fraggle

Hi everybody! I had an issue with a display computer disconnecting after long periods of inactivity. It was weird because the computer wasn't gonig to sleep and it didn't shut down. But when the production computer wasn't sending content for what seemed like more than a minute, the connection would be lost, and the only way to fix it would be to restart the display computer. We found that adding a black solid under everything that was playing the whole time was enough to maintain the connection, but I've never run into the issue on other machines

That's amazing to know, if EOS was running a cue to trigger a Watchout task, what would they need to send? Do you know if it could also be done through a macro? Could an EOS macro do the same thing as the fader to control ArtNet?

Is it possible to trigger a task from the EOS lighiting board? All of the cues are triggered through MIDI but the light board op who is also maintaining video will be a little far from the video system keyboard and monitor. I currently have tasks set up to switch to the backup watchout system, but is there a way to trigger the tasks easily from the light board without moving the playhead from where it currently is?

Does anybody know of an easy way to change watchout preferences through let's say tasks? This could be helpful in that I could make a task to enable/diable MIDI quickly. Or in another specific case, changing the display cluster name when I want to switch to my backup system in the middle of a show?

For all of those who were struggling like me and couldn't find any straighforward answers, I finally have some solutions after a lot of trial and error. In my specific example, I left the Art-Net setip on manual. The only numbers you really want to change is the Universe and Start Address. More on those specific numbers later. In my case, I had 4 panasonic projectors. I learned that you have to set a dummy DMX output in Watchout for Panasonic that's set to 1 at all times. If I had a projector on Universe 1, then I would send data to Universe 1 on Channel 512. I guess Panasonic doesn't like listening to Watchout unless something is getting sent to every channel on a universe. Theoretically you could set every projector to different universes with a starting address of 1, you would just need to send a dummy cue to each of those universes. I learned that you could set one dummy cue to Universe 255 and it would send something to everything, but that might be too extreme. You could set all projectors to the same universe and offset the starting address. So I guess you could do Projector 1 at Universe 1, Starting Address 1 and Projetor 2 at Universe 1, Starting Address 50. So Projector 2's channel would start at 50. Each projector theoretically only takes up 11 channels, but to be safe, you could create bigger offsets. But this way, you only need to send one dummy cue to one universe. You also have to set an output in Watchout to Enable Artnet. In this case, if I'm using Art-Net setup 1, I would send something to Universe 1, Channel 7. After that, you might want to delete the enable output in Watchout because that's where things got sticky. You could also then change the channel in a custom user profile on the projector and get rid of the Enable feature once it's set. Alterntively, you just have to make sure Enable is always set to 1 in Watchout. I also discovered that when you initially Enable Art-Net on one of the default profiles, the projector powered off because Watchout sends 0 to the other channels in that universe because of the dummy 512 channel and by default, 0 to the Power channel, powers off the projector. For projectors where you can't set a custom art-net user profile, you have to send the neutral default values. For example, I believe for Panasonic, you want ot send 50% to Lens Shift H and V for it to do nothing. I also found that sometimes commands weren't being received by the projector at all, so I turned off Art-Net under Art-Net setup and turned it back on. I would also delete the outputs in Watchout and recreate them and then it would work. I hope this helps someone else because it sure was a journey for me, even though this has been a feature for many years. This process is also different for other projectors. From what I hear, it's pretty straightforward for Barco, but for Epson, you have to potentially set more dummy channels.

Attached is my project file. I would appreciate any ideas. For reference, we have 4 Panasonic projectors. My thought had been to put each projector on its own universe and have them each have a start address of 1. HowToBreak MAIN.watch

Hi all, thanks for your responses so far. I am online and I go an artnet monitor. I added the output universe and channel. I can see from my other computer that the production computer is outputting data from universe 2, channel 7, but if I'm reading the artnet monitor correctly,the data doesn't seem to be reaching the projectors. Is it possible it's the IP address? I currently have everything on a 10.101.100.x on subnet mask 255.0.0.0. Under the projector settings, it had "Art-Net SETUP" and I set it to ON(MANUAL) so it would follow the IP address of the projector under Network setup. When I had it set to ON(10.x.x.x) or ON(2.x.x.x), I couldn't connect to the web control.

I am trying to figure out how to control a Panasonic PT-RW930 through art-net. I want to be able to control the light output so that instead of a 0 count hard shutter, I can fade the actual light output. Under Art-Net Setup in the projector, I set the Net and Subnet as 0, set the Start Address as 1, and put each projector in their own universe. Under watchout, I created a DMX-512 output with the universe of each projector, and set the channel as 6 since the settings in the projector say that channel 6 is Light Output. But it doesn't seem to be working. I don't have a good understanding of DMX or addresses, so if anyone could offer any wisdom, it would be much appreciated!

SOS We are using an external capture card Avermedia live gamer portable 2 to screen capture a PowerPoint presentation from a separate laptop and then feeding that in as a live video source on Watchout. I am able to see the screen capture on the Display computer in the application that is required by the software. As a test, I can also see it as a source in OBS. I added the capture card under "Video In" through Ctrl-W on the display computer. I then went to my production computer and added a Live Video Media using the settings attached. Every time I go online, and go to the capture card on the timeline, the Display computer immediately disconnects and I get a "Network Error." The output is 1080p@60fps. When I had chosen 1080p and 60Hz, I was getting a rendering error. When I choose 29.97Hz or 30Hz, I lose connection. I'm not sure what is going wrong... The display computer is running Windows 10 Pro version 20H2. My production laptop is Windows 11 Education 21H2. I had also tested it with a production laptop that was Windows 10 Pro 21H1. Could the issue be the different Windows versions?? If anyone has any answers or insight, I would much appreciate it!