Neil Stratton

Hi Knaval - sounds like your audio file is crashing Watchpoint. What type of file is it? I only use uncompressed wav files Neil

Hi Dylan - as Jim says the simplets way is to produce 3 1920 x 1080 videos. So say you were using AE or similar, your composition would be 5060x1080. When you render you would crop the videos to leave you with 3 1920 x 1080 vts. So VT1- crop right by 3140 VT2 - crop left by 1570, crop right by 1570 VT3- crop left by 3140 Then add a video proxy, setting the size to 5060 x 1080 and follow the instructions in the manual. Hope this helps. Cheers Neil

Hey Jonas - wishing you well in your new post. We will miss your patience and extensive knowledge with all things Watchout. You will be sorely missed. Neil Stratton

All I want for Christmas is folders in the task window. They would be the single best improvement from my perspective.

Thought it would be useful to update on this one. The fix is to scale your display in the stage window to the correct size in "real life' but maintain the aspect ratio. Then scale your media by the same amount and position as you would from pixel 0:0. Now I can place a moving line across all the screens and know exactly when and where it will apeear.

Hi all - ok this one has me stumped. I have two projection screens at 1920x1080 and 1 led wall in the centre at 1792x640. The led wall is fed from a 1080 output and in reality is the same height as the projection screens.The content sits within the 1080 head. What I want is to be able to have the led wall display in the stage window the same height as the projection screens.This way I can have an element travel across the screens accurately.I have tried playing with the display specifications but no luck. In a nutshell I want a 640 pixel high screen to be the same height as a 1080 pixel high screen in the stage window so I can accurately place media across all 3 screens. What I have tried is making the Led display in the stage 3024x1080 in the size specifications, but that means my content fills the display when I look at it on my monitor. I want ti to still sit in the top left of the output.Is this possible? Any tips much appreciated. Thanks Neil

Hi all- this may be a limitation of the aux timelines, but I'll ask anyway. Ok so sometimes I need to create a loop of stills and the way I achieve this is by laying them out on a timeline with a jump to run cue at the end to take me to the first still . I put the first image as the last image so it is seamless. I haven't done this for a while, and have always used the main timeline in the past. This time I have been trying to run a few of these on aux timelines but when the timeline jumps to the first still, the image disappears for a millisecond. I have tried adding a jump to run delay, and putting the images in a composition.But still it remains. I have used different media, compressed the images and still no change. If I put the same sequence on the main timeline this does not happen. Anyone else seen this? Or even better have a solution? WO 5.5.1 Win 7 64 bit. Thanks in advance Neil

Hey D- I use the K70 and it is great. But thats what got me thinking......I already have a keyboard in front of me with lots of keys doing nothing....so it would be great to be able to use these keys to trigger timelines. Thanks Sergio- just looking at one now.And thanks for the tip.I usually run the entire timeline but just running an opacity control is much more useful. Thanks all.

Thanks Mike. I think making an external control app, though it may be simple to you, is beyond my abilities. Hey Walter yes I do use a midi keyboard to trigger timelines occasionally.My reason for this query was I already have a keyboard in front of me which I often am unable to relinquish due to last minute edits.Often name changes/additions, which require a regular keyboard. So I was just thinking in those scenarios it would be handy to me to have just the one keyboard..Also sometimes desk space is limited. By the way what midi controller do you use? I have an AKAI MPK25. Thomas that is a great idea thanks. I shall explore this. Thanks guys.

I work in live events and by nature they can be unpredictable. Mostly awards shows and I run differnt awards on different auxiliary timelines. Works great for me. I use production as my controller because I like to work that way and I am usually tied up in changes until very late in the day, post rehearsal and only just pre-show. What I want to do is this. I am running Timeline 1 and it has multiple pause points as I progress through nominees etc. I have points where I want camera to come in but I don't want this in Timeline 1 because I need to be able to choose when I use camera. So I have a timeline for my camera cues and run that when I need camera. It works. However if I am running Timeline 1, I don't really want to move to another timeline and run that then have to shoot back to Timeline 1. So I thought maybe I could trigger the camera timeline with a key on my keyboard. Sure I could use a midi keyboard, but I would like to have the camera timeline cued by say F1 or C . I have tried to input these keys in the Trigger window but they are not accepted. Anyone know a way to do this or even achieve the same in a different way? Thanks Neil

You could fill the circle with say pure green or similar, and key that out in the Ascender. I don't know how the Ascender interprets aplha channels. It may just ignore them. In which case the above method would be a workaround. Experimentation will dictate the most suitable colour for keying. Obviously if it was a football match then green would not be the best choice...

Just a hunch but if the Pond 5 footage is offered to Watchout in the form downloaded then it will be in PhotoJpeg. I would encode this according to the encoding guidleines for Watchout Neil

Hi Don - the stage preview window should not be taken as an accurate representation of how the display computer will perform. It is useful for programming but in my experience is not accurate when it comes to certain scenarios.I suggest testing with a display machine attached. That is the only way to be sure. Also are you running W7 in dual boot or Parallels/VMWare? The latter will degrade performance considerably. Neil

Hi Charlie - go to Window - Task-. In the task window select the arrow on the right side of the frame and select Add Auxiliary timeline.Double click the timeline you have just created to open it. Put the looping video on the timeline. Double click it and in the advanced tab set it to free running and looping. Place a pause control cue on this timeline efter the start of the video .After the pause cue set an opacity keyframe of 100 and after say a second or so, a second keyframe of 0. To loop the video run the timeline. It will run to the pause cue and the video will loop until you hit run again when the timeline will run over the opacity tween and the video will fade out. Good practice to put a stop cue after the end of the vide to kill the timeline. Cheers

When you say the cue doesn't play do you mean the timeline rolls over the cue but doesnt play the cue? Or does the timeline position not move? Have you tried putting a longer pre-roll in the cue? Is the video encoded as per Watchout encoding guidelines?

It's a long shot: are all the psds in RGB colourspace and the third one CYMK?

I am afarid I am with Ray on this one. What I have found useful is the added advice a post may generate.So that although the post itself may be one that has been answered before, the replies from members invariably throw up interesting ways of working.So for me, I am happy to read similar posts as now and again this indirectly throws up something new.My other favourite forum is Creative Cow, and that has a vast amount of posts on there.I never find it a problem. And if the topic is of no interest/relevance or is repetitive, I am not obliged to read it. I am guilty of posting too quickly sometimes when I may have found the answer elsewhere, and apologise for that. Take a recent example though. I was on site and the situation arose where we wanted to leave the client with a simple solution to managing five projectors and a Watchout display. I contacted the projector manufacturers but got no answer, so while I waited for their technical team to get back to me I posted on here. The question was not a Watchout one, but regarding the port address etc for Optoma projectors. The post was accepted. As a result there is now a definitve answer to whether you can send a string output to these projectors on the forum. In the future if I am looking for an answer on another projector, I would be delighted if I could pop in here and someone with previous experience had posted on this. Stricter moderation would remove such posts, though many Watchout users would be grateful for such info. So for me it has to be moderation in moderation.

It's a fair point, but at the same time if these questions are publicly answered on the forum, it means we can easily find answers to such questions, and Support does not have to answer the same questions again and again.

For anyone else looking for a solution to controlling these projectors here is the reply from Optoma: Thank you for your support request, we have spoken with our product team and they have advised us that, this unit will not control via IP/TCP only via our web browser using the RJ45, the only other way is to control over RS232.

Hi- on a permanent installation we would like to have Watchout send a string output to a bank of Optoma EW610ST projectors. Does anyone have any experience of setting this up with these projectors? What port number etc. Waiting on reply from Optoma support but thought someone here may have already tried. Thanks in advance Neil

Yes this appears to be the solution. Thanks Jonas for your help.

To clarify-if I change the display width to 1066, will the edge blend position move or will it still run to the full width of the panel?It is difficult to accurately see on monitors which is all I have a t my disposal right now. Thanks!

Ok to clarify here is what they are trying to do.Basically we have fixed projector positions.The videos are rendered at 1066 x 800. The projectors are 1280 x 800.So the videos don't fill the panels which means we don't have an edge blend. Obviously we could re-render the videos at 1280 by 800 but wondered if there was a better way to fix this? If I change the width of the Display in the Stage Position and Size of Display to 1066 by 800 will this give me what we need? Looking at it on monitors it looks like the answer but just want to be sure. http://www.flickr.com/photos/94042073@N02/8579100115/

Hi all-have a query from a client. They have 5 videos which are 1066 wide running through 5 1280 projectors. The question is if the videos are all centred in the displays, is it possible to move the position of the edge blend to bring them in from the edge?Obvioulsy it needs to end not at the end of the panel. I have only ever used the full panel in blends so don't know if this is possible.The projector positions are fixed so we dont have the option of moving them.Hope this makes sense. Thanks

Hi Omar-the fact you are not seeing the ip address on the Watchout splash screen does suggest a network issue.Are you using unmanaged switches? What OS are you running? I would expect the displays to identify themselves by name as well as ip address once Watchpoint has loaded.Have you disabled all but TCP/IPv4 in the adapter properties?