WATCHOUT Technical Notes - 2015

[Guest DavidA]

Dear all,

the link to the Windows 7 tweak list has been fixed. I needed to remove the internal forum links and route externally. 

As for the remaining links, I have requested tech assistance from the providers of the forum, as I cannot find an easy way to resolve this and there are many more links across the entire forum threads that needs fixing, so I have to root cause it and get it done.

Best regards, 
David
 

[Guest DavidA]

Dear all, all problems related to downloading the attachments should now be solved. 
There is a single requirement and that is that you need to be a registered user (and logged in). 

Please let me know if there still are issues!!

On another note.. We are getting VERY close to releasing the Windows 10 tweak list! 

Best regards, 
David

[nikolai]

Hi

we are planning un upgrading our 2012 machines, does anyone have a 2018 display computer spec?

[Guest DavidA]

Hi nikolai!

Sorry for the late answer.  Here is our official take on hardware specs for building a WATCHOUT media server. 
 

WATCHOUT 
Hardware recommendation guide
April 2018

Introduction
WATCHOUT is the award-winning and market leading multi-display and projection-mapping software, with over 15 years of unrivalled performance and reliability. WATCHOUT is a very versatile software and can be used in a wide range of applications, from smaller fixed installations, through world record video walls and to large and complex live events. 

Because of this versatility and price performance ratio, Dataton is frequently asked about recommended components to build WATCHOUT display servers and production computers. This document is our general recommendation guide to hardware.  

The availability of hardware components has never been better and new and improved hardware is released frequently. Due to this fact, we have decided that we are not going to provide specific hardware recommendations, but a general guide on what considerations you need to make when building your own system. 

In general, building a WATCHOUT server with high performance, quality and reliability requires a combination of well-developed skills on selecting the right hardware, tuning of BIOS settings and of tuning the Microsoft Windows® 10 operating system. 

In addition to the level of skills you need, there are other of considerations you need to take into place before choosing to build buy a preconfigured WATCHOUT-server. This document will also cover this:

• Support 
• Warranty and service
• Longevity & 24/7 use
• Microsoft EULA when building for reselling
• Dataton´s WATCHOUT media servers

Support

If you have a Dataton WATCHOUT media server, we know the hardware configuration and can easily recreate – and fix – and challenges you have with your show, as we can receive your files and put it directly into a 100% identical server on our side. 

If you have built your own server, the possibility to provide a qualified support is limited, since we do not know your hardware and its settings, nor how the operating system is set up and tweaked. This makes it impossible to fully re-create the problems you have, and unfortunately sometimes we cannot provide a satisfactory answer through support. 

With an own-built system you are more on your own than with a Dataton WATCHOUT media server. 

Warranty and service
Most of the off-the-shelf consumer products have mostly one-year warranty. And while some of the industry/professional grade components can give 3 years warranty, when buying a media server from Dataton you have the option of extending the warranty up to 5 years with access to service and support.  

Longevity and 24/7 use
Many installations with media servers requires long operating hours, some even 24/7. Consumer-grade products are not built for this kind of use as it requires a different approach to design and choice of subcomponents to manufacture hardware designed to run 24/7 or 14-18 hours per day. 

Microsoft EULA when building for reselling
If you are building WATCHOUT media servers for commercial use to sell them, make sure that you have the rights to resell Microsoft Windows®. 

Dataton´s WATCHOUT media servers
As an alternative to building your own server, Dataton offer a range of media servers that are tuned to WATCHOUT – and that includes a license. You can read more about our WATCHOUT server range at https://www.dataton.com/products/media-servers. From a service and support perspective, we recommend this solution. 

Hardware recommendation guide

CPU
The CPU is the core of your system. Important factors are number of cores, PCIe lanes and durability. Making sure you have support for enough PCIe lanes for the system to handle graphics cards, capture cards and other PCIe cards in the system.

As an example, the Intel i7-8700, 4500 MHz has 16, while Intel i9 7900x has 44 Lanes. Overall, Xeon processors are more reliable and a processor like Xeon W-2145 can be seen as a good combination of single core performance and number of cores.  

The CPU cannot be boosted forever, and to avoid CPU throttling we recommend disabling boost for continuous and predictable performance.

Motherboard
We recommend workstation/server grade boards compared to the consumer boards. There are countless examples here in the Dataton forum where you can find examples of problems connected to consumer grade boards from various manufacturers. 

Memory/RAM
16GB should be fine. Bandwidth and channels are more important than increasing the available memory when choosing RAM chips.

GPU/Graphics cards/Video Cards
Cards with EDID management and sync for output is recommended if you need synchronized output. Cards like AMD WX7100 or WX9100 with S400 sync card or NVIDIA Quadro P5000 with NVIDIA Quadro sync.

Capture cards
Capture cards comes in a variety of flavours and price tag as the other components. Here the most important considerations are latency, scaling (built in or not at all) or if you are going for a PCIe or external device? 

Hard drives
For the operating system, you are OK with any decent SSD. For media storage, a solid state (NVMe) is recommended for maximum performance (U.2 or PCIe AiC). You need also to consider if you need redundancy in your system, and if you need a RAID setup or just a larger, faster single NVMe disk. 

Audio device 
The audio device has to support the audio interfaces WATCHOUT offers, such as ASIO or WASAPI. Make sure to review the documentation for up-to-date information on which audio interface WATCHOUT supports. 

Summary
Building your own media server can be fun and rewarding. But make sure you have access to the required skills and having the proper budget allocated to make sure you build a server that are satisfactory to your or your client´s needs. 

If you need more help on deciding on individual components, we ask you to use the Dataton forum ss requests sent to the official Dataton support or through other channels will not yield a better answer.