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Yes, but to do so, the machine running both production and dynamic image server must then have two keys connected. Also, when running both software packages on the same machine, dynamic images will not be available in production preview.

Yes, provided the channel assignment is done in the file itself - WATCHOUT can not assign output channels. An Adobe Air utility to change channel assignments of wav files is available here: channelshifter.air

Yes. Reference the WATCHOUT 5.2 User Guide - Chapter 11 Inputs and Outputs pg 206 - String Output or this thread: Christie LX505 control Consult Christie or your projector's user guide with any questions about control strings for your particular Christie projector model.

Once you have loaded the content with production, yes, for playback, you can run a WO show without a production computer Yes No

Absolutely yes, since version 2.0 . Long before the Flash API was provided, that would have been the only way to do it. No need for that, this is documented in the WATCHOUT 5 User Guide, Appendix E Display Cluster Protocol starting on page 247. Yes, as noted above.

The EDID utility is supported by the FirePro series. The HD 7870 is a Radeon series card. Less optimistic about it working on Radeon cards, but we will give them a try as well.

Before yesterday I would have said no, but spoke with some AMD guys at InfoComm and discovered such a solution does exist for the FirePro line. Don't have it yet, just got back from InfoComm, but it is on our todo list for next week. Will post back after we know more.

I do not know why you feel it is not accessible. The number of Adobe Flash programmers in the world likely exceeds the number of WATCHOUT programmers by a factor of hundreds of thousands more. It is a ubiquitous tool popular for use in web applications - the established knowledge base is vast. And you are not limited to Flash, it is just one option. Use any programming language / panel building system you feel comfortable with, all that is required is the ability to send TCP/IP commands to WATCHOUT. A tool like that would be a learning curve for everyone, as it is new to everyone. The tool you reference seems to be very limited in scope and focused on a very narrow market segment. As WATCHOUT addresses many markets with vastly different needs, such a tool would need to be equally as flexible. Flash fits that bill. So do many others like Medialon, AMX, Crestron, Mediamation, ShowMan, etc. Flash proficient programmers are easy to find, and in our economy, lots of them looking for projects to keep afloat.

Go to the WATCHOUT 5 User Guide, page 241, Appendix D Production Computer Protocol. The information needed to control Production is there. That said, the direct control of display will always be more reliable, as there is no way to make an accidental change in the program when controlling display directly. Production's primary purpose is to manage the content on the players, so when it is in the system, there is always a chance something may change, intended or accidental. I am curious as to what you mean by "u a have limits to what it can do"? From a playback control perspective, I am unaware of any such limits.

I suspect by "more complete" you mean custom to your specific needs. Dataton has provided tools for exactly such needs. WATCHOUT Systems Manager is a compilation of tools for custom panel development using standard tools like Adobe Flash or any tool capable of TCP/IP communication. There are sample open source control panels that provide a working starting point for developers. Shortly the support for panel development will increase with "Cook Book" recipes for developing Flash and iOS panels to control WATCHOUT. Those tools are debuting this week at the WATCHOUT Academy and should be made available here in the near future.

x2 I experienced the same phenomena feeding a Christie Digital Systems Vista Spyder. Fed three outputs to a Spyder from both a FirePro v7800 and a Radeon HD5770. Catalyst Control Center and WO displays set to 1920x1080. Spyder operator states his EDID is set to 1920x1080. The ATi GPUs did not think so, they would output 1920x1200 with the 1920x1080 image letterboxed in the overall raster. Initially the Spyder operator cropped the input back to the original 1920x1080 and we moved on. Next session, we added Lightware DA2DVI-HDCP-Pro2 EDID managers to all the outputs. The Spyder then properly received a normal 1920x1080 raster. But of course, then all the Spyder settings were now wrong, requiring the Spyder operator to undo the earlier workaround (remove the crop, and reposition the WO inputs).

Uggh, I so hate running Production during presentation, but if you must, I would suggest programming to trigger the " 0 " key on the numeric keypad instead of spacebar. Spacebar is a toggle (start/ run - pause - start/ run - pause - start/ run - pause - ...). The keypad key is a positive start / run only (start/ run - start/ run - start/ run - start/ run - ...) And the Esc key is a positive pause.

Short answer is yes. Simplest and safest way is to uninstall WATCHOUT and reinstall it on the RAID drive, then it will save all its assets there. Alternate way is described here: Forcing WO display pc's to use second disk When you use the command line trick, you must always start from the modified shortcut. When you install the WATCHOUT application software on the RAID, that is not a concern.

There should be no guessing on the input device number. Confirm the input device number definition in WATCHOUT Display (watchpoint) is correctly defined. The input devices in the WATCHOUT Display computer must be assigned in the Display Computer's "Video In" menu before you can reference them in WATCHOUT Production. (reference WATCHOUT 5 User Guide, page 137). If the display computer has not properly defined the inputs, they will not be accessible.

If the provided movie is not appropriate to the task, then your only choice may be to re-encode the movies your client provides to correct those shortcomings.

Yes. You will find them in the location that you have installed watchout software in a folder called log

We run our WATCHOUT Display systems with no anti-virus, no firewall. The WATCHOUT Display system has no public network connections, no anti-virus software, as per Dataton's recommendation in their Windows_7_Tweaking_list_2.1.pdf document. We do install a hard drive archiving system (Acronis True Image) on each WATCHOUT computer. When the system is built, Windows authenticated, tuned and tested, IP address set, etc. we scan the system for any form of infection. Once that is clear, we then make an image of the hard drive of each computer and store it on that each individual computer's Acronis secure zone. In the event of external storage infecting the system during production changes, we simply restore the original installation on the Displays from the image on each computer's Acronis secure zone. Done that way, there is no need to re-authenticate Windows / no need for an internet connection. As all media is placed on displays by production, there is no need to backup media on Display computers. Of course, before restoring media to displays, first clean up any contamination issues on Production. WATCHOUT Production is a different story. Depends on whether you intend to use production during playback or not. If you plan to playback with displays only, then run all the protection you feel you need on production - anti-virus, firewall, etc. You will need to open / allow firewall ports used by WATCHOUT. Personally, on Production, I would store all master media and show files on an external drive and scan that drive from another computer for infection each time before connecting it to Production. In that scenario, if there are no non-WATCHOUT network connections, I would also run Production un-protected as well. If you will run production during playback, then you would probably want to remove any non-WATCHOUT network connections and turn the protection stuff off during shows.

A pleasant surprise the delay is that small / good. The EasyCAP sure appears to be just an analog SD video capture device. Low res analog interlaced at traditional frame rates (29.97 / 25 fps) - ugh. As good as you need for 20th century analog SD video devices Probably not something you would want to use for a PowerPoint computer capture.

I wonder if changing between production and remote may cause an issue with the remote connection issuing the load command, since the show is already loaded. The load command re-establishes the cluster for WATCHOUT remote. Try this, after going offline with production, quit WATCHOUT display on the server you are conecitng to with remote. Restart WATCHOUT Display so it is sitting at the WATCHOUT logo screen. Then connect to that display and load the show from WATCHOUT Remote. See if that does not clear that up. That is exactly the way that should work. When production is present, it is the system timing master. When you take away / disconnect the system timing master, the system will stop. When using WATCHOUT Remote, the display machine itself is the timing master. Removing the remote does not affect that.

Well since your powerppoint laptop will output either analog RGB VGA or digital RGB DVI or DP or MDP or HDMI, the best choice would be Datapath: VisionRGB E1s/E2s/DL-DVI (VGA/Component/DVI/HDMI) That particular card requires a PCIe x4 expansion slot.

Yes, Windows 7 support was added in version 4.1 That and any later version is compatible. Yes, it is found on dataton.com under WATCHOUT Downloads (scroll down until you find WATCHOUT 4.5.1). Note, your service must also have version 4.5.1 or newer on their system, or you may not be able to open the v4 show file you make. There are no trial versions of WATCHOUT per se, only the full release version. That said, the full release Production software has almost full function without the USB license key. Functions disabled without the key are 'online' (transfer of content to the displays you do not have), export movie, and some of the control related functions. The rest work fine without the license key - open, save, preview, all tween functions, etc are all full function no matter what. You may see a logo "bug" overlaid on some movie file playback in the preview without a key. No, you can not build in v5 and open in v4. For that matter, you can not build in any version and open in an earlier version. i.e. a show built in 5.2 can not be opened in 5.1, etc. The other way is true of course, you can always open an older WATCHOUT version show file in a newer version of WATCHOUT.

At 4 times 1080p resolution, simply saying i7 ain't good enough, not all i7 series computers are up to such a decoding task. I doubt any PC is capable of successfully playing back smoothly 1920x4320 with ProRes encoding / software decoding. For the equivalent of four or more HD streams, in addition your hi-speed SSD (500 MB/s or more), it is likely an i7 six-core Extreme Edition cpu with triple or quad channel memory would be required. What is the frame rate of the clips? Interlaced or progressive? Save your h.264 as an mp4 as described in Dataton AB's document: WATCHOUT - Codecs for stable WATCHOUT playback.pdf With other codecs, I have occasionally seen strange results with large movies where the vertical resolution exceeds the horizontal resolution. Have your tried encoding it as a 4320 wide x 1920 high and rotating it in WATCHOUT?

Yes Not sure what that means. There are a couple of six output models with Eyefinity. Nothing to do with licensing per se, everything to do with the technical limitations of the drivers under DirectX 3D. We used those cards (and now the newer replacement Asus Radeon HD 7970 model). With proper active Mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptors you can get six DVI outputs and synch is not a problem with the adaptors. If you want six identical outputs, The ATi FirePro v9800 has Eyefinity and six matching MiniDisplayPort outputs. A lot more expensive though. The real challenge is building a PC with enough throughput and processing power to decode six HD movies at the same time. Using MPEG2 compression and paying close attention to the encoding settings, six 720p60 or six 1080p30 seems possible, but six 1080p60 may be over the threshold.

You can not. One and only one com port is supported per display computer, and it is always COM1. Most customers use IP to serial convertors to accomodate multiple rs-232 ports. Makes the com ports independent of the display computers so when you swap in a backup there is more flexibility without any additional serial port needs.

Assuming the availability of two PCIe x4 slots, Is it possible to run two DeckLink HD Extreme 3D+ in one computer at the same time? I agree, the Datapath VisionSDI2 probably makes more sense, but for those who may already own the BlackMagic Design Extreme card and want to expand, a second BMD Extreme card may make more fiscal sense.