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I'm working quite often with watchout and artnet and I can understand that this can be very frustrating. Most of the pitfalls have been named already. - You have to be online to send artnet from the production computer - You shouldn't have more than one active network interface - Your production computer need to have a network route to your artnet receiver. If you don't have a router and aren't a network pro that usually means that both devices have to be in the same network subnet (within a subnet network packets are transmitted without a router) - Some artnet receivers are only listening to artnet traffic on ip range 2.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x. Some even fool you because you can set up a different administration ip adress and they still only listen to the specified artnet adresses. The most compatible range is 2.x.x.x with a netmask of 255.0.0.0 - Artnet is (most often still) a UDP broadcast protocol. So there is no destination IP, to select a receiver you need a network port number which is called universe number in artnet. That is a little tricky point because different devices generate the port number in different ways. In watchout the port number is the same as the universe number and it is entered as a decimal number. In other products you often find terms like network, subnet and universe which relate to the original artnet specification. They don't have to do with IP adresses, they are just the original artnet way of generating the port number and sometimes they have to be entered in hexadecimal notation. The easiest way is to set everything to the lowest possible value. As already mentioned this is the next pitfall as some devices start at 0 and some at 1. So be prepared to juggle a little bit with a +-1 offset. - Make sure you only have one device transmitting a specific universe. If you are not sure start with only one transmitting device at all. If more than one device is transmitting to the same universe this can lead to an unpredictable result. - Most artnetmeter and artnet test programs are not suited well to troubleshoot artnet problems because they just show the values of an artnet universe and don't give you underlying network information. If you are a little nerdy you can try Ethereal, if you prefer a higher level use Artnetominator. Generally I would whish that the artnet got a few more options from Dataton. In my opinion it would help a lot if I could have more network interfaces and could chose one or more for the display control, one or more for artnet, one or more for remote tcp or udp control... Dorian

This is getting slightly off topic, but I have to tell you, that I simply love the write filter. I built a bunch of machines for an installation five years ago and used Win 7 embedded with EWF enabled. The system reboots every night, which takes about 20 seconds. The systems are operating 24/7 for five years without any problem and are as fast as at the first day. Back on topic. Since the User manual isn't online yet and I can't check myself at the moment: is the NDI input capable of NDI v3? Especially does multicast work? I'm planning to use NDI for the first time next week with 7 display computers and four NDI streams. Without multicast this would result in 28 streams and that could be too many even for my 10GB network. Dorian

jochri, you are right if you want to playback uncompressed image sequences. But then you not only need fast transfer speed but also large capacity raids. The average user will playout h.264 and HAP. I still use h.264 most often and can reach very good quality with it. So everything not uncompressed shouldn't drive the m.2 storage to continous load. The NVME PCI SSDs on the other hand can also be recommended without doubt. Dorian

Hardware is a very fast changing topic, especially if you ask for the "best". Here is what I would recommend at the moment. Good Intel CPU, at least octacore, e.g.: Intel Core i7-6950X Don't forget some high performance cooling A good X99 motherboard, this one has 10GB Ethernet on board: ASUS X99-E-10G WS Fastest compatible RAM, at least 16GB: ADATA XPG Z1 gold DIMM, DDR4-3333, CL16-16-16-39 Fastest storage you can afford for data, e.g.: Samsung SSD 960 PRO 1TB, M.2 Some other SSD for system Don't invest too much in graphics power, what you need is a: AMD FirePro W8000 or even W7000 will do But you need a sync board: ATI FirePro S400 For the case I would go with proven professional standard: Supermicro SuperChassis 745TQ-R920B If you want to have input cards for SDI or HDMI or DP go for Datapath If you are in a rental environment I definitely would recommend woodracks, or case in case or whatever you call them. It is a small wooden 19" rack containing only the computer. You can stack the woodracks and transport them in several standard boxes. It is a good idea to transport accessories with the computer but it is a very bad idea to do so in a rack drawer which is fixed in the same rack with the computer. If you have a production with ten or so computers you don't want to have ten drawers too. Dorian

Congratulations! Is there an updated user manual too? The manual download still points to the 6.1 manual. Dorian

That's why I say "full and easy", you still have to chose the point to control with the mouse. Maybe a,s,d,w to navigate beween the points and A,S,D,W to chose the four bezier handles. It can't be larger than the screen, but sometimes has to. Also often I have two or more windows open at the same time to adjust two adjectant or overlapping projectors. So I like to have two windows side by side, but then the screens get tiny. And another thing: Vertices of masks are only shown while they are inside the screen. Also what about keyboard control of mask points? After rotate, move and scale there stands ®, (M) ans (S) but for me only moving works with the arrow keys. And here is a new one: It is nearly impossible to create a real good projector blend with masks instead of the default blend because you can only adjust one gradient at a time. It would be great to have a gradient pool where I can add gradients as I like and then only use one of the gradients in my masks. When changing the gradient in the pool all masks which use it should be updated instantly. When changing one instance of the gradient there should be a dialog wether to change the pool gradient or to proceed with a new copy of the gradient. If you like you can extend this concept to all keyframes. Maybe a new Pool-Window. If I have a custom position which I want to keep for later I copy the Position keyframe to the Pool-Window and give it a name. I I want to reuse the keyframe I pull it from the Pool-Window to the tween track. If I change the data in the Prototype all instances will be updated.

First of all: thank you for the good work over the last years. I like the stability of watchout and my topmost request is keep the robustness. Regarding new features, many have been requested over and over again. My points are: - Grids. I'd like to have user adjustable magnetic grids in the timelines for placing objects according to that grid and and within objects for placing tween keyframes. For example I'd love to have a 1 frame grid for the timeline and a 0,5 seconds grid for the objects. - In-timeline trimming of the in-point. When I have to cut off a movie at the beginning, it is always a two step process: adjusting in-point and lenght accordingly. If there are keyframes they have to be adjusted too. It would be so much easier being able to just move the leading edge of an object to do all this in one go. - Enhancing live geometry correction. When doing geometry correction you have to keep your eyes on the stage and not on the production computer. It would be nice to have visual markers to see which points you are correcting, a grid overlay and also full and easy keyboard control over the anchor points. - A blur tween track. I need this quite often either to compensate for the vertical video syndrom or to temporary blur a top secret video during rehersals. - A edge feather tween track. I can do this with four gradients and multiply mode or luma masking, but this takes a lot of time and time is precious if your client just came up with this fancy new image which has to be blended in the composition smoothly. Perfect solution would be to extend the cornes and crop tween with "soft width" values (off course separate values for each edge) - Build up 3D-mapping strenghs. At the moment they are neither one thing nor the other. It's 3D-mapping light. First of all I'd like to have more accurate (larger) calibration window, visualization of the 3D mesh while mapping, snapping of the markers to mesh vertices. So you make at least usable what is already there. Later we can talk about 3D edge feathering. - Network stream input is cool but I haven't seen it being used yet. NDI input on the other hand can be game changing, especially when using NDI with alpha. - Ability to use any keyboard keypress as Aux-triggers - Midi out - Being able to have different resolutions on different displays of one display computer - Countdown has been requested numerous times. I got used to use my little countdown movie. Would it be so difficult to maybe have a countdown control cue and a little countdown field next to the time position which always shows the time from playhead to the next countdown cue. I think the one good point about watchout always has been it's simplicity, but sometimes things are getting over complicated to achieve just by the intend to keep the software simple. So none of my points is breaking the look and feel of watchout, it's just evolving. Thank you Dorian

I send you the files at support@dataton Dorian

Hi everyone, I just had two errors in a Watchout show with version 6.1.6 and wonder if anyone has seem similar errors. 1. I had one display with non working opacity tween. Instead of the normal opacity behavior, which makes the object transparent, the opacity tween made the objects darker until nearly fully black and when they reached black they suddenly became transparent. After a restart of the display computer everything was normal again. So a restart fixed that issue. 2. I have one movie object (mp4, h.264, aac) which sometimes is not rendered on one display computer. It renders fine on the second display computer and most of the times also on the first one. But not all of the times. Both display computers have same hardware and same software image (Win 8.1 Pro). Dorian

Now (9 days later) the show is over and I used to disable the 1GB NIC. How does Watchout pick the NIC? I didn't try reordering them. Does it use the first NIC? In alphabetical order or whichever NIC seems to have the most compatibel IP range to the display computers? Also what about artnet? I often have artnet receivers in a different subnet and then I add a secondary IP to my NIC. Can I use a second NIC for that? Which NIC is chosen for artnet by default? Thanks Dorian

The show is not converted from an older version, it is brand new. The color issue of course is only at the displays, at production computer I just have the default icon for the video-proxy. HAP 12 shouldn't be the issue because there is no difference in the generated files itself to earlier HAP versions, the difference is only in compatibility to encoder applications. Dorian

I have checked this, all Files are HAP Q, all 50fps, all 1920x1200, all mov container, all play fine when not within media proxy. but as pre-split movies they show the render error. There is no preview or thumbnail so far. The files have been coded with Aftereffects and HAP v12. Watchout 6.1.2, Windows 8.1

Watchout 6.1.2, HAP v11 and also tested with brand new v12 (but the HAP version shouldn't make any difference). I can use and play a HAP file but I can't use the same files when they are in a proxy. From within the proxy I see very strange manly green decoding. Dorian

Hi guys, I have a strange topic with a new network infrastructure. The production computer has built-in 1GB ethernet and this one is working fine. To speed up media distribution the whole system is equipped with 10GB ethernet now and with 10GB at the display computers and 1GB at the production computer still everything is fine. When I now use the 10GB port at the production computer, I still can update and distribute media, but I loose control over the timeline. I guess update uses TCP and timeline control UDP or something else, but I don't know. Does anybody have a good hint where to look for the reason of the problem? Thanks Dorian

Is there any news for the HAP in video-proxy with presplit movies? It still doesn't seem to work.