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Also, keep in mind, that while two 2K movies may be the same amount of pixels as the 1/2 4K movie, running it as two movies instead of one better utilizes the available resources by spreading out the task over more processor cores, etc.

The selection of the audio device is done in Windows, and WATCHOUT uses whatever Windows presents as the currently selected audio device. So theoretically, if windows allows you to select multiple Directsound audio devices, then WATCHOUT should have access to them. I did not think Windows allowed multiple audio devices to be selected though

I would still be looking at the audio sub-system. There are very few digital optical audio out WDM capable systems available. (Lots of ASIO support, but that means nothing to us) Most motherboard digital outputs suffer in the WDM driver area (while analog typically works fine). We have had to resort to third party sound cards to do this, and have no currently available solution that pass testing. Discontinued products had successfully done this in the past. WATCHOUT simply uses Windows DirectX / DirectShow services to play out audio. If it works with one product and not another, then the supplier of the abhorrent product needs to cure this. In that area, check their support forums for info on WDM use. or look elsewhere for an audio card solution.

4k is still pioneering territory - the gpu and its drivers and their interaction with win os all become sensitive at 4k For example, when we were experiencing 4k crashing AMD suggested that improvements in the graphics support of Win 8.1 was beneficial. We have not confirmed that yet, we got Win 7 stable before we needed to conquer 8.1, we continue to fight with 8.1 on the back burner. My point is, there are a lot of unknown interactions in the 4k arena. BTW This sounds a bit like the issue we saw with 4k resolutions in our trade show booth at LDI 2013 (Nov). reference: 4K Video Playback Tell us more about the connection from the graphics card to the 4096 x 2160 display? And out of curiosity, what kind of display is it?

NO. WATCHOUT 5.5 and later must be windows 7 or windows 8. You might get XP or Vista to kid of work, but random crashes would be pretty much expected in that case. Probably. goes back to stability of drivers. Hardware that predates Win 7 rarely have drivers that are stable under windows 7+. I know we gave up trying to get old pre-Win 7 hardware to work with Win 7, just to many problems like you describe.

among other things, be sure to check hard disc controller, disc drives, USB controllers, etc. Even if those controllers are on the motherboard, they should show the motherboard vendor as a source. Simple keyboards are not a concern, fancy keyboards with added features could be an issue without the proper driver. (Even a WATCHPAX can be taken down by a fancy keyboard).

Yes, we had found an accessory sound card compatible with WATCHOUT 5 / Windows 7, that output multi-channel digital audio signal (7.1 Optical & Coaxial S/PDIF), but they have since been discontinued. Accessory sound card Windows 7 and 8 support for WDM audio is shrinking. When necessary, we add Ovation audio systems to WATCHOUT systems to overcome WDM shortcomings. A bit of a pricey solution though.

but there are differences between the two, are there not? i.e. the decklink is a video only card - YUV colorspace, and the datapath supports either RGB or YUV colorspace. And computers, or course, prefer RGB - but will step down to YUV when needed. Or am I reading the spec incorrectly?

You did not indicate if the Win 7 tweak list has been run. If not, then there are numerous background tasks that can cause crashes. Including Remote Management if your IT guys have put it on there. Of more concern is the age of the hardware. The hardware pre-exists Windows 7, so win 7 drivers become a concern. If any of your hardware drivers say the source is Microsoft (i.e. a generic driver from the OS install), that is a likely problem.

BTW OP. Even though the output window will let you select multiple string outputs, you must drag a string output one at a time to the timeline to create a cue for it. If you drag multiples, you still only get just one cue, and it will always be the same string output out of the selected group. Say what? "The cue"? Meaning the string output cue or something else? Is this a feature suggestion? That sure sounds like a feature suggestion too. Possibly should be posted in the topic: Feature requests? - POST here ? And the Control Cue calling the aux timeline can be named to provide a good description of the action to be performed. In a way, this works around the behavuor of the string output cue name display OP describes. Depends on how you define loopable I guess. I trim the timelines down to about 1 or 2 seconds and then have them die (stop) with an explicit Control Cue - Stop which implicitly resets them to the beginning for the next use. That is not really a loop, but I guess the result is similar.

Yes, I do as well, as I often use the same command in multiple places. By referencing an aux timeline with a control cue, any edits / corrections made on the aux timeline are implemented in all the places I use the same cue. Just be aware of the time needed for an aux timeline to transition from dormant / dead to active / alive and manage that accordingly in your programming. But that is unrelated to OP's confusion. The same confusion AMarsh describes will occur on a main timeline or an aux timeline.

Martin has always been such a closed system, you might have better luck looking for anyone who has controlled a Martin console via ArtNet on a show control forum like The Show Control mailing list Out of curiosity, what do you expect to control in the console with a DMX level command? I was looking for documentation of how the Martin M1 console's ArtNet input worked, but there are a few broken links on Martin's documentation list. http://www.martin.com/en-US/Support/Product-details/M1 Can you provide Martin's description of the function of its ArtNet input?

So few people use the string output device feature that it took me a minute to grasp your description. I get what you are saying, and what you are observing appears to be perfectly normal. the cue name is not displayed on the timeline cue, the string output device name is displayed. i.e When you drag an output device from the output window to a timeline, it creates a cue. First time I did it, like you, the displayed name of that cue was not what I expected. i.e. it is not the cue name, it is the associated device name. When the cues are running, watch the display in the Output Device window, and you will see the cue name appear there, I suspect that is what you are expecting for the name on the timeline. Now as for all of them being "LED 4", two things to consider. Is the displayed name truncated? Or face the possibility that are all really String output "LED 4" and revisit the process of dragging string output devices to the timeline.

Maximum Digital Resolutions 1080p30 Supported Resolutions TV: 1080i/p, 720p, 576i/p, 480i/p PC: 1920x1080, 1440x900, 1280x1024, 1280x960, 1280x720, 1024x768, 800x600 Where do you see that? Typical marketing speak where they give resolutions with no refresh rates. The stated maximum is unambiguous.

The StarTech is not going to give you that. Stated under Specifications - Performance - Maximum Digital Resolutions 1080p30

The protocol commands are extremely case sensitive, there is no variation accepted. I trust that is not exactly as it is used, as there is an error in that timecodeMode command. 5 = SMPTE 30 (”B&W”) which is fairly uncommon. If the TC is in fact 29.97, which is far more common, then that would explain the drift. Also, SMPTE 30 (”B&W”) can not be auto detected, for that type of timecode to work correctly, it must be set explicitly. So if your case is wrong in your command file, fix that first.

FYI I am working with a customer using up to 45 1920x1080 .png images that all change every ten seconds. We are doing it with the URL method and it works very well. Otherwise, you are probably looking at multiple dynamic image servers.

This may be caused by using the "Auto Detect" setting for timecode type. In auto detect, each time the timecode signal appears, WATCHOUT analyses the timecode and determines the timecode type. If it gets that wrong, then what you describe will occur. I have seen this occur with less than ideal audio signal levels (usually to hot). Simple solution is to set the timecode type explicitly. An added benefit of explicit timecode type setting is faster lockup to timecode, as the system then skips the analysis process.

Why must you keep production? You are making your life difficult with that approach. Pretty much have to write it from scratch to do what you want. Production has limited control functions compared to playing back in cluster mode (no production). Definitely would be custom iPad development to achieve what you want. You would make your life a lot easier if you eliminated production and used WATCHNET, then the panel development is simplified and designed just for WATCHOUT. WATCHNET sounds like it is exactly what you ask for except the need to run production. WATCHNET will serve an unlimited number of panels concurrently via HTML5, pretty much allows you to use any type of panel device with an HTML5 compliant browser. iPad (or any iOS device), Android (via the Chrome browser), Windows, Mac, etc. You can run as many independent panels as you want - no limits. You have everything you need already to run WATCHNET, i.e. you run WATCHNET with the displays in cluster mode (no production), so when you content is ready, quit WATCHOUT Production and start up the WATCHNET server. It uses the same license as production/display/etc. (but not at the same time, its either / or, . to run both at the same time you plug in two licenses), has much lower requirement for the PC (if it runs production, it will definitely run WATCHNET).

EDID distortion from extender solutions is quite commonplace.

The four character minimum is common to pretty much all search engines, You need to be a bit creative to work around that. So you instead look for similar valid search terms that would be on topic instead ... Try 3840, 2160 ... I actually try to consider future searches when I compose my posts While it is quicker to simply use 4k referring to the outputs, the actual resolution numbers add clarity to the post and better search results in the future.

Never seen that one before. Very strange. Could you be accidentally deleting it with an unintended keystroke. A simple touch of the delete key when an aux timeline is selected will 'make it disappear' / delete it and this is perfectly normal. After deleting an aux timeline, if you were to re-open the file without saving changes, the aux timeline would reappear. I can think of no other explanation.

Is this simply a matter of opening the Window Menu and selecting Task to make the Task Window reappear? Or are you saying that auxiliary timelines are disappearing from the Task window?

Built in FrameLock On the other hand, 2 Gb memory for six 4k outputs seems a bit meager. I have never seen that locking MiniDisplayPort connector before, definately looks like an improvement. locking Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adaptor graphics card locking Mini DisplayPort connections

Perfectly normal when you put the copy in a different location than the original .watch file. All of your relative media references will break, all your absolute media references will retain. That makes no sense. Are you sure the errors did not exist in the file before you renamed it? We did see something along these lines when a customer was putting the .watch file and media files in the 'Shows' folder created by WATCHOUT. Do not put anything into the Shows folders created by WATCHOUT, make your own folder and call it anything else (Customer shows, my shows, etc.) You could use 'File - Save a Copy As' and place it in the same location as the original and it should perform exactly the same as it regards to media links, granted it will transfer new copies of all media to new a new show folder on the displays. You are mixing up two different functions on the File menu - 'Save a Copy As ...' and 'Consolidate To ...' When you use 'Consolidate To' you target an empty folder, 'Save a Copy As' can go anywhere, but don't expect it to work properly from any location other than the orignal .watch file location. People who save to alternate folders move the file to the correct location before attempting to open it. 'Save a Copy As' is good for back up a .watch file 'Consolidate To' is good for moving a show and all its media to a new location. 'Consolidate To' copies all media and translates all media links so that they are portable and will not break when opened in a new locaiton. 'Save a Copy As' makes no changes to the media links, they are preserved as in the original. Probably not. No. And the file save dialogs in 'Consolidate To' allow you to create a new empty folder as part of the process. No. That should be no problem if the above is followed.