JG

So, I finally got our first show with Watchout loaded in today and ran through a handful of cues (about half the show). Everytime there is a pause cue stops the main time line in a composition (which is probably 75% of the show), the display flashes. I'm not seeing this in the preview window of the production machine, only on the actual outputs. We're running version 5.1 under Windows 7 64-bit. The display machine has a Firepro v7900 video card and it's driving two Eiki projectors at 1024x768. Any thoughts on what's going on? Jim

This may be a dumb question, but if I accidentally add points to the edge blend curve, how do I get rid of them? Jim

Actually, the version of Quicktime probably is different on the two. I will take a look and see if that fixes the problem. Thanks. Jim

I suppose that I should preface this with I know I should upgrade to v5.1, just haven't got around to it yet. Our license keys arrived this morning and I went to start exporting rehearsal Qs using the export move command. I kept receiving the error message: "Can't interleave audio and video". The odd thing about this is that there is no audio in the show, only still images. I had been working on my desktop (Apple iMac running 10.6 with Watchout inside Parallels v6 on XP home). I switched to my laptop (Macbook Pro running 10.7, again Watchout inside Parallels v6 on XP), opening the exact same show file (it's stored on DropBox) and had no troubles. Any thoughts? Jim

Sounds good. Cheers. Jim

Is it possible to insert "time" into the main time line so that if you wanted to add media inbetween to exisiting cues, everything would shift left or right automatically rather than manually dragging everything? Jim

Full disclosure, I've never done any work with edge blending before. Are there any tools in Watchout I could utilize to make it possible to blend images across two displays of equal resolution, but who's real world projected sizes are different? I'm stuck with a set of mismatched projectors, both in terms of how bright the lamps are and the focal lengths of the each lens. I think ideally, I'd like to be able to zoom down each lens to fit the screens as closely as possible, but I'm unsure how to handle the fact that a single pixel will wind up representing different amounts of screen real estate. Jim

Thank you for all the excellent suggestions. I had started playing around with free running compositions this morning, and looking at JME's exampes, I think that's the way to go for this particular production. I had also experimented with aux timelines in a maner similar to Thomas's, but using pause and play cue's from the main timeline to trigger the aux timelines. Generally, though, I'm thinking compositions in the main timeline might make composing the show intially a little easier, and give the operator and better view of what's going on once the show opens. Again, thank you everyone for all your valuable help. Jim

The plan is to have an operator at the production computer push the space bar, though I'm open to other options. And yes when I'm talking about image fades in Watchout. Specifically, I have three still images up on three screens and want to start opacity tween tracks to take each of them out individually based on lines of dialogue.

I'm tyring to setup a series of fade cues that will be triggered manually by an operator. The second cue wants to be triggered at a particular point in the dialogue while the first cue is still fading, and then again with the third cue. So far, the only way I've found to make Watchout hold for the second cue without pausing the fade on the first cue is to put all three in seperate auxilary timelines. I suppose this would work but I'm wondering if there's a more elegant solution I could use? Jim

Well, I'd say that pretty much covers it. Thanks for all your help and your very insightful reply. Jim

Having used rented Watchout Systems on occasion for a couple of seasons now, my company is looking to purchase a system of our own. We are looking for a production computer and one display computer to drive three 1024x768 outputs. I've combed through the forum for some information on succsessful display computer configurations with multiple outputs, but still have a few questions. I'm definitely looking for a quad-core processor, but haven't seen any mention of a minimum clock speed. Would 2.0 GHz be sufficient for SD video, or should we be looking at 3.0 Ghz or more? I think we're going to invest in an AMD FirePro card, and I would love to hear any feedback from users who are using that family and which models they're using. There's a note in the Users Guide that mixing different kinds of graphics cards is not recommended. Those this mean that if we select a four output card like the v7900 for the display computer we would also need one for the production machine, or could we use a less beefy card for the production machine as long as it is still in the FirePro family? Lastly, have people had good success with active DisplayPort to VGA adapters? I see a lot of discussion on the forum and in web searches about active DisplayPort to DVI, but we would like to utilize our existing stock of VGA cable, if possible, especially for longer runs. Thank you for your help. Jim