WIN 10 big troubles...go back to win 7 ? :( so much troubles i have never been into before (like wedding !)

[MISTERK]

Hi all

first impressions with win 10

My config :
 - Asus Mobo x99 with P6000 nvidia and Xeon 10 cores
 - 16 Gb Ram and Win 10 x64 LTSB 1709 Fall Creators,
 - Dedicated drive for watchout is M.2 (samsung ,given for 3,500MB/s theorically Seq. Read)
 - watchout 6.2.1
 - Nvidia Quadro Driver 391.33

all my questions are wrapped with ##########

 

i had a big show last week, with 4x 4k outputs @50hz in  watchout
no softedge between them (hopefully!).

i Ran into a lot of issues.

First i couldn't have 3 or 4 files, playing at the same time on each screen.
files are mpg2( 3840x1200, 200mb CBR) or Prores.
the same video file, starting exactly at the same time, on each display.

it worked only if i had 2 files playing, otherwise every output goes to black.
it's not happening with still pictures (jpeg).
it's not happening with Hap Video files.

when i have at least my 2 files running, in mpeg2
starting exactly at the same time in tyhe time line,
they don't play right, one is starting, the other is
- starting later
or
- playing poorly.

i tried 4 mpeg2 files(1920x1080 at 50p) at the same time
no issue.

i also try .mp4 but same problems.

i have found that if loading preroll activated, it helps to play files better
but still not starting at the same moment, i had to change the preroll time
to different values to make it work.
it also happened that i had to delete everyhing in the timeline,
then just put one file, hit CTRL D, then the other file, hit CTRL D again
to get something working.

Files in Prores are playing very badly, it was playing well with my old display computers (win 7x64, quadro 4000)
even only one file in prores is playing so bad.
i forgot this codec for my show.
And i didn't talk about crossfading between two video files.

Less Problem With HAP or HAP alpha, it plays correctly.
But i lost a lot of precious time, with hap encoding and transfering (very long encoding and huge file size).
Anyway , Hap saved my life last night (not the DJ !)

i also tried a HAP file 15360x 2160 at 50p
it plays correctly, except crossfade between 2 files (maybe it's normal, it's huge files i mean)
two times the same file in the time line : no problems
three times, only two files are displayed, the third one is invisible.

I had strange issues with Wav Files (16bits, 48Khz) sometimes it plays and sometimes not,
i had one sound  that has not played during the show, so i was in panic and stressed to death
for the rest of the show, praying for sounds remaining in my timeline to work.
It happened only once, but  my clients were not very happy with it.

I HAD A VERY VERY BAD AFTER-SHOW (with clients), I CAN TELL YOU !.

i noticed that i had to set audio output to speakers, on my producer laptop, if i wanted to see the sound Icon back in the stage window.

NEXT ISSUE IS :

when starting watchout display software on display PC's.

it takes a very long time and sometimes not working at all, i had to hit CTRL + ALT +DEL to stop watchout display
and restart it again. (it take many seconds to start the 4 instances, i suppose one for each output).
i always use a shortcut to start watchout display in the taskbar (shortcut is WIN + 1)
no icons displayed on the screen, black background, hidden taskbar when not in us, etc...

i noticed that watchout display starts better if you go in the windows menu, go to programs,watchout, and then watchout display.
than using a shortcut, it crashes less with this method.
puting watchout display shortcut in windows startup folder, seems to not work very well,
so i disabled this (shell:startup ,remove wo display shortcut).

i saw on the forum,
i quote Jochri :
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1709 Fall Creators Upgrade => Stay away from it!!!!

1607/ 1703 =>Tested and save version. We did some big shows on it.
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i'm with 1709 so bad choice for me !

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While until now Intel Speed Step technology needs to be deactivated to prevent Watchout from running out of sync on the new Xeon-W CPUs
this feature must be activated to allow the CPU to go into turbo mode and use all the speed possible
___________________________________________________________________
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i disabled Intel SpeedStep technology, so bad choice for me again ?
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i quote Benoit
___________________________________________________________________

In Windows 10, Nvidia graphics cards could produce flickering image in a multi-display setup.
This issue is resolved in Nvidia Quadro drivers 385.77 and Nvidia Geforce drivers 388.00, or later.
___________________________________________________________________

i'm running Nvidia Quadro Driver 391.33 from 2018.3.27
so that is not the problem i think.

i quote Miro :
___________________________________________________________________
If you want to take it to the next level and maximize robustness then make the OS partition constant (read-only)
using the unified write filter that is provided by the enterprise versions.
Never start windows explorer/desktop because it spawns tons of unnecessary disturbing processes (that can cause frame drops)
and use the shell launcher to boot directly into WATCHOUT.

Sure professional processors will provide you with ECC memory (increasing stability) and more cache memory making video decoding more efficient
but Xeon W, Xeon Scalable or AMD Epyc might be overkill and too expensive for some setups.
But if you want to go hi-end then these are the best options designed for heavy 24-7 usage.

Constant systems either using file based write filter (FBWF, windows 7 embedded), enhanced write filter (EWF, windows 8.1 embedded) or
unified write filter (UWF, windows 10 "embedded" aka Enterprise LTSB) is great for long term stability.
Our WATCHPAX hardware is using FBWF by the way just for this purpose.
___________________________________________________________________

To never start windows explorer/desktop  is impossible or does that mean :
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each time you open a window explorer on display PC's
you have to restart display computers before playing ?
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how to start watchout manually (sometimes you need !) with shell ?
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how to had a delay to watchout display if it's in startup folder ?
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i think i have have ECC memory in the computer.
I can see ECC memory on NVIDIA's GPU config panel, does it need to be activated ?
two different operating modes for NVIDIA's GPU, one for computation and one for graphics
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which one to choose ?
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Vertical Sync is always on, is it a good choice or not  ?
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Can someone describe the process with unified write filter in win 10 ?
is it worth it, to get a more stable system ?
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With all these issues i didn't even try sync test at all but i'm afraid !

I know watchpax PC's are build with AMD 9100 so i hope NVIDIA's GPU are still compatible
with watchout.
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You can say why not buy watchpax or watchmax ?
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because we use PC's for something else sometimes,
rendering farm, other mediaserver software etc...
and i have a clone image for each use, and one for watchout of course.

 

Never have all these troubles when it was win 7 x64...

i think i have a bad configuration, not stable with WIN 10, most of my problems are certainly coming from PC's bad tuning.

I have another Big show coming next, i think i will go back to win 7 x64 a make a new install,

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BUT IS WATCHOUT 6.2.2 STILL WORKING WITH WIN 7 X64 ?
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I WILL FORGET WIN 10 FOR NOW UNTIL A TWEAKING LIST FOR THIS OS IS RELEASED,
AND WHICH STABLE VERSION OF WIN 10 MUST BE INSTALLED .
i know that dataton have legal stuff to deal with (thx Microsoft !)
and i can understand that.

 

Thx in advance for answers and sharing testers experience with this kind of troubles.

TAK.

[Benoit]

Hi MisterK,

That’s a big list !

It seems most of your issues are related to performance or stability of the server. May I suggest you should look to Watchmax or your local premium partner server (you’re based in France, no? It would be a pleasure to show you projects where we have 4x4K@50 per server with lots of video playing…)

To answer some of your questions:

- SpeedStep is supposed to be disabled on most CPU except for Xeon W, I don’t think your CPU is a Xeon W (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/xeon/w-processors.html)

- HAP is definitively the best choice for encoding, yes you can lose a bit of time when encoding or uploading but it works so better. The time you spend in preparation is generally saved later…

- If you start the explorer on the display server, yes you need to restart the server. But why do you need to start explorer?

- Miro (correct me I I’m wrong) talked about ECC but it’s for system RAM and not GPU (GPU is another story). I don’t think you have ECC RAM on your computer. The ECC memory modules are server grade and the issues you are facing are not related to that I think.

- Watchout 6.2.2 is still working with Windows 7 x64, if you’re not confident with Windows 10, stay to windows 7!

Feel free to call me if you want to discuss.

Best,

Benoit

[MISTERK]

On 13/04/2018 at 10:50 AM, Benoit said:

Hi MisterK,

That’s a big list !

It seems most of your issues are related to performance or stability of the server. May I suggest you should look to Watchmax or your local premium partner server (you’re based in France, no? It would be a pleasure to show you projects where we have 4x4K@50 per server with lots of video playing…)

To answer some of your questions:

- SpeedStep is supposed to be disabled on most CPU except for Xeon W, I don’t think your CPU is a Xeon W (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/xeon/w-processors.html)

- HAP is definitively the best choice for encoding, yes you can lose a bit of time when encoding or uploading but it works so better. The time you spend in preparation is generally saved later…

- If you start the explorer on the display server, yes you need to restart the server. But why do you need to start explorer?

- Miro (correct me I I’m wrong) talked about ECC but it’s for system RAM and not GPU (GPU is another story). I don’t think you have ECC RAM on your computer. The ECC memory modules are server grade and the issues you are facing are not related to that I think.

- Watchout 6.2.2 is still working with Windows 7 x64, if you’re not confident with Windows 10, stay to windows 7!

Feel free to call me if you want to discuss.

Best,

Benoit

Thanks for answers about ISS tech and ECC

As i said, No possibility for me to buy WatchMax, My Display PC's are not only dedicated to watchout !

so i have clone image for each use.

My decision is to go back to Win 7.

I know hap is good, but it's time-consuming and making files more bigger, in weight and bitrate/s

mpeg 2 is the best choice for me until now.

As is said i need from time to time to open explorer on Display PC's, so if just opening a window in win 10 is bad for the system reliability,

that means win 10 is not a good thing for me.

 

Regards

[caparellisergio]

Man, that must have been a hell of a show!  ?

Reading all  that stuff reafirms my decision to stick to win7 to the end of times. 

One thing that catched my attention was the mention of the read-only OS,  did you or anybody in the forum tried that setup?

 

[Alex Ramos]

I'm slowing changing my 50+ machines from Win 7 to Win 10 LTSB.

For me the problem with Win 7 is the limitation on some drivers for NVME drives and AMD drivers for 4K outputs.

Win 10 must be highly customised to work fine with WO.

Follow the:

If you have no need to use Win 10 keep using Win 7, don't change a winning team.

Even if you need Win 10 for some other applications other then WO, make a dual boot, or get some HDD bay for easy drive swap.