Neil Stratton

You smashed it there Dan! Gives us all something to aim for.Brilliantly executed and truly inspiring.Loving it! Neil Stratton

Yes thanks Jonas for your comprehensive reply. Sending you a virtual beer! The delay on the Intensity is pretty good to be fair.I just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing anything I am going to try one other thing- pulling live camera in thorugh my Vision E1.Anyone tried this? Many thanks Neil

Hi all-I know we have been over this before but it still remains a mystery to me. I am mainly a designer who uses Watchout to deliver special visual projects. I occasionally do corporate work but have avoided it for a while now because of my issues with live camera capture.I used it a few times at first but was never happy with delay which came from a variety of sources, one of which was my Watchout system. I have read what I could find on the subject on the forum but still not clear about what settings make a real difference. I have a project coming up where i must have a camera and a powerpoint pip on a single display of 1920 x 1080. Because I have very little knowledge of video apart from creating and editing, I have a few questions i was hoping you could answer for me. Firstly-we will have PAL cameras and WO will be driving a single projector. Usually i run at 60fps and create all my animation at 60fps or 30 fps. Because I have to capture a PAL source would I be better to run WO at 50fps? I have two cards I can use- Osprey 230 and Intensity Pro.Which would you say would be the better card? I will only be taking composite or component for this project. At the moment I cant see any real difference between the cards. I have attached screen shots of my settings for each card and was hoping someone might have a minute to take a look at them and suggest anything I could do to improve the delay time? I have to admit that most of the settings mean nothing to me. I work alone and so dont have any support technicians to advise me on this. Thanks in advance! Neil Stratton http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/OSPREY.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/INTENSITY.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/WO-1.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/2-1.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/1-1.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/WO.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/9.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/8.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/7.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/6.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/5.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/4.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/3.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/2.png http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt259/neiltstratton/Watchout%20Forum/1.png

No problem. Have tried to replicate your problem but have no issue with those settings with HDMI from Intensity Pro. Cheers Neil Stratton

Hi Mikesull- could be one of many things. Generally speaking though it is good practice to render files as mpeg 2 with a seperate audio track, usually uncompressed wav.Having said that I use H264 with embedded audio frequently without issue. Are they large files? Where is the audio playing from- a dsipaly machine or the production machine? Try starting the file not at 0 on the aux timeline- just a fraction of a second in. Are you saying that once it has not played with audio once it never does again? If so check the file plays fine in quick time on the machine playing it. Look around the forum for info on encoding reccomendations. Its there somewhere. I would list the encoding settings for these files, and also your hardware setup as there isnt enough to go on in your message Cheers Neil Stratton

On Display PC hit Ctrl W while running Watchpoint and select Video In in drop down menu.

My first would be to be able to solo a layer.I can switch layers off but to be able to solo a layer would be very useful. Or am I missing something... Thanks Neil Stratton

And maybe you could start a sticky for people to drop feature requests into? Cheers Neil Stratton

That's exactly what I could do with Matkeane. My solution has been to copy the composition (1) and its attributes and paste it on the timeline.Then I create a new composition (2), and copy the cues from the original composition (1) into this new composition (2).Then I drag the new composition(2) onto the old composition (1) on the timeline and now I have a composition (2) with the same attributes but different media cues. And Fredrik good to hear you are looking into this. Many thanks Neil Stratton

Excellent! Why didn't I think of that...... I know- I've been working far too long. Thanks Adela Neil

Hi all-not sure if this is possible but if there is a way it would save me some time. I am used to working with After Effects compositions where I copy a composition then replace items within that comp.I would like to do the same in WO.I am running version 5.1. In my current WO show I have 18 compositions which all have the same moves, timings etc and what I want to is take Composition 1, duplicate it , then change the media items within it.Cant find a way to do this.Any ideas? Many thanks Neil Stratton

Hi Iclavell-this was covered pretty extensively in the old forum but as a quick recap you would want to set up your project to the pixels stated then render it as a pre split movie, Mpeg 2 being the current favourite. On a typical 3 display show I pre split for each display so you have a movie file for each display.You will find details on this in the manual. All the best Neil Stratton

Hi Adam-not sure if this is the right direction but I had some problems when swappig machines around only to find that the NIC settings didnt match on the production machine and display machines. In my case I just got a whole host of errors and couldnt run anything. The settings that were different were the IPV4 Checksum Offload settings. If they dont match Windows throws its toys out of the pram. But dont ask me why. By the way where did you get Version 5.1? Thanks Neil Stratton

Hi Ben-only just saw your post so you have probably already bought but I use the following with success to run HD shows. Intel I7 2600k quad Core 3.4GHZ ATI Radeon HD5850 ASUS P8P67 Mobo. 4 Gig Ram All in this set me back around £600. Add a couple of Sata drives and a decent PSU you can easily come in under £1200.More like £850 Neil Stratton

Bingo! Nice one Jonas.Pauses nice and smooth now I have rendered all I-frames.Wow thats saved me a lot of time. Thanks!

Hey Jonas-yes good advice-I am encoding with ProCoder.Will give the I frames a whirl and report back. Thanks Neil

Hey all-done a little research on this already but thought I would throw it open. I have an awards show coming up where all the content is created in After Effects. Each line of text is an animation and the correct way to do this would be to render each piece out as a seperate file. However I was wondering if anyone had a way of avoiding this as there are many awards and not so much time. I would love to be able to render each section out as one movie file then add Pause Control Cues at the appropriate points to hold for the next build. Has anyone ever done this? It would save a mountain of time but so far my experiments have shown the file to slip a couple of frames after the Pause Cue kicks in. Neil Stratton

Which manual are you referring to Jonas?No such entry in my WO5 manual...

An addition to the Win7 tweaking list might read: "avoid at all costs"! Next week I am going back to XP. (only joking!) A simple way to determine if your switch is causing the problem is to connect the Production machine directly to one of the Displays(thanks to Dataton for this). I still would like to hear from people who have not had these issues with Win7 and more importantly what NICs and switches they use.I'm not asking for product recommendations.Just be interested to hear about combinations that work out of the box. On every other forum I know of users freely share their setup for others benefit.So why not here? Cheers Neil Stratton Asus P8P67 Rev3 (Realtek® 8111E Gigabit LAN controller)(Win 7 Certified) Intel I7 2600k Netgear FS108 (Win 7 Certified) Win 7 Home Premium Watchout 5

Back to the one postage stamp then! Yes I always disable my bluetooth at the Bios stage if I can and definitely have no other devices enabled. Neil

Hi David-it is still a work in progress and I will keep posting what I find as I go along. Feel free to pop round anytime, but best check on the salmon situation first! Cheers Neil

Hi David-I'd like to say I am glad I'm not the only one having problems but I wouldnt wish the dark depths I have plumbed on anyone.Ok well maybe a couple of people.To make matters worse salmon have been running my local river while I have been tinkering with NIC settings.Oh the pain! I have spent many hours on this one and have possibly eliminated my occasional triggering failures, but network speed has yet to be improved. Much of what I was about to write is already included in Jim's post above. Windows 7 appears very poor compared to XP regarding network.Have a look on the web and ponder over the reams of material on this subject.I would like to revert to XP but then the whole problem of drivers makes that a non starter. So far my travels have taken me to disable Flow control in the NIC adapter properties and disable auto-negotiate and set speed(in my case 100mbps Full Duplex) in the Speed and Duplex option.Just had two days of rock solid operation.I know nothing about networks and so am still very keen to hear what else people recommend looking at. I have a suspicion that W7's behaviour in seeing the network as unidentified and treating it as public is a factor.Unless you are on Pro, Enterprise etc then you dont have the Group Policy Editor function and have to resort to registry hacks.So an upgrade of W7 might be on the cards. I am using a Netgear FS108 unmanaged switch and have tried others with no difference.I'd be interested to hear from people who have no problems what switches/NIc's they are using? Below are some links to useful articles.The top one appears to help and the others are worth a look. Seems incredible that a new OS should actually set us back, but hey thats progress I suppose. Keep us posted as to how you get on.Unfortunately I do not have a team behind me.It's just poor old me and what I know about networks you could write on the back of a stamp.Ok maybe 2 stamps after the last few weeks. All the best Neil Stratton http://www.sysprobs.com/windows-7-network-slow http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/2b6c59c3-5404-44ff-b8ac-eb73f9eee559 http://www.thehtpc.net/htpc-tips-and-tweaks/network-tips-and-tweaks/improve-vista-and-windows-7-network-performance/

Ah Michael that's it! Excuse me while I slap myself soundly! For anyone following set the opacity of both points in the Edge Blend to 0%. Thanks Michael!

Hi all-just to add to this thread I need to turn off the blend globally for all layers in V5. But try as I might I cannot find how to? Thanks Neil

Thanks Jim-exactly what I was looking to hear.I have had issues such as these. Thanks for your advice-again! Neil