline where possible. I only wondered about this some time later and wished I had asked more. Let's say I have a dozen compositions which run sequentially, is there any gain in performance in placing these on the Main Timeline , as opposed to placing them in an Aux Timeline for more flexibility?

Check this earlier thread: http://forum.dataton.com/topic/503-slide-presenter-with-watchout/?hl=%2Bmicro+%2Bcue&do=findComment&comment=1819 Hive Industries Micro Cue/ Master cue work for me after simple repatching.Default is Page Up/ Page Down. Good luck Neil

Hi there - without After Effects, Adobe Media Encoder and Photoshop to hand during rehearsals and programming I would struggle. I create the majority of my content for my shows in After Effects and I still use it every single time when I am on site. I am one of those people who runs shows from Production and it serves me well. And any Watchout operators must have a good grasp of these 3 packages for me to consider hiring them. So typical usage for After Effects for me is text animations with alpha channels and creating loopable animations. A lot of my work is awards shows and the way I approach it is to create a sequence in AE then render the scene out in to usable chunks and reassemble in Watchout. So from my scene I would want : 1. A video file that establishes the scene. 2. A loopable version of that video. 3. Text animation with alpha channel I can reveal when required for nominees/winner. Using free running and looping cues and auxiliary timelies I can easily create something interesting. Typically I have an 8 to 10 second Video in. An 8 to 10 second video loop .And a handful of small text animations. After Effects is also useful for managing files easily and visually.Pixel Aspect Ratio, framerate, forcing to progressive, etc are all easily managed in AE. When I change things like framerate and PAR I like to Ram Preview in AE before committing to render so AE is my preferred way. Rendering from AE is fine in my experience but I still use AME to encode so as to free up AE. Typical uses of Adobe Media encoder are encoding late delivered files. Client turns up with a handful of files for the show and I use AME to strip audio out and encode to my preferred codec. Also use it to render edited AE projects in the background while I continue working in AE. Photoshop useful for removing backgrounds from logos that dont have an alpha channel, converting colourspace to RGB, and a quick text insert if like me you find the Watchout text engine less user friendly. Photoshop is also invaluable for creating a standard size for say a logo insert that will use different logos. Much easier than resizing in Watchout. For example create a project to required size then arrange all the logos you have in that project on separate layers. Then just export layers as files using the script in the File menu. Place one of these files in Watchout then copy and paste it with the other layers to get consistency in size and position easily and quickly. Without these tools I have no idea how I would create a show. For me they are all as essential as the other. And to be flexible and adaptable on site any Watchout operators should seriously consider getting to grips with them. Good luck! Neil Stratton

If you are free running and looping a comp then the comp must be exactly the same duration as the clip. Otherwise you will get black. I usually just copy and paste the time specs from the clip to the time specs of the comp Neil

For long free running loops I always encode to Mpeg 2. Tried H264 but it always seemed to drift after a few hours.

Congratulations on a great new release.I love the new interface and the geometry window with media is extremely useful. One thing I had hoped to see in the new release was an option to place aux timelines in folders, like in the media window. I run so many these days that it is a chore looking for the right one sometimes. Yes I still use production to run shows.It works for me. When you are creating content in coffee breaks it is the only way to go. Also colour coding of timelines would also be very useful. Great work! Neil