JJ Myers

Hi Jonas, I just came across something in this post that I didn't catch before... perhaps just in time for a gig I have coming up. In regards to using ACTIVE DP/MiniDP --> DVI/HDMI adapters, how can one tell if a given adapter is ACTIVE or PASSIVE, if not directly provided in the product specifications? Traditionally, ACTIVE has meant it needs to be plugged in, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is not the case here. Not having read your post until now, I had bought a bunch of these for my gig, and am unsure if they qualify : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158199 Is there any way to tell? Thanks! JJ

Bart, that IS fun! Very impressive indeed! I'm assuming by posting in this thread, you were able to accomplish using basic Adobe tools as well? Nice work. Bravo! JJ

Well I'm bummed that I never heard any responses on this, but I just put an order in for one - so I'll let everyone know my results!

A lot of your encoding info seems really odd, but perhaps some of it is a typo. Either way, I'll comment on what looks suspicious to me : 1. 29 fps. I'm assuming you mean either 29.97 or 30 fps? 29 fps would definitely not be a good frame rate to use in W/O. 2. 8.1 MB in file size / 2796 Kbps. That is extremely low. Those data rates are more applicable for web. Whenever you combine low data rates with a high quality setting on your encoding, you are ultimately placing more strain on the processor when decoding on the playback side. With your provided specs, you are barely even utilizing the 10K RPM drives, because pulling 2796 Kbps of data from the HDD pales in comparison to what you are asking the processor to do. I recommend something more along the lines of 10,000 Kbps - 20,000 Kbps. 3. Video sample size 24bit. Not sure if I'm clear what you are reporting here, but most likely, what we refer to as 8 bits per channel for a non-alpha supported encoded video. If so, this has - most likely - zero factor in the problem you are experiencing. 4. WMV. Possibly the biggest part of the problem. I used to use WMV. Then I started using MPEG2 for my encoding, using Telestream's Episode w/ custom settings, and I've never looked back. Some people still use WMV and swear by it, but if you bench mark the performance efficiency of WMV vs. MPEG2, I believe that MPEG2 will win that battle the majority of the time. Best of luck, JJ

Hi everyone, I know that this card is considered to be on the "tried and tested" list, but I would like some additional feedback from the user base. I'm considering picking one up for testing, and I am especially intrigued by the dual-stream capability. I'm assuming that W/O can recognize each SDI input as an independent live capture input? Other notes of feedback I am interested in from users : - measured delay (in frames)? - quality of de-interlacing? Can this be set (board level) on the card so that W/O doesn't have to do any software de-interlacing? If not, can anyone comment on the quality of de-interlacing in W/O? My previous experiences have proven poor when compared to solid hardware de-interlacing from scalars like Barco Image Pro, etc... - does the card keep up in W/O when using 2 streams @ 60fps? any motion lag or dropped frames? - general quality of card? Many thanks in advance for your input!! JJ Myers

Hey Rogier, 1. Locate the shortcut that you use to launch W/O display (also known as WATCHPOINT) on your display machines 2. Right click, and choose "Properties" 3. In the text field for "Target", it should read something like : "C:\Program Files(x86)\Dataton\WATCHOUT 5\WATCHPOINT.exe" It will vary, depending on your OS, where you chose to install W/O, etc... 4. Change this line so that it adds the NoLogo argument : "C:\Program Files(x86)\Dataton\WATCHOUT 5\WATCHPOINT.exe" -NoLogo 5. Enjoy splash screen free updates!! Regards, JJ

Bernd, I would recommend that you contact your WO reseller about obtaining a "site license" as opposed to individual licenses for each of your displays. The site license is a single dongle with a certain amount of available software licenses that it distributes out to displays requesting a license. Your environment seems to be a perfect fit for a site license, and I'm sure that your reseller would be more than willing to trade in your individual licenses for a site license. JJ

Jim, These Matrox boxes pipe off a single head from the installed GFX card. They are external devices that support super large pixel spaces from a GFX card and then splits that space across multiple heads on the box itself. The box provides the GFX card the EDID info for the custom resolution. To the GFX card and Windows, the Matrox box is a single display that supports a super large amount of rez. For instance, on a "Triple Head To GO" Matrox box, it is capable of supplying the GFX card with a 5760 x 1080 EDID and then splits that space into 3 - 1920 x 1080 feeds at the box. It was the method for supplying multiple GFX outputs from a single WO display before v5.

Ahhh... I did not know that. Learned something new today So I guess you would have to install 3x 2-headed Matrox cards on 3 DVI heads.... which I'm not sure you can do from a Matrox standpoint. Peicco, you may be out of luck on this one.... so sorry...

It sounds like the proper solution would be more displays. Unless you are not using any video, I would think that 4+ heads per machine would be overload on the system resources. Otherwise, you end up spending more money trying to make a single super computer vs. splitting up the horsepower across more machines. However, if you insist on over 4 heads - I would think that you could put a triple head on the 4th head of a 4-headed GFX card to extend it. On your WO stage, you would then have 3 displays @ one standard size and 1 display at a really wide size. Assuming all your outputs are 1920 x 1080, you would have 3 displays @ 1920 x 1080 and 1 display set to 5760 x 1080. If you run into any trouble, it would probably be Matrox driver related - but I would think you should be able to accomplish the setup.

Neil, if your video is not loading from the aux timeline, it may be because you haven't given the system enough "head's up" on the video. Because aux timelines are considered "wild cues" or "on the fly", the system cannot pre-cache or anticipate you cueing it. My standard procedure (and has worked for me plenty of times) is to provide a little pre-roll at the head of the timeline, then have the actual video cue's time base start at about 1s into the timeline. Also, I ALWAYS add a control cue in my aux timeline to kill itself - at the appropriate point in the aux timeline. That way, I simply continue to advance the aux timeline up until the point that I don't need it, and then it kills itself.

We've actually used those with v4 to accomplish the same thing that v5 already provides. Now that v5 supports the ability to accommodate multiple heads recognized at the OS level, the need for Matrox cards in v5 is actually completely unnecessary (IMHO). You would be much happier acquiring a GFX card that has 3 or 4 heads and would spend less $$ as well.

The same basic principal applies to the production PC. The only difference is that if the production PC drops a little video performance here and there, it does not ultimately affect the presentation from the audience's standpoint. If you are comfortable with viewing video as "thumbnails" and/or toggling between thumbnail and full quality preview mode, you will probably be OK with a SATA HD on the production machine. If you want the best performance on the production PC as possible, and the maximum work flow, then you will want to load up your production PC with as many resources as possible... including an SSD.

Yes... about 150 Mb/s in drive throughput ;-) It will make a difference when you are trying to play back multiple 'heavy' files (ie: hi bit rate video). If you think you may be layering multiple videos at once, or wish to use 'heavier' codecs, then you will want to use an SSD configuration. That being said, W/O users have been using SATA HDs for a long time now with great success.

That is great news Frederik! Thanks! JJ

Hi. Is there any future plan by Dataton to release a v4 that runs on v5 dongles? One of the factors I'm struggling with on upgrading my keys is that once I go to v5, there is no going back (no ability to digress). This is a huge factor in the rental market where WO providers have to also rely on the availability of other sub-vendor's inventory. Thanks, JJ

I have also been testing the Dynamic Image Server and have found it to become frequently unresponsive. I have been testing it with various Flash files. It seems like it handles simple Flash files (minimal objects, low processing load) just fine, but really struggles with larger, more complex Flash files. I would test the same Flash files in the local browser and they play just fine, but when they try to play from DIS (that's my acronym for Dynamic Image Server), I don't get the same results. DIS is a revolutionary idea, conceptually. And I know it will be a complete game changer down toe development road of WATCHOUT. But I'd be remissed if I didn't say it has a ways to go :-( Don't get me wrong though - totally diggin' the new features of WO5!!

Just to follow up. I have been benchmark testing my software RAID 0 across 3x WD Caviar Blacks on a Win7 installation. The process is working very well. Although I do not have a hardware RAID to compare it to, I would say the performance is beyond acceptable.

I intend to slowly migrate to SSDs. However, I currently have a stock of over 30+ machines. If I want to have a decent amount of storage, I would need to go with 240 GB SSDs @ +$300/each x 30 = $9000 in storage upgrades. There goes my budget for upgrading W/O keys :-( The 4 machines I am currently building RAID configurations on have motherboards that only support RAID or non-RAID (cannot have mixed RAID/non-RAID partitions). I'm running into many brick walls trying to put the Windows installation on the RAID set. It can be done.... it's just gonna take some jumping through hoops (for reasons too long to explain here). So... I'm trying to keep the Windows installation on a separate non-RAIDed partition and the storage side on a RAIDed partition. And since the solution is temporary until I go all SSD, I figured perhaps software RAIDs would be adequate. Do you perhaps know of any data on the web that compares processing overhead on software RAIDs vs. non-RAIDs? Anything would be greatly appreciated! JJ

I also just read that a software RAID can use extra CPU cycles, but I'm wondering if it's negligible? I'm guessing it becomes even more negligible in cases of RAID 0 vs. RAID 5, or any set that uses parity....

In anticipation of migrating all my systems to W/O ver5, I am reconfiguring all my machines to RAID configurations. I have decided what level of RAID I want to use. What I cannot decide is whether to go with a software RAID using Windows 7 Disk Management tool, or use hardware RAID configurations (when able). I keep running into limitations with hardware configurations, so I am leaning towards software RAID sets, but am interested in getting feedback from the W/O community in regards to software RAID sets. Are there any drawbacks that anyone has encountered? Many thanks, JJ Myers

Not sure why, but I had a response to a similar thread where the thread was deleted. Possibly because the topics were so similar it was considered a duplicate? Anyways, I have found that there are all sorts of hidden processes on a Windows 7 installation that interfere with W/O at the low level OS - a level that any software developer would have no control over. Some of these processes are capable of assuming priority from WATCHOUT and then forcing it out of full screen mode. You can access control of the processes by typing "msconfig" in the Start input text field and then pressing enter. My suggestion is to go through the list of processes and disable any processes that pose a potential threat to the stability of W/O. I wish I had one of my machines in front of me so I could list the ones that I have disabled, but as soon as I found the magic recipe of disabled processes, I have no longer had the issue of W/O being forced out of full screen mode. I hope this helps, JJ Myers

OK, so I finally got it to install. The only thing I did differently? Copied over the W/O installer onto the local drive and then ran the installer from there. When it was failing, I was running the install from my server, which was a network path, which was likely causing the driver to be unsigned.... or at least that's my guess. I could have sworn that I've run the W/O installer from a network path in the past, but I am going to stick with running it locally from now on BTW - Kudos to Dataton for starting this web-based support forum! Now things like this can be searched and found without new threads being created, etc... Regards, JJ

I remember awhile back that someone was having difficulties getting Windows to install the drivers for the WIBU key. I have been coming across similar struggles. I just started building some brand new RAID-based, rackmount CPUs, and for some reason the WIBU Key will not install. Every time I plug it into a USB port, a notification alerts me that Windows is trying to install the driver, and then the notification changes to a big red "X" and : "Device driver software was not successfully installed. Please consult with your device manufacturer for assistance getting this device installed." One of the notifications led to something regarding the digital signature for the driver being "unsigned". I've tried uninstalling W/O and reinstalling a few times. That didn't solve the problem. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit Professional w/ SP1. Thanks in advance for any help. -JJ