Mike Fahl

Just a clarification. I saw this HapQ colorization problem on a regular 2D display. I.e., not related to 3D texture mapping. Mike

I noticed the same problem today on WO 6.1.4. Going into the media item's settings dialog and flipping the alpha channel mode back and forth a couple of times seemed to fix it. On one occasion I also had to re-drop the media onto the cue. Go figure. There definitely seems to be something that's amiss related to HapQ interpretation. Mike

Note that you need the production PC only for producing the show. You can play it back without using the production computer, either having it load and run the show all by itself, or by using some other control system. Mike

Fixed IP can be set using a startup script. Use the Remote Access function on the Stage menu to connect to the WATCHPAX. Choose "Edit Startup Scrtipt" on the File menu of he display computer. The script file contains an example of how to set fixed IP (look for the "setIP" command). Just un-comment that example and enter the desired numbers, Mike

Should work the same in v6. What version are you using? Mike

While Jim is correct that those paths refer to the same file, this doesn't explain the problem you experienced. Nor does the error message you referred to say much. What was the actual problem you had? Were you unable to open the show file? Was that error message the only result of attempting to open it? I've never seen such an error message as a result of opening a corrupt show file. If the show file is indeed corrupt, you may be able to salvage a working show file from one of the display computers that were used to play the final run of the show (Jim can fill you in on the details here). As a side note, the path format used in WATCHOUT isn't really the one Jim refers to, but a home-made unified path format I originally devised back in the days when WATCHOUT ran on both Macs (which use UNIX style file paths, with forwar slashes and no drive letter) and Windows. That format is what's used internally in WATCHOUT to this day, even though it hasn't worked on Macs for over a decade. Mike

A Virtual Display, can have pretty much any size and aspect ratio, within the capabilities of your graphics card. It appears as a Media element (in the Media list). Hence, you can create a cue from it, to which you can then apply corner pinning and other tweens. I believe you can also use geometry correction on a Virtual Display. So I guess what you ask for can already be done, unless I'm missing something. Mike

While Jim's answers are correct, there are a few more aspects to keep in mind when mapping onto multiple objects. Especially if you're going to cover them all with the projectors: 1. Will there be enough focus depth range to cover the objects without loss of sharpness. 2. Will you be able to place the real-world objects accurately in relation to eachother exactly in the same way as the models are placed in WATCHOUT? If not, you may run into trouble calibrating the projector position to match all the individual objects. Both these points will be easier if you use separate projectors for each object, as the projectors can then each be calibrated in relation to the object it is aimed at, as well as having to deal with shorter focus range. Mike

Hi again! You my want to contact Barry Fluster at Media Fabricators. He used to have some old stuff still around. Here are the details: Media Fabricators. Inc.8509 Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232-7443 Email: MFI [at] mediafab.com Office Phone: (323) 937-3344

From what you wrote above, I'd say this should work from WATCHOUT: ATRN 0$0D$0A where $0D$0A is the CR and LF characters, encoded as hex. Hope this helps. Mike

Yes Not yet. But that was an idea pretty high up on the wish list. Some kind of "snippet library" with tweens and other frequently used pieces of functionality, that could be dragged onto cues, or applied using an assigned keyboard shortcut. Didn't happen on my watch. But there's still hope... Mike

I would look at those "out of memory" errors first. If the system is running seriously low on memory, all bets are off. Getting this as a rendering error may indicate its related to video memory, but it's not entirely clear. Googling for "windows error 0x8007000 d3d" may give you some further ideas. Here 0x8007000e is the hex equivalent of the decimal error code reported by WATCHOUT in your screenshot. I added "d3d" to those search terms since the error was reported as a "Rendering error", which usually means it came from the Windows Direct3D subsystem. Mike

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't that exactly what a Generic Input provides? I.e., a "variable" that can be set (internally, or from the outside) and subsequently used in formulae?

When and where do you see this error? What do you do to make it happen? Windows OS version? Type of network? Some context here would help. The command you refer to is used to obtain he MAC address from a WATCHOUT display computer, and I have a hard time seeing why it would fail assuming the network is working (which it seems to be, since the command can apparently be sent to the computer).

If the setting is static (i.e., doesn't change over time), you should be able to just connect it to an Input, as Jim suggests, and then set its value in the Input window. No need for the external loop-back control hocus pokus. In this way, the Input merely acts aas a variable, shared by all those cues, allowing you to set the value(s) in one place for all of them. Mike

I think much of their differences stem from their backgrounds. Pandora came from a lighting background, and was initially operated more or less manually as a lighting instrument (e.g., from a lighting console). Their timeline was added somewhere along the way. WATCHOUT came from a show production background, and had a timeline at its core from the outset. Here, interactivity and DMX in/out was added along the way. For many rental houses, having an expensive system to rent, which often also requires an on-site operator, is more attractive than a more cost effective solution that requires/allows for more of the production to happen ahead of time. Just my 2c. I'm by no means well versed in Pandora, but know bit about the background of the products. Mike

Yes, this was one of those nagging little details that just never made it to the top of the list. But at least there's no performance overhead associated with those left-over stage tiers, fwiw. Nope, I won't be at the show. Perhaps next time. Mike

You should be able to do this already using the "-NoLogo" option (see the manual for details). I recall there was a discussion to expose this setting also in the UI, but I don't know if that happened.

Yes, one of the log files may provide more information. Which one depends on which program ran into trouble and how. Mike

The "connection lost" message can be somewhat misleading, in that it seems to imply network-related problems. What it really means is that the communication between the production and display computer stopped unexpectedly. This may be due to someone unplugging the network cable, unplugging the power to the display computer, or the display software crashed or hung for some reason. All these conditions may result in connection loss. Loss of power is obvious. A crash is often clear cut too (e.g., a blue screen or Windows error message). But if the display software has stopped responding, it will take a while for it to recover (which you'll see as the display software suddenly being restarted). If you have a keyboard connected to the display PC, you can try hitting Ctrl-W to return it to Window mode. If nothing happens, it's most likely hung. The display software may hang because of some serious trouble with a media file, or some other operation that causes the program to perform extremely slow or semi-crash (lock up). Mike

The warning messages indicates the IP address of the projector can't be reached. If you're running from the production computer (can't tell from your description), you may instead try connecting to the projector using a telnet client running on the same production computer. That will most likely exhibit the same problem, allowing you to troubleshoot the connection independently from WATCHOUT. Windows has a telnet client built in (although it may need to be explicitly enabled in the "Programs and Features" control panel). Mike

You should not use more than 250 characters per line, as far as I can recall. If your string may contain non-ASCII characters, this may need to be constraned further due to the UTF-8 "multibyte" encoding used. Mike

I made som tests with this path a few years ago TCPSyphon -> TCPSpout -> Spout/SpoutCam -> WATCHOUT and it actually worked surprisingly well. This makes the use of the Live Video media in WATCHOUT, mapping it to the SpoutCam "capture" source. But if you want high resolution and/or high frame rate, it may not work that well. Also, keep in mind that the Spout path uses TCP (and not UDP, as the Network Video), so playing a video straddling multiple computers may not give very good sync. Mike

An internal ID does indeed exist, but is not exposed anywhere in the UI. While using it would allow the binding to "stick" even when the target is renamed, it gets more complicated if/when you want to copy/paste stuff between shows, since the ID numbers are show specific. Hence, a combination of ID with a name fallback would likely be the best solution, where the ID then gets discarded when pasted into another show to not confuse things. That's something that would require changes to the applicaiton, though, and not something users could take advantage of right away. But since this is a "feature request" thread, I thought ot could till make sense to post my proverbial "2 cents" here. Mike

I recall there's a command line option to speed up some cases dealing with very long timelines. Ask Dataton tupport to give you the details (Erik would know). Mike