jfk
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Posts posted by jfk
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Yes, simply create very short auxiliary timelines ( i use one second duration)
that contain control cues to play or pause the desired timeline.
i.e. timelines can control other timelines.
Place your midi note input in the trigger field of the aux timeline used to control other timelines.
Toggling function is best left to live operator control, where the operator can dtermine the current state
and decide wether to toggle the action.
i.e. Toggling play pause from a control system would be risky,
a positive play and a separate positive pause would be much safer.
But if you must, a simple aux timeline with
one play cue to the other timeline,
a pause cue to itself,
a pause cue to the other timeline,
a pause to itself,
followed by a loop back to run the first play cue to the other timeline
would accomplish the desired result
(providing there are no pause cues in the controlled timeline).
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it runs a dual amd firepro d500 card with 3gb of vram each . six thunderbolt outputs.
Normally WATCHOUT will not provide support for the outputs on a second graphics card.
Did you get six outputs working in WATCHOUT in that setup?
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Just ran a show on mac-pro via boot camp with 6x 1080p@60. it was faultless, not an overly stressful show, mainly backgrounds and jpegs,psd's and a few videos.
just curious,
6x 1080p@60
is that the number of outputs available in WATCHOUT ?
What graphics sub-system does the MacPro provide to accomplish this?
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You make no mention of the preparation of the computer exhibiting these issues.
Yes, others have encountered such issues with improperly prepared computers.
Almost sounds like you have Windows Media Center active,
which is a big no-no, known to cause erratic behavuor like yours.
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We've been successfully using ECHO Audiofire8's for 4 years on Windows 7 machines. I don't know if they are making 8 channel boxes anymore.
Unfortunately, the Echo AudioFire interfaces are no longer in production. Work great if you can get a hold of them.
We have switched to FocusRite FireWire interfaces when Echo stopped making theirs.
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Hi, Looking if anybody can help me with scripting.
on the lightware manual the ascii is {02@o} (route input 2 to all out) , {1@5} (route input 1 to output 5)
tried it in hex aswell but no luck.
i tried using packet sender and the ascii cmds work perfect.
do i need to change something?
using port 10001
thanks
Do you have a link to the "lightware manual" ?
So is the actual string you are sending in the cue
{02@o}, {1@5}
? I notice you have a letter after the @ symbol in the first one and a number in the second?
Is that exactly how it is sent in "packet sender" ?
Have you tried
{02@o}, {1@5}$0D
?
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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.)
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Is possible to extend Input/output control?
At moment is possible only with Midi / DMX.
RESPONSE: You are omitting the most powerful one - IP is available for both input and output as well.
I can't use MIDI because I always use Midi controller. ( only 1 Midi interface is possible to use at same time)
I'ld like to create some interface to controll the task.
For example is very simple with PIC microcontroller generate some UART / RS232 command,
but I need to interface my hardware with Watchout, at moment into "INPUT" task I can't add RS232 or other interface.
Thanks.
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.
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Things got a bit mixed up in the brain I guess since WO is not doing any blending, still uses the 3x 1920 x1080 output but shows a video that is smaller than that. I thought: how do I line them up?!
... 5060 x 1080
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.
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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
That helped a lot JFK and Neil! Thanks for that.
Was indeed looking for the"turn off softblending" option.
Things got a bit mixed up in the brain I guess since WO is not doing any blending, still uses the 3x 1920 x1080 output but shows a video that is smaller than that. I thought: how do I line them up?!
Quick other question. I've been reading a lot on this forum about the "max resolution" of a single video file in WO.
Spoke to a local video tech here in Stockholm yesterday and he said that a 5060 x 1080 should not be any problem to play as a single file(instead of pre-splitting) if you use just one server and use Quicktime Animation instead of H264. Any pro's and cons to this?
Thanks a lot!
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.... Since Watchout will not do any blending in this setup I'm wondering how to setup the outputs, in what resolution. If I'm going for 3x 1920 x 1080 then I will need to position the pre-split video files in a way so they match up.
And since the video files are smaller then 1920 I think that's going to be hard.
I might be overlooking something here or not doing the math in the right way.. So what's the best wat to do this?
Thanks in advance.
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.
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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.
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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.
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So I have recently been having a strange problem within my Watchout system.
Randomly (or so it seems) the windows start bar will be visible at the very bottom of the full raster of one of my displays. It will just show up randomly every once in a while and the only thing I can do to get it to go away is to remote into the display computer and relaunch watchout on it. I have tried some different things to try and keep it from happening but none have worked so far.
Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem?
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.
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...
Another thing is, as it is now, when I uses MSC to control cues in the aux timelines, the timeline have to
have the name of the button on the GrandMa2, ie: button 136.
Then the aux timeline name have to be 136, that is not the best, then you have many timelines.
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?
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Can it be that Watchout cant handle commands that close?
Is there som way to have a MSC event viewer built in to Watchout, and have a filter so I can filter out some MSC commands.?
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.
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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.
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thank you for your answer.
what is a still graphic file?
can you send me a sample ?
thank you again
assaf
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
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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.
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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).
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Do you have a link to the "barco protocol manual" you mention?
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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?
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... I have a show with numerous Task comps so I can cue live various scenes. However, when I have one play for about ten minutes or so then the whole task window stops responding. I cannot stop the previous task playing nor can I start up another until I log off and back on again....
Could you clarify " log off and back on again " ?
Stage Offline - Online? Quit and restart watchmaker?
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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
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Thanks for being available during Christmas.
And sorry, to many years in the television industry
TC means timcode, and I only mentioned it, to make it clear that I didn't trigger the command cue, on zero in timeline.After posting my question, I realized that using variables was not possible. I've changed the string now, but get an error saying "Failed delivering data".
Is it possible to program everything in advance on a production machine, and exucute the strings, to see if it works? As i wrote, I've configured my string output to: 127.0.0.1:3039
to make it run as localhost. And then, of course, change the ip and port, when I import the show to my studie setup.
Best regards Christian
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.
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Display port to male HDMI adapter
in WATCHOUT FORUM
Posted
Passive cables like that are easy to find. Cable needs to be active, so that is not going to help.