jonasf
-
Posts
14 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by jonasf
-
-
14 hours ago, jfk said:
Very good idea. If you normally do not use standby, an easy way to accomplish this is to place a cue for your NDI feed on a standby layer of the main timeline. Start the cue at time 0 and make the cue duration equal to the timeline duration. Then cue the feed with regular cues as needed.
20 hours ago, Simone said:Keep NDI feed always triggered. I do the same even with normal live feed from input card.
Thank you both for the suggestions. Yes I've indeed used the standby cue a few for a few shows. toggled using CTRL+B was straightforwrd. It does only work if I only have 1 camera feed cue. But for this instance, I would need to have 3 different live feed cues and a few powerpoint presentation slides. What did help me was triggering each cue as a task rather than having all of them in 1 timeline.
My issue now is that, everytime I have 2 or more instances of NDI screens on a single cue, not all would play at the same time. Here's a quick test to show what I mean:
After this test, I've done another approach which is to use tasks to cue each NDI Feed. It worked well and smooth but the same issue of needing to let the system cache/pre-load before I can toggle my cues.
I don';t experience any latency when using the NDI Studio Monitor etc. Is there another setting within watchout that I need to adjust in order to address this issue?
Thanks once again for the helpful thoughts and ideas. Getting ready for a big show next month
0 -
Hello,
I have managed to have 4 layers of different NDI applications within watchout. I have a live feed from an iPad Camera thru an NDI app, 2 desktop mirroring (wired connection) and 1 Live feed camera connected via hdmi onto to an NDI enabled laptop.
Connections are straight-forward thru a local gigabit network. All having static IP. frame rates set to 30fps.
My issue, everytime I trigger these on my main watchout timeline, all 4 screens will play but will only playback 1 at a time intermittently. playback lag are between 30 seconds to 1 min. Once all screens are playing, I have no issue with latency as I've set the latency to low for optimum performance. ie, sometimes iphone screens comes up first then a few seconds later, laptop 1 & 2 screens comes up; then sometimes vice versa.
My question, how do I eliminate this lag everytime I trigger the NDI feed? otherwise this will be almost unusuable/impractical for live events. The idea is to use NDI for live feed and laptop screen mirroring without the use of capture cards and thru a wireless network ecosystem. Anything I am missing on the setup? Hoping for some guidance.
Thanks in advance.
0 -
Hi All,
Thanks for all the inputs and help. We are still experiencing the same issue. We have done another setup at our warehouse using another Control Server, another type of lighting fixture and another type of DMX node. We are still experiencing the same issues.
Here's another video of what we are encountering.
Cheers
0 -
Hi Jonas,
here's the video i test with dmx_test.watch project.
DMX light Channel 1: Intensity (always on), 2:Red, 3:Green, 4:Blue, 5:Effect, 6:Flash rate
in the right hand side, is the artnet monitoring program.
you can see the change is very smooth. no flicker / sudden change at all.
and the LED light is perform very normal and following the watchout program.
I am not sure what actual problem is since i am not on the site to do the test.
I know you already test directly control with lighting console, so shouldnt be the DMX dimmer problem.
so my question is:
-Any other artnet program/ device on the same network?
-Did you try another DMX box?
-How about use another PC/laptop do the program?
-and How about the connection path? just dmxLan node direct to the dmx dimmer? or have other device on the network?
Cheers,
Morgan.
Thanks Morgan,
Your settings work within your single fixture. Our fixtures are only using 1 DMX Channel (dimmers). As per video above, the flickers do exist and a bug is still out there. This has to be fixed for everyones sake.
My Watchpax is Brand New fresh from delivery so I didn't try using another unit as I don't see there was I need to. It's straight from dmxLan Node 1s to the dmx dimmers.
Hi Jonas,
As previously mentioned by message, I'm a nube at DMX so not sure if this will work for you or whether it is 100% relevant to your situation. Try using DMX Channel 1 as THE catalyst/partner for the other DMX channels, eg. 1&2 to control DMX 2, 1&3 to control DMX 3, etc.
I just managed to get my Sandbox Artnet unit working with a single strobe light using the above method. Not sure if it was due to the peculiar character of the strobe light, but DMX 1 alone, or DMX 2, or 3...would not work. Only by using DMX 1 as 'the partner/catalyst' would the strobe work.
Thomas
Thanks Thomas, I believe your setup is different from mine. As mentioned above, my fixtures are only using 1 DMX channel. There is no need to partner it with other catalyst as I am only controlling light intensity and not colours.
I hope dataton addresses/fixes the bug as it is still out there.
0 -
My tech team has put together a simple 3-spotlight program for you to test with your hardware setup. Please see if your reported errors reappear.
Thanks Ken, got it. Although your setup looks like it's meant for a single fixture, the principle is the same. Results also same, giving me the same issues. Say Task R, G, and B are ON. If I ONLY turn OFF B, Tasks R and G turns OFF for a while and then turns back ON. If someone is at the toilet having a shower with their lights ON, I'm sure they wouldn't want their lights to flicker OFF overtime I turn OFF my Living Room Lights.
I hope we can resolve this issue.
Hey, I just spent some time testing DMX by setting up two WATCHOUT production computers, where one sends DMX outputs to the other's DMX inputs and the other way around. I could reproduce similar glitches when changing universes while beeing online. However, if you restart WATCHOUT and go online again then the problems are gone. Obviously, something isn't cleared properly when switching universes and will be fixed in 6.2.
A tip is to run this software to monitor your DMX network to see which device is sending what: http://www.lightjams.com/artnetominator/
Best Regards,
Miro
Hey Miro,
Thanks for the reply. I have restarted my Watchout a few times with same results every time. I am just using 1 universe for the 102 DMX Channels I have as I don't think having multiple universe is necessary. When I control my light fixtures using my lighting desk and EasyRemote App, it works seamless with no glitches. But when I use Watchout to ON and OFF fixtures, I get these glitches. It appears like a higher DMX channel takes precedence when I think each channel should behave individually. i.e. when I click DMX 1, it shouldn't affect any other channels at all whatever state they are in.
Thanks for the DMX monitor, I am also using a similar program with visualisers as shown on the above youtube link. I hope we can fix this issue as I have already handed over my project to my client. I wouldn't get a chance to test things from here onwards.
Here's another video using the actual fixtures onsite.
Cheers,
Jonas
0 -
Thanks for the reply. I had updated to 6.1.4 but I'm getting same results.
For argument sake, I did a new show with just 3 dmx channels. DMX1, DMX2 and DMX3. Each dmx is on its own auxiliary timeline task. Inside is a fade in and fade out. I have a pause after the fade is completed, and when I toggle play, it moves to fade out and back to zero position. Basically, one task is an ON and OFF switch. I turn ON DMX2. I turn ON DMX1, DMX2 goes off for 2 seconds then turns back ON. It's weird way to have WATCHOUT send signals that way.
My light fixtures are set to take and maintain the last action to take precedence (LTP). I did the same setup with my lighting desk and it does what I intended to do. I would use my lighting desk if it wasn't a permanent install and I because I had to use WATCHNET because the main plan is to control everything on an ipad with the custom UI etc. So in general, I will have 1 button to turn on light 1, another button for light 2 etc. I also have a button to turn ALL ON and ALL OFF. Even on the task that simply turns off all 102 channels, with the same fade in and out, they don't fade out all together but instead quickly does a chase effect that turns off DMX102 down to DMX1. It would be nice if I'm doing a light show, but for a museum, it shouts programming error.
0 -
In addition, I tried to delete some dmx channels from my output. I had it turned on manually from a lighting board. But when I click on the other tasks, the dmx channel that's not even on my program, is being turned off even without me sending out any dmx value.
0 -
I am using watchpax with watchout v6.1.3
0 -
Hello,
I have 102 DMX lights that I have setup to be controlled using Output Tasks. I am using dmxLAN Node 1s on Artnet. I can control all lights with no problem. My issue comes in when some groups of lights (in example, hallway lights) needs to be continuously turned on. When I play the next output task (another set of DMX channels), the current running task/lights will flicker OFF for 2 seconds before it goes on again. In a nutshell, say, DMX 1 and DMX 2 will turn off for a while when i turn on DMX 3. But DMX 3 wont turn off when I play and light that has a lower DMX value. I hope i made sense. Here's a test visualizer I have done to explain this issue further:
Is this a known issue within Watchout or do i need to look at other hardwares that might be causing this issue? Hoping to get some thoughts on this. Cheers.
0 -
Hi,
Most video tools including Adobe Media Encoder are using codec settings for mainstream usage, which nowadays are optimized to deliver minimal size with best possible quality. This is great when streaming stuff over the internet but makes often the decoding process more hardware intensive. In WATCHOUT, best decoding performance is more important than smallest file size for a certain quality. To really optimize your videos you will need to use more hardcore tools like FFmpeg, which is the most flexible, fastest and free video tool available. It can convert to any format WATCHOUT uses like HAP, H264, MPEG-2, ProRes, still image sequences etc..
As jfk mentioned, getting rid of b-frames is one good step on the way. B-frames are great for reducing size but they require more processing since each b-frame need bi-directional references to the closest intra frames (i-frames). Also make the GOP (group-of-pictures), the distance between i-frames smaller may also help to improve performance. Also it will make seeking faster. It's common for some codecs to use GOP sizes around 300 frames but in WATCHOUT I would recommend a size around around 30 or even smaller if you need to do a lot of seeking/jumping. For more complex codecs like H264, its also possible to disable all post processing and loop-back filtering to gain some performance.
You can download a FFmpeg build for windows here. Easiest is to use a static build because then you only need the "ffmpeg.exe" file. FFmpeg is a command line tool which means that either have to use the terminal/cmd or write a bat-file. A bat file is basically a text file with a ".bat" extension which will be executed when double-clicked. I created this one for an other customer for conversion to h264: https://www.dropbox.com/s/phkf16ialcm4ynn/convert.zip?dl=0
You can use the same, but modify the bat file in a text editor so it suits your needs to something like this:
set bitrate=20Mffmpeg.exe -i "input.any" -c:a copy -c:v mpeg2video -g 30 -bf 0 -b:v %bitrate% -minrate %bitrate% -maxrate %bitrate% -bufsize %bitrate% -y "output.mpg"pause
Change the input to the path and name of your input file. Easiest is to place the input file in the same directory. Also set the output name to something useful. You will need to modify the bit-rate of 20 Mbit/sec to something that matches your resolution.
The -bf flag is set to zero which means zero b-frames. The -g flag is the GOP size. Since MPEG-2 is a very simple codec it hasn't that many options. You can also set the pixelformat if needed. Default is 4:2:0 but WATCHOUT but in some cases 4:2:2 i needed. This is done my inserting "-pix_fmt yuv422p" before the "-b:v" flag.
Or if you prefer HAP_Q the process i very simple too.
ffmpeg.exe -i "input.any" -an -c:v hap -format hap_q -chunks 8 -y "output.mov"pause
Where chunks is the number of threads that will be used in decoding.. -an is to disable audio.
Regarding Windows tweeking, make sure you use "High performance" power plan and if you are using intel RAID then install the latest Intel Rapid Storage drivers.
Best Regards,
Miro
Hi,
After 3 days of intensive tests, I will conclude for now that 26 videos mp4 stresses the hardware so much that it causes watchout to drift connection, random restarts and occasional freeze frames. 26 wmv's played well at 30fps 10,000kbps CBR @ different resolutions.
My specs:
Intel Core i7 6800K @ 3.4GHz
Quad Channel DDR4 64GB Ram
AMD FirePro W7100
X99 Board
S400 Sync Card
128GB Raid 0 SSD Samsung Pro
Tweak List followed
Windows 7 Pro Installed on Display Servers
Windows 10 Installed on Production PC
Setup 1 (Built-up hardware)
1 to 1 file per display, both mp4 and wmv played fine on a looping & Free running for a few hours not jerks etc.
26 files mp4 - unstable, lost network connection, freezes
26 files wmv - played on looping and free running. Jerks during transitions but catches up sync and plays loop with no problem
Setup 2 (Watchpax)
1 to 1 file per display (Same result as above)
26 files mp4 - Plays the files but some video layers will freeze and needed to be refreshed (CTRL D) to make all the layers pop up and play.
26 files wmv - (Same result as above)
Note: mp4s with B-Frame and without B-frame tested and rendered same results. Tested both on WO 5.5.2, 6.1.3 and 6.1.4b2 (All same results) 50 points Geometry correction on each display (no issue), I tested with and without geometry correction, same results.
For now, I will limit the video layers to anything less than 10 to ensure smooth playbacks. I still stand to be corrected.
Thanks for your inputs. Cheers.
0 -
26 movie files at the same time is a lot of video clips for just 4 displays.
Are you downscaling the videos in WATCHOUT or are they just really, really small videos?
(Downscaling video in WATCHOUT is a HUGE resource waste).
No, you are not pushing the software.
Yes, you are pushing the hardware.
System throughput is the most likely bottleneck.
Also, double check to make certain that B-frames were not used in your encoding
Use of B-frames in movie encoding can reduce system efficiency by as much as 75%!
Furthermore, B-frames are known to cause crashes when the system is pushed too far.
If wmv improved performance,
you may see even greater performance benefit with standard HAP encoding.
Another key area not clear from your description is memory throughput.
Quad-channel memory and the faster the better are important for what you are attempting.
More common dual-channel memory is unlikely up to this task.
Geometry correction has little impact on resources needed for movie playback.
Since it is a fixed transform executed in the GPU, it has no negative impact on
the critical areas for movie playback - disc drive throughput, memory throughput, and CPU capacity.
Thanks for the kind reply. I have rendered my clips pixel per pixel to optimize file size since i know i'd be dealing with multiple layers. Video sizes from 216x216pixels (smallest) up to 216x916pixels (largest). All clips have different sizes. I had to do this method due to the setup we have.
B-Frame, I am using Adobe Media Encoder straight from After Effects export. I didn't come across any option to turn off or untick the use of B-Frames. Can you point me where or how to disable B-Frames?
Memory, I am on a 32gb Dual-Channel setup. I will make it a quad-channel asap.
Geometry, thanks for clarifying. I shall use 1 video next time and just do the point to point geometry correction as opposed to the 26 video files.
Finally, does using Windows 10 on my production pc to communicate to windows 7 display setup as mentioned affect video layers from syncing? I had no issues controlling the show with windows 10 production pc at the moment, but if it would also possibly affect anything, then I shall also downgrade my control laptop later to Win 7.
Thanks so much! I hope this also helps some people having the same scenario.
0 -
Hello Jonas
Thank you for uploading the show for my examination. Nice show, good graphics, lots of work.
There are lots of videos. When you crossfade two compositions, you have 52 videos running at the same time! The WMVs are running well. You also have a large composition, 4826x2524, encompassing all 4 displays with borders. The pixel count is almost 50% more than if you use 4 compositions of 1920x1080 each.
Since the 4 displays are separated, I suggest you use 1 composition for each display, then you would have less videos in each composition and a smaller composition. This workload will be lighter for the hardware system.
Best
Hey Thanks Ken. Understood on the crossfade, it makes sense. I actually made the crossfade as a workaround for the 2 second lags. Coz they were actually meant to be played continuously. But since I am getting sync issues with the 26 videos, I crossfade them so that the next 26 videos will get a chance to pre-roll and sync before they fade in as a next cue.
For the composition distribution, separating them into 4 comps for each display came across my mind but I thought since the 4 displays are coming from 1 graphics card/cpu, that it wouldn't matter. I should've tried that previously.
With this, do I conclude that I should avoid running 26 videos next time? If so, with my maxed hardware specs, what shoud be the optimum number of videos I should play with? I've also just order watchPax and will run the same show to see if there is any difference just to eliminate some questions in my head.
Thanks again.
0 -
Hello, I know this might be a dead thread but since the topic/issue is the same as mine, I have a few questions. I've just finished a show where I had 26 video layers different resolutions spread across 4 displays using a composition in watchout 6.1.3 I initially tried mpeg2 and h264 where both didnt even allow to me to play the clip as both display and production machines will crash everytime i play the 26 clip cue. I then used wmv 10mbps bitrate which surprisingly let me play the chunk on free running and looping with no problem. I'm fine with that until i crossfade the 26 layer comp with another 26 layer comp. I will get a few seconds of delay and unsynced video before they all catches up and play insync again. Question is, am i pushing the software with my 26 layers? I tried playing 4 layer comps but i still get the same syncing problem everytime i do the crossfade from 1 comp to the next. Any advice how to optimize my show?
PC Specs:
Windows 7 Pro
Watchout 6.1.3
6-core processor
amd firepro w7100
S400 sync card
128 ssd Samsung evo Raid-0
Ram 16GB
Tweak list and codec guidelines were strictly followed.
PS. I also have about 15 points of geometry correction on each display screen.
Any advice or harsh comments are very much appreciated.
Cheers
0
23.98 frame rates and playback in WO
in WATCHOUT FORUM
Posted
Hello,
This thread might be old but I am exactly on the same boat. With most of my shows being conferences, clients and speakers would pass me last minute video files which are most of the time 25 fps and 29.97fps. 5 years ago i've done heavy testing and comparison of different file format/containers and frame rates. at that time, mpeg @60fps rendered 16mbps Constant bitrate was my optimum setting. No stutters or lags on a span of 10 projector setup. Now with HAP-Q introduced and H264 mp4 playback being stable. Is this still an important pre-requisite? At the moment, I always ask my clients to provide files in 30fps. Is watchout now capable of playing any framerate with no stutter/lag? especially if 2 video files are being played at the same cue but with different framerate.
Will ofcourse do another test for this but I am curios to know your experience with this. TIA