Miro
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Posts posted by Miro
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We have decided to reschedule the public release of WATCHOUT 6.2 to late summer/early fall in order to include new elements and finalise quality assurance in the redesigned audio engine. However, as most of the other key features, such as NDI support, are well tested and considered finished we will provide betas on request until the public release. We know that 6.2 is eagerly awaited and do apologise for this delay. If you would like to participate in the beta program, please send a mail to support@dataton.com.
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Thomas, LTSB versions of Windows10 doesn't include any apps, games, cortana, store etc. and therefore is pretty easy to configure.
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Hi, WATCHOUT is working fine in Windows 10.
It's a bit harder to configure regular Windows 10 for 24-7 usage without any interrupting processes and for that I could only recommend LTSB versions that are intended for embedded systems.
There is a NVIDIA driver bug which may cause flickering on displays when using different display devices on the same GPU. This seems to be related to Microsoft's WDDM 2.0 (Windows Display Driver Model) which was introduced in Windows 10. Nvidia is working on this and hopefully they will have a solution available soon.
For WATCHOUT Production, please turn off the "Scroll inactive windows when I hover over them" feature in the mouse settings since this is causing an annoying scrolling behavior.
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We are exploring the options of adding NDI outputs as it would be useful in many ways. I cannot give you any more details.
//Miro
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Hi, looking straight up or down is causing undefined behavior and will be resolved in later versions. In the meanwhile simply rotate your 3d object(s) -90 degrees instead.
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Just double checking.. is the wifi adapter on the laptop off? No firewalls? Other clients had similar problems with switches that had IGMP snooping enabled which caused a delay of the multicast packages sent by WATCHOUT but that mostly occurs while going online.
As jfk pointed out make sure you are running the laptop in high performance power mode and not in the balanced mode. Which version of WATCHOUT are you running? What do you mean with after some time. Are we talking minutes, hours, days or weeks?
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Hey, the position calibration of the 3d projector (virtual camera) in WATCHOUT will remain constant and you need to sync the virtual car's rotation with the real one. Best would be too slave both WATCHOUT and the rotating platform to timecode. The other alternative is to use a third party tracking system but this will introduce a small lag.
The tricky part here is that WATCHOUT at the moment doesn't have automatic masking for 3D projections. So you need to do the masks by hand. You can set up static mask's on the time line that you interpolate. Like a mask for each 20 degree step in the rotation or so. And by mask I mean to place a textured quad between the 3D projector and 3d object. Its doable but a bit tricky and time consuming. The other alternative for masking is to bake the masking into a UV-mapped video on the 3D model using a 3D editor/engine like Unity 3D. Is this case you need to import the calibrated 3D projector positions into the 3D editor to get it right,
Best Regards,
Miro
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WATCHNET 1.4 has been released and you can download it here. There has been massive improvements increasing reliability and stability. The major highlights are:
It is now possible to configure and connect to Production Computers and control them just like WATCHOUT clusters from panels and scripts.
The text panel item has been enhanced and now includes a dynamic text option which enables WATCHOUT input values and current time of Main/Aux Timelines to be displayed on the text item.
- A selection of well-known protocols for controlling external devices are now shipped with the WATCHNET installation and can be found under "Devices".
Full release notes can by found here: https://www.dataton.com/watchnet-release-notes0 -
Hi, there are three prores codecs in FFmpeg (prores, prores_aw and prores_ks) and the default one is no good. Try the prores_ks instead. Also use the -chunks option to specify the number of chunks for multi-threaded decoding.
//Miro
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Hi Mario, the latest firmware on WATCHPAX2 supports USB video capture using Microsoft's generic USB Video Class drivers.
The Magewell USB devices works fine and we are also recommending epiphan ones: https://www.epiphan.com/products/avio-sdi/
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WATCHOUT 6.1.6 has been released and you can download it here: http://www.dataton.com/downloads/watchout
Release notes:
Dataton WATCHOUT® version 6.1.6This version focuses on fixing bugs as well as some improvements.Improvements- Improved performance of live video media.
- Improved performance of hardware-accelerated video playback.
- Messages in the message window can be copied to the clipboard.
- Improved network video functionality that indirectly adds support for additional network cameras.
Bug fixes- Hardware-accelerated video would sometimes not use the full color range, for example black would not appear totally black.
- Seeking in a hardware-accelerated video would result in a frame that is about half a second in the future.
- Seeking in a hardware-accelerated MPEG-2 video would show the first frame of the video.
- A warning message could pop up when controlling WATCHMAKER externally.
- Double-clicking a display in the Stage window would sometimes not bring the corresponding dialog window to the front.
- Right-clicking on a display mask gradient curve would result in the wrong menu.
- Media cues using "Anchor as local vanishing point" would sometimes disappear.
- Looping a composition containing another composition did not work.
- Playing a video for more than one week would result in stuttering playback.
- Deleting time, using the "Insert/Delete Time" command, would sometimes yield an unwanted result.
- Virtual displays with very low resolution, such as 2 pixels in width or height, could cause rendering errors.
- Image sequences with file names containing only numbers (for example 0001.tiff, 0002.tiff etc) did not work.
Known issues
- Hardware-accelerated video decoding will be disabled for looping media.
- Seeking can produce image artifacts for hardware-accelerated H.264 video.
- Hardware-accelerated video may be rendered one frame late while playing.
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Something seems to be really wrong with your network setup.
- Are you running any firewalls?
- Is the production computer and the display computers on the same subnet?
- Are all computers on the same VLAN?
- If you are using a managed switch, test to replace it with an unmanaged switch to see if there is a problem in your switch configuration.
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When running the h.264 files did you monitor the CPU usage to see if it peaks? When the h.264 videos are starting to drop frames then sync between the videos will fail.
We updated the h.264 codecs in 6.1.5 with better memory handling. You could try re-building the show cache and test the new version to see if it helps. Another option is to use MPEG-2 which consumes less resources in decoding then h.264.
If your storage can handle the HAPQ bandwidth then it's probably the preferred solution running a single file. Just make sure you encode it with chunks to take advantage of multiple threads in the decoding.
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Ricky, On most modern capture devices it shouldn't be necessary because each input normally maps to individual directshow devices. However if you have a capture device where multiple physical connectors (HDMI, SDI, etc.) turns up as a single directshow device then you can hint which connector type to select using the drop-down menu in the advanced tab.
In older WATCHOUT versions this drop-down was mostly confusing because it was just a hint which in most cases never were used. In 6.1.5 we added a default option to this drop-down which let's the capture device decide which input to use. Since most users don't need to care about this drop-down menu we therefore moved it to the advanced tab to simplify the user interface.
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Hi, please report bugs to support[at]dataton.com instead of the forum or contact your local dealer, which usually is one of our partners at: https://www.dataton.com/partners
I couldn't reproduce the issue using 5.5.2. I simply added three images inside a composition. Added the composition on the main timeline with an opacity tween track. No movement's.
For WATCHOUT 5.5.2 we are collecting the bug reports but the priority to compile a 5.5.3 bugfix version is very low.
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Hi, please report bugs to support[at]dataton.com instead of the forum.
I just tested this in 6.1.4 and 6.1.5 and it works. It might be a good idea to clear the show cache on the server. You can find this in the menu:
Stage->Manage Display Computer->Re-build Show Cache.
The pre-rolling is driver dependent. Default settings should be fine for most users but if the driver is slow a longer pre-roll might be required.
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WATCHOUT runs on Windows10 anniversary update but there are some bugs in the graphics drivers from AMD and Nvidia which we are not in control of.
Changing the resolution and refresh rate from WATCHOUT doesn't work for some drivers and the workaround is to simply set these settings in the GPU control panel or in Windows desktop settings. Nvidia GPU:s cause flicker/noise in the image when running on multiple displays.
AMD have a bug in Windows 7 where 4x 4K outputs are not working and we haven't tested this in Windows 10 yet but we suspect that the issue is there too.
Both Nvidia and AMD are working to solve these issues but it's outside of our control. Other features related to Microsoft drivers works actually better in Windows 10 like USB video capture and USB audio. Also keep in mind that there are a lot of processes in Windows 10 using the GPU and this interference can cause dropped frames. The best thing is simply to never start explorer when starting Windows (because explorer.exe spawns a lot of other processes which uses valuable resources and can interfere with WATCHOUT). There is no need to run the desktop and taskbar when running a display server.
For the Windows 10 certification we are waiting for the Windows 10 creators update since it's a significant update. Microsoft are usually known to fix one bug and introduce a new one. First version of Windows 10 worked fine with WATCHOUT and then in a update Microsoft broke the multi-monitor directx9 functionality. They resolved this issue in the anniversary update but introduced new graphical issues. Microsoft seems to focus everything on directx12 and don't really test the compatibility with older graphics APIs like directx9 and 11 (10 is no longer supported). From our point of view we can't really upgrade to directx 12 because it's unsupported in Windows 7 & 8.
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Hi, most video editing tool and encoding tools seems to encode h.264 for web usage where smallest file size is desired. This results in more complex coding where more hardware resources are utilized. For WATCHOUT is doesn't really matter if the mp4 files will get slightly larger for the same quality but with lower complexity. If bi-directional frames are not used the CPU and memory usage is usually reduced by 50%. It's also possible to disable loop back filtering but that can introduce banding so the bit-rate needs to be increased. Also for faster seeking the intra frame interval (group of picture size) can be decreased from 300 to 30.
With ffmpeg you can try this:
ffmpeg.exe -i input -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset slow -profile:v main -g 30 -bf 0 -b:v 30M -y "output.mp4"
And for more optimizations:
ffmpeg.exe -i input -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset slow -tune fastdecode -profile:v baseline -g 30 -bf 0 -b:v 40M -y "output.mp4"
Where bf=number of b-frames, g=group of pictures (I-frame interval), b:v=bitrate for video- The fastdecode tune removes all loopback filters and should also set b-frames to 0. The -c:a simply copies the encoded audio input stream to the audio output stream. Hope this helps. You can adjust the bitrate settings to match your needs.
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Yes, you are correct. You might also disable the intel GPU in the BIOS settings for certain hardware.
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WATCHOUT 6.1.5 has been released and you can download it here: http://www.dataton.com/downloads/watchout
Release notes:
Dataton WATCHOUT® version 6.1.5
This version introduces support for the new WATCHPAX 4 media player.
Improvements
- Overall improved hardware-accelerated video playback performance on WATCHPAX devices.
- Added support for hardware-accelerated MPEG-2 video decoding on WATCHPAX devices.
- Updated the list of available resolutions to choose from when creating a 2D Display/Projector.
- The live video dialog has been simplified and improved.
- Improved USB video capture support and performance. For example, UHD 4K video capture over USB is now possible.
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Added option to use single audio renderer.
- Maintains inter-channel synchronization (no phase shifting).
- Bypasses WATCHOUT’s internal mixer and maps channels directly to the default audio playback device. The ability to route channels and set volume per channel is disabled.
- MP3 and AAC files can be played in WATCHOUT.
- The lower limit of the width/distance ratio of a 3D mapping projector is decreased to 0.25, to support short-throw projectors.
- Added synchronized start, play and pause for http video.
- Fixed a bug that could appear when double clicking a WAV media.
- Fixed a bug in handling of dropped frames for hardware accelerated video.
- Fixed a bug that could cause stuttering when using a generic input to affect a media cue on a display computer.
- Fixed a bug that prevented 8-bit wav files to play (time code files).
- Hardware-accelerated video decoding will be disabled for looping media.
- Seeking can produce image artifacts for hardware-accelerated H.264 video.
- Hardware-accelerated video is rendered one frame late.
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The old datapath vision RGB has probably the same performance as Magewell resulting in 4-5 frames capture latency. The new datapath SC range performs much better (2-3 frames latency).
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Hi, some browsers forbid mixing https and unsecure websockets so we moved the remote app to an unsecured http location instread: http://app.dataton.com/remote/
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Hi, for the production interface Windows10 works just fine. We are using dell XPS laptops in house equipped with either skylake or kaby lake processors.
On the display server side I mostly tested Skylake so far but we will test newer hardware soon as well. The only issue we have with intel GPUs and windows 10 is that we cannot set the resolution and refresh rate from WATCHOUT. The intel GPUs seems to ignore all resizing requests so the workaround is to setup everything correctly in Intel's graphic properties user interface.
However, the kaby lake processor available at the moment have only the low-end GPUs (Intel HD Graphics 615-630) and I would wait for the Iris and Iris Pro series (640, 650 and 680). The low end GPUs have a much lower fill rate (filling the pixels on the screen, including all layers) compared to the Iris series. But if you only want to connect 1-2 HD displays then it should be fine. It also seems that the frame scheduling is not as accurate which can lead to dropped frames.
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WATCHOUT 6.2
in WATCHOUT FORUM
Posted
The current version works in Win10 and so will 6.2. You will get most reliability with LTSB versions. For current branch (CB) you need the anniversary update or later. The consumer versions like home and pro are not really recommended since they come shipped with a lot of junk and takes too much time to configure.