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With a properly prepared PC, you will not lose anything with Windows 8.1 In fact, according to AMD, when attempting to drive multiple 4k displays, you will gain additional capacity with Windows 8.1+ While we have not confirmed that AMD claim just yet, we are working with AMD support to verify their claims

That has a considerable amount to do with the content. I suspect you primarliy perform video rolls and do not overly stress with tweens, masking, keying, etc. i.e. the GPU in the laptop has much lower limits than a dedicated GPU graphics card. As long as you stay within those limits, you will be fine. But it is naive to think an onboard low power mobile GPU can perform equally to a full blown graphics card in all content situations.

sure, there is an IT industry standard command for Wake On LAN. no watchout command, because obviously watchout is not running with a Magic Packet, yes. Wake On LAN is a computer industry standard. There is plenty of documentation online on the operation of Wake On LAN. As far as obtaining the MAC address, cluster protocol includes a query to obtain that. for more details, see this post -- IP power down That is a vague question. The WATCHPAX will power up into its logo screen. Since you have a control system sending the Wake On LAN, then it would make sense for the control system to tell it what to do next, so then no need for startup script.

Usually see that error when production is open or had been connected. Try rebooting the WATCHPAX with no production system and retest. Problem should go away.

Pretty sure the resolution limit is determined by the source hardware and the VNC server software on that hardware. multiple screens are supported, again, the server software chosen provides the limits. Yes. With the proper motherboard, two DataPatch VisionRGB E2 will work. We have successfully tested three of those cards with WATCHOUT. Latency per se is not so much an issue with Remote Computer (VNC). Frame rate is. It is not for full motion content. Great for static screens.

The Club 3D Multi Stream Transport (MST) Hub DisplayPort 1-3 we have tested with a FirePro W7000 did work, with a very important caveat. It was not completely stable. It would be inconsistent on activating all outputs through boot cycles. Most of the times it worked as expected - but not all the time. Sometimes an output would randomly fail to appear. So does it work - yes, sort of. It is reliable - no, not yet. caveat emptor

Each WATCHPAX has a stereo audio output via a mini-jack. That is all the audio a WATCHPAX provides. Some may see this as one of the WATCHPAX weaknesses, as there are no other options for audio output short of using a standard PC / license as a dedicated audio server. I am not sure what that means. Each WATCHPAX 2 is capable of feeding its individual outputs at full resolution. Well, with four WATCHPAX you have a total of eight discrete outputs, so you should be good to go.

Exactly, The aux timelines can not go from stop (nothing loaded) to complete load in 0 time. In the case of a live video input you can probably work around that by keeping the live video input active, but hidden. The simplest way to do that is to place a live video cue in a STANDBY LAYER the full length of the main timeline. Then when you run the aux cue the video input signal is already established because standby content is always loaded, including when standby is off. So then the aux timeline is just revealing it. Of course, if you are using standby, there are other tricks. Yes, the one you mention next ... That is a good way to address that. Use control cues from the timeline with the first cue to set all the aux tasks to pause right up front. There is a limit to the number you can "pre-cue" like that before something chokes, trial and error to determine the threshold.

They will not work, those BMD Decklink cards / outputs do not support Microsft DirectX 3D acceleration on the output side, which is an absolute requirement for WATCHOUT. No one does, but that is the only option to get to HD-SDI today. There are no DirectX 3D accelerated GPUs with native HD-SDI output available today. Rumour has it AMD is working on a DirectX 3D capable GPU with HDbaseT outputs, and a variety of signal types, including SDI, would be made available for the receiver side. But I would not hold your breath waiting for that.

Motherboard, processor, and four channel memory (4 ch memory must be supported by the motherboard / cpu). A bit of overkill, but an x79 based motherboard with an i7 Extreme Edition cpu and appropriate memory should do the trick. Also, SSD speed / throughput is important, capacity is irrelevant to performance - sustained throughput is what matters, evaluate your current SSD choice from that perspective. The gpu is not much of a factor as it relates to movie decoding, so it should be fine.

I would disagree. Of course, encoding is the big variable, both codec, and codec settings can have a big impact on this. but for encoding to best quality using Dataton's recommendations, I would not expect four simultaneous 1080p30 decodes on that platform. When selling hardware for a project with that spec, we would not recommend a mid-range performer like your spec. Three is more realistic for that spec.

More than likely you are experiencing a network issue related to loss of UDP traffic, which is consistent with your trouble description. Reference the third post in the topic Routed Watchout? for a possible solution. If the UDP loss is only between your production and display (which is the most common issue), quit WATCHOUT and open WATCHOUT remote to run the show, it will most likely work fine. If the show is already loaded, be sure to force a reload from WATCHOUT Remote for correct results. Oh, and the 100mbit switch (more likely a hub) is probably not an issue.

You do not 'have to'. More like an alternate option for uploading a show to a cluster. If you never make a .wob file, WATCHNET will still work the same, as noted above, you will just use watchmaker to upload shows and changes. so more like ... When using the Watchnet, you have to consolidate your watchout project and wrap it as a zip/wob file if you wish to use watchnet to upload it to displays. instead of the production computer -- either / or. Short answer is yes, at least for now. But, I thought I heard that when the next release of watchmaker adds an export .wob file function, some kind of incremental .wob file for updates will be made available to eliminate having to move the entire project for small changes. Either I misunderstand that, or more likely the Linköping crew are mum about unreleased function

From what you describe, it sounds like you are referring to images in the WATCHOUT Production (watchmaker) Preview Window. I suspect you also experienced error messages upon opening the file in v5, regarding missing media files. Did you consolidate your v4 show in v4 prior to transferring it to v5? This corrects all media file links for safe transfer. Also, prior to consolidation, you must be able to open the file with no error messages. Otherwise, the same errors will occur in v5. Degraded preview of still images will occur when the media file is not where it is supposed to be (aka not found), as watchmaker is unable to cache the original image for preview, and has dropped back to using the thumbnail from the .watch file. Correct the broken media links and your preview quality will be restored. BTW This is not about v4 to v5 upgrade of an existing show, it is about safely moving a show file and all of its media items. (the .wob file format available in the next release of WATCHOUT will make this even easier)

Please turn off Windows Media Center. This is a known issue and is clearly stated in the compuer preperation tweaking lists found in the Technical Notes at the top of this forum.

Is the "small window to write precision cordinate of points" a dialog? You can select a point and hit enter to open a dialog for numerically adding the values

Regular audio files render a graphic of the waveform in the cue. Occasionally run across files that have problems with that rendering process. This does not always work, but is worth a try ... Try bringing the audio file into WATCHOUT as a media proxy, which skips the waveform rendering.

You can do it with MIDI inputs. Use the basic concepts in this method: http://forum.dataton.com/topic/1318-set-input-value-via-timeline/?p=5235

Have you read the WATCHOUT 5.2 User Guide, Chapter 12, Tasks and Expressions, starting on page 209 ? Perhaps you could be a little more specific on your areas of uncertainty?

What does "... map MIDI controllers ..." mean? The MIDI input learn capability typically makes it pretty easy to link a WATCHOUT input object to a specific action on a MIDI device.

Correct

IP control, yes. Bit of a vague question. Let's start with what is documented in the User's Guide. the IP control command is enableLayerCond, which is used to turn conditional layers on or off [page 265]. Granted, combining the state of all 32 conditions into a single value (page 255) puts some of the work on your control system. i.e. you can not send a simple command that only affects one condition. You must send the desired state of all 32 conditions just to change one of them. so the control system must maintain the status of all conditions and combine them into the single value needed by the command. Can you re-phrase your question from that baseline? Also, the behavuor of the Preferences - Condition tab can be confusing. Any condition you check on that page becomes a 'default' ON condition. When any conditions are enabled in preferences, and you send a enableLayerCond 0, it will NOT turn them all off. Instead, it will leave on any condition enabled in the preferences Condition tab. So if you want all to really go off when enableLayerCond 0 is sent, they must also be all off on the preferences condition tab.

There is no built in way for a cue on a timeline to do this, but it can be done. Basically you have WATCHOUT send IP commands to itself. Setup an output device whose TCP/IP IP address is 'localhost', i.e. 127.0.0.1 Set the port at 3039 for cluster use, or 3040 for production computer use. Then use the standard command set as appropriate (Appendix D for production, Appendix E for cluster mode). Don't forget to put a carriage return ($0D) at the end of each command's string. You need to send the authenticate 1 and then the appropriate setInput command. I break the authenticate and the command into separate cues so I can control their timing.

That is the correct method. That needs to be fixed. No. The WATCHPAX is locked. (And that is one of its most significant features). Most likely. Version? Are you getting an OK using the display dialog Test Connection button? Are you using a name or an IP address for the display dialog "Computer: entry?

One way would be to create a device in WATCHOUT for every display computer, use an auxilary timeline in your show that sends the powerDown sequence to each display, shutting down the cluster master last. With that prepared auxiliary timeline I would name powerDown, just send one command to the auxiliary timeline, run powerDown Shutting everything down with one command always makes me wonder, how you will power them back on?