Miro
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Posts posted by Miro
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Nice and very well written post Jochri! =)
When putting together system critical hardware it doesn't make any sense to use the current branch (CB) or current branch for business (CBB) of Windows. Long term servicing branch (LTSB) is the way to go.
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.
Dual CPUs might make things worse due to a lot of added overhead in memory sharing between the CPUs. You won't get 2x gain with dual processors and in some cases this might be counterproductive (like intense HAP playback). This is the reason behind Xeon Scalable and AMD Epyc which are basically multiple processors packaged as one sharing the same silicon in order to minimize overhead.
//Miro
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Have you tried to re-build the cache? Both on the production computer and the display server(s)?
//Miro
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Luca, it might be possible to configure the playback device in windows to a 7.1 output device. In this case you can use it as a multi-channel WASAPI device in WATCHOUT.
Using ASIO4ALL you can probably setup an 8 channel output in the ASIO4ALL control panel. Additionally some motherboard manufacturers are supplying ASIO drivers for their onboard audio chips. For example my dell laptop audio drivers comes with native ASIO support (Realtek). Did you install the drivers from Asrock or are you using generic ones?
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Michele, unfortunately this is a limitation/bug in 6.2 and we are working on a solution. Also the playhead is reset when recalling a layout preset and this one will also be solved in an upcoming bugfix release.
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Thomas, compared to 6.1.6 the selected audio device is initialized as well as the NDI listener (so it can populate the combo box with available NDI devices).
If your selected audio device is broken or has a damaged driver then the production interface could hang or crash on startup. In this case it would help to disconnect the problematic audio device and try to open WATCHOUT again.
What type of media item does your show file contain? What you also can do is to check the Window's event viewer and look for clues under Windows Logs->Application.
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Hey, also check that you only have one network adapter active so you don't broadcast on network port 1 while your gear is connected to a network on port 2. On a laptop I would enter airplane mode to disable the wifi in order to force all traffic through the wired network adapter.
The subnet mask is used to narrow down the broadcast range. In most setups the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 which allows you to broadcast to class C subnet. As example, if your IP is 192.168.0.12 you can broadcast to all 192.168.0.xxx addresses (255 destinations). But if your light gear is located in a different subnet like 192.168.1.xxx the artNet commands will not reach those devices. You can modify the subnet mask to 255.255.254.0 in order to reach both subets (192.168.0 and 192.168.1). Double check your ip addresses and network settings.
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Which version of windows 10 did you test and which AMD drivers? If hardware sync is not important then 4x 4K works fine with W5100 or better (probably works fine with W4100 too but I haven't tested that one).
Here is a picture from my tests running 4x 4K 60 Hz using AMD W5100 in a Win10 x64 Enterprise LTSB server.
Also make sure to run the same display mode on all displays.. Some cards seems to default to using 8-bit color depth on some ports and 10-bit color depth on others. Set all to 8-bit.
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Hi, frame sync happens over network so that all devices are rendering the same frame at the same time. Scan sync or genlock means that the scan out of the ports of the GPU are synchronized. A synchronization card can also achieve genlock across several GPUs/servers.
If two GPUs are not connected using a synchronization card the following will happen:
- Even if booth GPUs are rendering at 60 Hz they will not scan out/transmit the signal at the same time and will be out of phase. They will render the correct frame (frame sync) but there might be a slight offset between the display devices (mostly not noticeable)
- The timing devices in each GPU are not synchronized so the perception of time is a bit different. Both of the GPUs will render at 60 Hz relative their internal clock, but relative to the production computer (cluster master) clock they might actually render at 59.9999 and 60.00001 Hz.. The slower GPU will need to drop a frame after some time while the faster GPU will need to duplicate a frame after a while.
If using synchronization cards but having a bad network might result in bad frame sync.. Even if all GPUs will keep the exact 60 Hz timing and scan out the signals to the displays at the same time, the rendered content might be out of sync. The clock time stamp from the master will be multicasted using UDP. On a normal setup this time stamp can have an offset of +- 0.5 milliseconds (in 60 Hz each frame time is 16.666667 ms) between servers. In extremely rare cases this could result in that a video frame would be scheduled into the incorrect display frame causing a very brief mismatch between what is shown on the outputs.
On Nvidia and AMD GPUs (pro and gamer versions) all outputs are automatically genlocked if they output a signal with the same timing (same resolution and refresh rate).
Hope this make some sense..
//Miro
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Hey, I just tested the Echo Audio Fire 12. Works fine with the ASIO driver and all 12 outputs works as expected.
WATCHOUT 6.2 doesn't have any support for time code input through ASIO yet but it will come in a minor update version soon (6.2.2). This is a bit limiting since ASIO takes exclusive control over the whole sound device, which makes it impossible to use the directsound input from the Echo simultaneously.
We also discovered a multi-channel WASAPI bug in WATCHOUT that is corrected in version 6.2.1 which makes it possible to use 8 outputs and TC input from the Echo Audio Fire 12. WATCHOUT 6.2.1 is finalized this week and released in the beginning of next year.
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Which version of WATCHOUT? 6.2 doesn't have this problem and doesn't have any confusing checkboxes either. For RME, use the ASIO driver.
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Which OS? I haven't tested the sync card properly but in Win10 you will have 6x 4k outputs. There is a bug in AMD's win7 drivers preventing more than 3x 4k DirectX9 surfaces.
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Hi, audio is treated separately on each WATCHOUT device. You can use ASIO4All in your case too and you only need to install in on the computer where you want to output your audio.
On the display server, you can select the ASIO4ALL device in the menu Audio Out->Audio Device after you entered window mode, either locally by pressing Ctrl+W or using the remote access functionality from the production interface.
There shouldn't really be much to configure but if you want to be on the safe side I would recommend to increase the buffer size. Audio is pretty complex and for any optimizations/tweaking i would recommend you to read this one: https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209071469-Optimizing-Windows-for-Audio
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I see, in this case it's important to know which GPU you are using and which driver since it might be a driver/GPU related bug.
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Hi, if you get a warning that "Multi channel audio renderer is not available" this indicates that WATCHOUT wasn't properly installed. This can occur if you update the WATCHOUT version on the display server through the production computer without running WATCHOUT (WATCHPOINT) as admin on the display server.
Solution to this problem:
- Uninstall WATCHOUT on the display server
- Install WATCHOUT 6.2 on the display server
In the update process of WATCHOUT 6.2, important components needs to be installed and without administrative rights this is not possible. The installer elevates it's privileges to get administrative rights but WATCHOUT doesn't (because this involves user interaction which might be hard on the display server). Therefore it's recommended to run WATCHOUT on the display server (WATCHPOINT.EXE) with administrative rights in order to get the remote software update working correctly. Otherwise files will get copied but not installed.
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Hi, which version of WATCHOUT did you use? If you can send a dropbox link to a show that displays this problem to support@dataton.com we can have a look at it. I also assume that the signal isn't lost to the display but that WATCHOUT renders only the background (transmits only black pixels to the display).
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You can use Spout to NDI or Syphon to NDI if use want to get output from mac applications..
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Hi, with the performance updates in WATCHOUT 6.2 it's now possible to play 4x 4K@60Hz using HAP.
We tested this last week with filmed content (less compression than animated/CGI content). At average we pulled 785 MB/sec from the SSD drives (Max read speed of ~1050 MB/sec). The problem in this case is that you will fill the 1 TB drive very quickly.
The Nvidia GPU will automatically genlock the outputs if the output timing of all ports are equal. We measured the offset between the outputs using an oscilloscope and the WATCHPAX4 outputs where better synchronized (a few nanoseconds) than outputs on a AMD FirePro 7100 + S400 card.
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H264 level limitation in WATCHOUT 6.2
Hi, the updated H264 decoder in WATCHOUT 6.2 has a level 5.2 limitation. It’s a third-party codec not developed by Dataton so this limitation is outside of our control. The codec update was necessary to eliminate important bugs. This level limitation shouldn’t really be a big problem for most users since most video editing tools have the same level 5.2 limitation in their encoder. In more extreme scenarios where huge and odd resolutions are required this may be a problem but there are workarounds!
Each level in H.264 is basically a combination of constraints like the maximum number of luma samples per second and the maximum number of macroblocks per second. The number of luma samples equals the number pixels and a macroblock is 16x16 pixels.
In level 5.2 the maximum number of pixels per second equals 530 841 600. For example:
- A DCI 4k footage at 60 frames per second: 4096 x 2160 x 60 = 530 841 600 luma samples/s which is exactly at the limit.
- A super wide video for a custom LED wall at 60 Hz: 8192 x 1024 x 60 = 503 316 480 luma samples/s is slightly below the limit.
Videos with a higher luma count will be encoded using a higher level then 5.2 and will not be rendered in WATCHOUT 6.2!
The easiest workaround would be to export the video as HAP or HAPQ but in some cases the large file size of HAPs causes problems when it comes to distribution of the files from a remote producer over internet.
Some encoders like x264 can be forced to use a certain level despite of the luma count. You will get a bunch of warnings, but it doesn’t stop the encoding process. In WATCHOUT the decoder checks only the level of the video and if it’s lower or equal then 5.2 it will play even if it’s an 8k60 video.
For example, you can use ffmpeg to transcode an 8k (7680 x 4320@60fps) video with a forced level:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -refs 2 -level 5.2 -profile:v high -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 30 -bf 0 -b:v 200M output.mp4
And this video will play successfully in WATCHOUT if your CPU is powerful enough.
//Miro
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Hi,
We made some substantial changes in WATCHOUT 6.2 in how audio is rendered. We have limited the audio output selection to a single device. This might cause problems for users that are using the internal audio device on a WATCHMAX because you can only use two channels using the WASAPI interface.
The solution to be able to output all 8 channels is to install ASIO4All and use the ASIO interface in WATCHOUT instead. It should look like in the image below:
The lower latency in ASIO might result in buffer underruns if you push the CPU too hard, simply because the small size of the buffer. It might therefore be a good idea to increase the buffer size a bit proving a better margin. Buffer underruns are heard like tiny clicks.
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Hi, this is a slightly embarrassing error in the installer resulting that .watch extensions are not associated with WATCHOUT. We corrected this and replaced the installer. Uninstall WATCHOUT, get the updated installer and install again.
Your missing .exe extension problem seems a bit odd. Haven't seen that one before. What browser and OS are you using?
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Hi, for video capture we only support devices that use the generic Microsoft USB Video Class drivers. We don't install any proprietary capture drivers on the WATCHPAX units. For Epiphan you must use the AV.io family of capture devices:
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Hi, does it make any difference setting the GPU power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance"? You will find this setting in the Nvidia control panel->3D settings->manage 3D settings.
We had crosstalk issues with some motherboards where a re-clocking of the GPU frequency would result in crack/pop in the audio interface. By running the GPU at maximum no re-clocking would occur.
//Miro
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There are also a lot of under the hood updates in 6.2. HAP playback performance has been optimized and for some devices the performance has doubled. Also MPEG-2 and H.264 playback performance has been increased by at least 10%.
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Hi Andrew, for the current branch of win 10 you need the anniversary update or later and multi display will work. The problem was that microsoft introduced a bug that prevented the creation of multiple synchronized windows in directx in the early versions of windows 10 which they resolved in the anniversary edition.
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WATCHOUT 6.2 - Available NOW!
in WATCHOUT FORUM
Posted
Hi Dorian,
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.
For your off topic question. WATCHOUT 6.2 is using NDI v3. Multicasting is taking place in the NDI transmitter and for the receiver it make no difference if multicasted or not. The dynamic image server software can be configured to use multicasting though WATCHOUT. Previous versions used RTSP and since 6.2 the image server is using NDI with alpha channel.