Daniel Quinn

Last time I had an issue with Watchout and Encore it was 1 source link cable that proved the problem, and it tested fine 3 times, and failed the 4th. Replaced it, wham fixed! The other day I was forced into a situation where I had to use some cheap DVI I dual links that were 2m.. not a problem at all, thing ran fine for two days. Go figure. Every other cable in the thing was 300mm (1ft) Encore is a temperamental beast.

Which switcher is it? If it's the 1600 you will achieve what you want. If I was running it in Australia I would be running it in either 720p or 567i at 50hz, and I would run my Watchout show at 50hz. I run two machines with Blackmagic Multibridge Pro's in them and achieve quite low frame delay.

I would prefer a preview of that display behind the grid, which scales along with the window when you resize it. It would not have to be full definition, although that would be preferred. Most of the time if I am using correction I am just using either a B&W mask or a wireframe anyway

Up until recently, I haven't done much geometric distortion. I would appear that now we have done a few shows using it, everyone in our office wants to project onto the next weirdest object they can find! Unless something has changed in V5 and I haven't found it, I would really find it useful to get the Warping Grid overlaid over the image on Screen. To achieve something similar, and other people I am sure may have tried this, I have built a template up of Screen Shots of the Geometric Grid in full warp mode and made a bunch of different resolution Grid PhotoShop files, which I overlay on the Watchout stage to give me a grid on screen, so I have at least have some reference as to where my points might appear. This is especially handy when I am doing weird and wonderful curved shapes on a stage set for example, where I can put up the grid and a mask of my shapes at the same time. The other way I have tried, with some success although it is not perfect, is to VNC my production screen live into the Stage, and scale it out so the grid is correct. This isn't perfect though. Anyone else tried / succeeded with any other variation of this? Cheers Dan

I attempted to do this, and the system actually wouldn't let me. Different drives, folders etc, V5 automatically removed V4, and retrying to install V4 just resulted in an error message telling me I had a more recent version installed. btw I only tried it to see what would happen. Dan

http://www.youtube.com/user/AlienwareAustralia#p/u/1/lxCCBUt2UGU 10 x Watchout displays.The rear wall was 5 projectors, 3 edgebutted with 2 doing the angled corners due to lousy roof height. We made a manual feathered blend in Photoshop over the top3 x Projectors for the caravan shape in the middle, one for the middle and one at each end. I won't begin to describe how many warp points that took around the edges. Content pre-mophed in Cinema4D2 x Projectors for the floor, pre masked and vertically distorted to make a rectangular projector make a square shape, pinned back to remove the keystone, and blended in the middle3 x Production machines running SMTP time code from Cubase, running dedicated 6.1 surround top mix, and a dedicated 6.1 surround sub mix for some incredible surround lower end 3d panning by the audio team.Production houses did all the content, we did the Projection and Design.Dan.

You need to pre split your video content and proxy it in. The manual describes the process quite well. This will allow you to separate all your video content per display machine, and is recommended when playing content of the size you are suggesting. My video producers are always pushing the limits on display capabilities, so I have been pre splitting for years. It looks great, and I've never had an issue with it. Dan

I have two machines with Multibridge Pro's, which I believe are similar hardware. I have successfully used the HDMI input on these with my laptop as the source, using my display port -> DVI and then adapting it to HDMI. It worked extremely well, and looked fantastic Dan

Always good to find the reason. I hate intermittent faults!

I have seen audio lag on WMV files before for, and we recently had an experience where the audio lagged for a very specific reason. The first one I had audio embedded on the first display only, and that machine lagged slightly processing audio when the other 3 displays didn't have to. Lesson learnt from that experience was if it is possible to extract the audio and play it separately, do so! If you are using USB audio devices, I would imagine this problem would be exasperated. The second time was a bit interesting. The team who built the show had the audio running off the production machine, and the pause point was .010 off the start of the video. About 1/3 of the time (and we tested this for 2 days to get this average) the timeline would Pause, but because the "green line" on the timeline was so close to the video it would actually trigger the video file on the display machine. Because they received the files so late, they had added them on the timeline and set them to Freerunning, so when the pause point triggered the video, it started running until the operator hit the go again to fade the opacity of the video up. This triggered the video as far as the production machine was concerned, but was obviously 15-20 seconds behind the video footage. Not sure if the second example is what happened to you, but be wary of having pause points that close to free running video files. Interestingly, if I zoomed closer in on the timeline, and made a visible space between the green bar and the video file, the fault never occurred. Dan

I have used the Roland USB midi interfaces with great success in the past. Cheap, easy, and works. I have used these both off a lighting console, and from a Mac running Soundtrack Pro. http://www.roland.com/products/en/UM-1SX/ http://www.roland.com/products/en/UM-1EX/index.html Dan