Jump to content

jfk

Moderator
  • Posts

    1,802
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by jfk

  1. Yes, it can be made to work. And yes, you will need a specific computer configuration. The specifics of that configuration hinge on a lot of variables related to output resolution and content requirements (movie vs stills, number of concurrent movies - their frame rate, resolution, codec, etc). If you are unsure of those variables, then you build for the most demanding case (i.e. beaucoup € ) Show Sage defines its most demanding case as decoding six concurrent 1080p30 (1920x1080) or three concurrent 4k_UHDp24 (3840x2160) movie files. To fulfill that, we use 12 core cpu, fastest DDR4 memory available, SSD media drives on a PCIe 3.0 interface (because it is faster than SATA3), a SATA3 SSD for the OS and archives, and a motherboard to support all that. And a professional GPU. For three outputs per computer, the AMD FirePro W8100 appears to be a very good choice. And of course, that is only the starting point. with the correct hardware choices, the key to stable performance is the Windows preparation and the stability of the hardware's driver software. (see WATCHOUT 5 Technical notes for more information on Windows software prep.)
  2. You can input / output RS-232 or RS422 via an IP-Serial interface added to the WATCHOUT network. Staging companies in the US have been doing serial interface that way ever since the output device appeared in v4. Most WATCHOUT computers do not provide the anachronistic serial interface. Using an IP-Serial interface eliminates any dependence on a serial interface in a computer, allowing standard computers to be used for hardware swaps when needed.
  3. By defining your final total output as 5060 x 1080, you have also specified how to line them up. It is tedious math from there. To achieve ... 5060 x 1080 total image size assembled from three 1920 x 1080 displays (projectors) set Width and height same as Display resolution adding a Leftmost display offset in the stage 100,100. you would set the following stage co-ordinates: Stage Position 1 100 L 100 T Stage Position 2 1670 L 100 T Stage Position 3 3240 L 100 T Above results in horizontal overlap of ≈ 350 pixels in each overlapped area. Then go to File-Preferences - Edge Blend tab and turn off blending. Do this by selecting the existing blend curve tween point and dragging off to delete it, then grab the endpoint in the top left corner and drag it to the bottom left corner, resulting in a flat line on the "x-axis". Blending off BTW If you did not catch it in the reference threads, the X 20 Spyder is going to give you fits with EDID. Highly recommended you get three matched solid EDID managers with their own power supplies, set the EDID managers up and test them, before arriving to connect to the X 20, and save yourself a lot of time.
  4. QuickTime animation codec 5060 x 1080 movie file in a .mov container is likely to be problematic. Frame rate is relevant as well, progressive highly preferred. That codec is RGB, supports transparency, and can be encoded lossless. Quicktime animation codec can be a massive demand on the throughput of the system The actual image content plays a large role here. Due to the simple RLE lossless compression used in Animation codec, animations that fit the codec's original purpose ("cartoon" cel animations) with large single color areas, perform quite well. Camera acquired video and synthetic animation (rendered from After Effects, FinalCut, etc.) are typically huge resource hogs. QuickTime h.264 codec is a YUV lossy codec with no transparency support. It is far more efficient and is most likely to provide success with 5060 x 1080 single movie files. 5060 x 1080 can also be a challenge to encode, depending on the encoding tools chosen. i.e. not all encoding tools support resolutions as high as 5060 x 1080. A tip to consider is using both - each for its strength. Instead of rendering your compositions as a single movie file, separate appropriate layers to two different file formats. This can provide the best of both, with h.264 (mpeg4) handing all the camera acquired and low res content, and animation codec with transparency for all the synthetic animations (animated text, icons, etc.) Play the two in synch and the results can be better than any single file could provide (up to the current v5 version). In many cases you may want to break up the synthetic layers into multiple animation codec movie files. Rather than make one 5060 x 1080 animation movie file with huge areas of transparency, keep them small and position / move them with WATCHOUT tweens. Even though huge areas of transparent areas should compress well, the decoder still has to deal with every tansparent pixel like any visible pixel. Crop your animated areas tightly and keep the file(s) more efficient. Systems setup to perform with the dual movie approach often benefit from SSD RAIDs with higher-speed PCIe 3.0 controllers. Jim
  5. Set it up with three 1920x1080 outputs, make the pre-split and pre-overlapped movies in 1920x1080, setup your WATCHOUT stage with the exact same co-ordinates used in making the pre-split movies (with an offset if you would like). Then turn off soft-edge blending in WATCHOUT. You might also want to look at these threads. Spyder VISTA how to Watchout & Spyder
  6. Are you using WATCHNET v1.1? There were some fixes related to scheduler in that version. But that still does not explain why it worked in the past and mysteriously stopped working. I would be suspicious of new software installs as a potential conflict. Also check the possibility the watchnet computer has picked up a virus or other form of attack.
  7. Double check power savings are all disabled, check the component drivers for NIC, HD controllers, etc. to confirm no secondary power savings settings. A component may be throttling down or going to sleep have you tried a fairy long (3-5 sec) manual preroll instead of the loop selection trick? If something is going into a lower power mode, extra time to rev back up may make a difference. Also, are the movies butted up against a Control Pause cue? When a timeline transitions from paused (halt) to run, there is a bit of housekeeping to take care of too, which may interfere with a smooth start. If so, try backing the movie cuss off the pause cue by 0.05 to 0.10 sec to see if that helps.
  8. Yes, this typically occurs at power up when watchpoint is loaded from the startup folder. Other software loading after WATCHOUT triggers this. It can be quite frustrating to tune this out, but if you can identify the offending software, it is best to fix it that way. As you note, once this happens, quitting and restarting watchpoint is the only cure. A command line startup delay option was added to WATCHOUT 5.5.1+ in attempt to workaround this. From WATCHOUT 5.5.2 release notes ("What's New" under the Help menu in watchmaker) A command line option is added to the display software, allowing a delay to be introduced when the software is started. This may occasionally help in avoiding start-up problems, by delaying the start of the display software until things have settled down. To use this feature, append -Delay 3 to the shortcut used to start the display software ("WATCHPOINT.EXE"), where 3 is the desired delay in seconds.
  9. That does not sound right. Normally you would trigger cues from a cue number within a cue list. The numbered auxiliary timeline is the cue list number, not the cue number. Cue numbers within a cue list should start a Control Pause cue with the cue number as its name, not the auxiliary timeline name. If you assign an auxiliary timeline to a cue list number and there are no cues within the cue list, it is not going to do anything anyway. So you should not have a lot of timelines unless your GrandMA has a lot of cue lists with actuall cues inside the cue list to trigger cues in a timeline. Maybe a GrandMA user can chime in and correct me if I am wrong?
  10. WATCHOUT should be able to handle commands that close. No there is no MIDI event viewer in WATCHOUT (and I have asked Dataton for one in the past). MIDI OX is shareware that can both display all packets on the MIDI stream as well as filter displayed packets as you wish.
  11. In the meantime, to answer your original question ... "Is there a way to get media thumbnails to appear for mp4 files in the media window?" the answer is yes*. * via a cumbersome workaround. Bring the mp4 into watchout via the Video Proxy in the Media menu. You must manually enter resolution (dimensions) and duration, but you get the option to make your own thumbnail and select it with the Thumbnail Choose function. And the thumbnail can be either a still or a movie. For example, for a 4k movie you could render a 1/16 scale thumbnail that would not bog down a production notebook.
  12. jfk

    subtitle

    still graphic file is any file format that provides a bitmap representation of a still image. They come in many forms - photoshop (.psd), jpeg, tiff, .psd, bmp, pict, etc.etc). If the file format provides transparency (alpha) information - .psd & .png are the most popular for transparency, WATCHOUT will utilize the transparency information appropriately. Any image editor can produce the files you will need for the subtitles, including the one included with Windows - Paint. The built-in WATCHOUT text media object can produce reasonable text files with transparent backgrounds for you as well. By comparison, Photoshop has detailed text generation functions, so .psd is a popular choice for the subtitle task. For more information, refer to the WATCHOUT 5 User Guide Chapter 3 - Media, page 34 & 35 - STILL IMAGES and page 52 - TEXT You can find sample still image files on any Windows computer, Microsoft includes three sample files in the standard Windows install. They are found in My Documents - My Pictures
  13. First off, that card should work, limited to either 4 or 5 outputs as indicated at the link you provided. That said, I am not a fan of graphics cards that provide more output connections than you can use at the same time. Especially when the combinations utilized effect the result. There are times in the past where we have used such cards for lack of an appropriate alternative. The AMD FirePro line provides enough options and price points to eliminate that compromise. All FirePro cards (that we use) have sets of identical DisplayPort outputs (4 out are all full DisplayPort, six out are all MiniDisplayPort). Granted this introduces adaptors in many cases, but the convenience of all outputs identical and all outputs available, keep confusion to a minimum.
  14. jfk

    subtitle

    Yes, of course. Make your movie with no subtitles. Create your subtitles for each language as separate still graphics (WATCHOUT supports transparency for the subtitle graphics if you wish). Place the subtitles for each language on a different layer. Each subtitle layer is then assigned as a unique conditional layer. You can use more than one layer for each language, just assign all the layers for one language with the same conditional value. You are not limited on size, placement, fonts, etc so you are free to design the subtitles as you see fit. Then use your control system to activate just the value for the desired language (WATCHNET or even the free WATCHOUT Remote utility can switch conditional layers, as well as most popular AV control systems).
  15. Do you have a link to the "barco protocol manual" you mention?
  16. While your method of control for non-linear layered playback to achieve almost limitless combinations to play should work as you expect, the same can still be accomplished without watchmaker. As issues triggering auxiliary timelines from watchmaker has not been one we have heard about before, a careful examination of your show file may provide some clues. The fact that watchmaker's task window seems to stop working and is then restored by an offline / online cycle is just as confusing, as the task window should run the same whether you are offline or online. Hard to see how cycling the watchpoint connection would change that. Almost sounds like watchmaker is overloaded. Have you tried the same with the Preview window closed, to remove that rendering load from watchmaker?
  17. Could you clarify " log off and back on again " ? Stage Offline - Online? Quit and restart watchmaker? ---- While I have triggered tasks (auxiliary timelines) from other auxiliary timelines, triggered auxiliary timelines from WATCHOUT Remote, triggered auxiliary timelines from MIDI Show Control, triggered auxiliary timelines from switch closures (via MIDI Note interface), even triggered them from Telnet sessions - all with great success. But I have never used the task window to trigger auxiliary timelines beyond simple prototyping. Quite honestly, I find the added / unnecessary complexity of the full production and editing environment during performance a bit risky. Relying on playback methods that result in 'playback only mode' for watchpoint have been bulletproof. BTW watchmaker = WATCHOUT Production watchpoint = WATCHOUT Display
  18. Got it on the timecode abbreviation. I have done the 'WATCHOUT talking to WATCHOUT IP control' myself, so I know it will work - with either production or display. Yes it is possible to pogram to port 3040 and change the port to 3039 just before removing production. You need to use port 3040 when running production and port 3039 when running cluster. I suspect your error is from using port 3039 when running production, that is expected. Note production does not need the authenticate command, cluster does need the authenticate command, so the cue strings are not exactly the same for either. When I do it, I put in two string output devices, one for production and one for cluster mode, with duplicate cues, one to each one of them. One of the two will always error with the 'failed delivering data' message. I sometimes put them on conditional layers to avoid that error, but since you are using conditional layers in this case, that might add to confusion. It could still be done, but managing it that way requires a bit more attention to detail.
  19. What is TC 1.0? To send the command you want from a WATCHOUT string cue, you can not use a variable name, you would need to hard code the condition value. To enable ONLY layer 1, all other layers disabled, you would enter enableLayerCond 1$0D in the string cue dialog.
  20. Future alert (i.e. fun post) Happy Holidays to all! Here is an interesting application of projection mapping - albeit with a very sophisticated multiple target tracking front end. With the front end managed, it would be very easy to implement the output side with a simple black square image and WATCHOUT live tweens The multiple darkened cones eliminate headlight glare for both oncoming and leading same direction traffic.
  21. The AMD FirePro W8100 is also a viable alternative. It should mainly be considered over the W7100 when the intent is to drive 4K outputs.
  22. The cluster members consist of all display rectangles defined in the stage of a single show file. So if there is a display rectangle with the computer name used in another show file, even if it has no content, that could cause such a conflict. Double check to make sure there are not two display rectangles stacked in the exact same location. (I go through and delete each display rectangle to make sure there is not one underneath it, when I do not see a duplicate, I hit undo and move on to the next).
  23. All WATCHOUT does is scale up the original pixels when the stage is set to a smaller number of pixels than the display. It does not scale it down and then back up, unless you use a tween a track to scale it down. Yes, you could do that. Just keep in mind, that WATCHOUT must first process all the original pixels of the oversized original and then scale it to the final resolution. While this can be done, plan to throw more hardware at that solution to better accommodate the extra workload of processing all those pixels that ultimately will be discarded.
  24. Yes, you can include pictures (screenshots), but you most host the images and link to their URL. I posted this image in my personal private web space, then clicked on the picture button in the editor here, and pasted in the image's URL (http://dataton.net/watchout/screen_shots/LeftPanel-stage-display_dialog.png) , as in ....
  25. It is most likely a problem with the show files. A display can only be a member of one cluster at a time. If both show files reference a common display, then the display will will work with the last one to reference it. If the display stolen by the second file to load was the master of the first group, then the remainder of the first group will stop having lost its cluster master.
×
×
  • Create New...