[Decklink mini recorder capture slows down]

Hi,

 

We are using since recently the Decklink mini recorder from Blackmagic to capture SDI/HDMI camera feeds.

Whenever we are showing the live feed in Watchout for a few minutes, the capture gradually becomes slower until it freezes completely. Once we update, everything works well again until the next time.

This seems to be a memory related issue with the capture card, however, we are only encountering this in Watchout, not when we are using the Blackmagic capturing software.

 

Does anybody have experiences with this kind of problem? Any suggestions how to resolve this?

 

Cheers

[No capture of VisionRGB-E2s with WO 6.0.2]

If the problem persists even after quitting and re-starting WATCHOUT on that computer, and isn't resolved unless you reboot the computer, the problem most likely lies in the capture driver. Trying a different driver verison may help.

thanks for the tip.

We actually used the driver version 7.8 and it worked until it just stopped working. We tried to update the driver to 7.11 (the latest available) but it was still not working.

I will try now to install 7.7 to see if there is any change...

[No capture of VisionRGB-E2s with WO 6.0.2]

Hi,

 

We just recently had a show using WO 6.0.2 with no problems. We had video capture (Decklink) and 1 laptop feed through our VisionRGB-E2S everything worked fine.

Last Saturday, we had another show and, using the same 2 PCs (main & backup) we could not capture anything on our E2S, only the camera feed through the decklink worked.

We got another PC with an old analog Datapath (VisionPro) and it worked.

 

We now checked ALL drivers, settings... exchanged parts from our various PCs and the only success we had was that we could see the capture after a reboot of the display PC. But only when touching the media item for the first time. Once, we left the media item, the feed never comes back until another reboot.

 

In short, we tried really everything and the only thing that worked, was downgrading our systems back to WO 5.5.2.

Now all is working.

 

This seems to be a major glitch in v.6.

Is there a fix for it? (I checked an old post with a very similar problem, but we tried all these remedies to no avail - http://forum.dataton.com/topic/424-52-does-not-see-visionrbg-capture-while-51-consistently-does/?hl=datapath&do=findComment&comment=1477)

 

I hope somebody has the answer....

 

[audio drops in WO6.0.1]

We just had our first show with WO6.0.1 and encountered problems with audio files. All audio files in different formats (wma, wav, mp3) worked well when played directly from the production pc but when we went online and started playing the audio from the display pc, the audio dropped at different points in time and for different lengths. That's when we tried replacing the original wav file with mp3 and wma but to no avail. The unpredictable dropping of audio remained.

Our only safe was our WO5 backup which played all audio files without problems.

Any ideas, what could cause this behaviour? or is this a WO6 bug?

[WATCHNET AT ISE 2014]

Hi Mike,

 

Does that mean if I have already a spare WO dongle I do not need to pay anymore but can just download Watchnet?

I hope that is the case as it would be quite pricey to have to spend the same as for an additional WO license key...

 

Martin Block

[Masking problems in v.5.1 and 5.2 with several outputs]

I isolated the problem now:

It seems that whenever the JPEG that has "alpha mask" and "masked by layer above" is not touching display 1 it disappears, i.e. we can only show it on other displays if it is large enough to touch display 1.

We tried to put the same file in a task or as a 0 opacity file in the main time line but apparently it has to be that exact JPEG file that you want to show that needs to touch display 1 (any other instance does not do the trick / does not seem to push the file)

We found a very user unfriendly work-around by increasing the display 1 stage preview size to the maximum and putting all other 4 displays (of our 5 head HD6990 graphics card) inside that display. As a result, all files/masked files are touching display 1 and are now showing.

I have not read about this problem in the forum but I hope that somebody has a solution as at this point, we cannot comfortably use any mask!

 

Looking forward to a solution

 

Best regards

 

Martin Block

Live Media

[Warping & Softedging]

Hi,

 

A simple low tech approach is to calculate the physical locations of the center and corner points for the projection area of each projector. You can mark them on the actual, e.g. curved, screen and then make your image fit.

The quickest way would be to make your whole projected area larger than the screen area and use Watchout's geometry correction to "shrink it". Once you got the center and corner points the rest should be simple to do.

 

I am sure there are more high tech ways to do this but for shows with little set up time this has worked well for us.

 

Good Luck

 

Martin Block

Live Media

[How to add live video.]

We are using sometimes as a cheap alternative in addition to our Blackmagic card a similar USB video dongle (it actually looks the same as your EasyCap but it is not branded). Surprisingly, the delay for the USB dongle is the same as for the several times more expensive Blackmagic card :-)

[compositions only show on Display output 1]

Thanks Rogier,

I will try out your suggestion immediately. Hope that works.

We are using v.5.1 and 5.2, 1 display PC with 4 outputs...

 

Best regards

 

Martin Block

Live Media

[compositions only show on Display output 1]

We recently tried to run a simple background animation (just some flashing JPEGs) in a composition on 4 different outputs of the same Display PC. The movements were all shown nicely on the preview of the production PC but when we went online, only Display 1 was showing the content of the composition. The other Displays did not show that same composition at all. We had to remedy that problem quickly by using still images as backgrounds only.

We previously encountered similar problems that could be remedied by taking out the all the parts within the composition and placing them in the main timeline.

Does anybody know why or how to fix this problem?

 

Best regards

 

Martin Block

Live Media

[Masking problems in v.5.1 and 5.2 with several outputs]

In a 5 output show that we recently had, (1 display PC with 5 output HD6990 graphics card), we used the function "masked by layer above" with alpha mask on some JPEGs to create some nice looking effects. All the effects were showing perfectly on the preview of the production PC. However, when we went online, there were some parts during the show were the image was not appearing at all (even though we had identical parts/files just a few seconds further down the timeline).

This problem was sporadic in v5.1 but when we loaded the same show in v.5.2 it happened with all of these file types (only JPEGs and PNGs).

Any ideas?

 

Best regards

 

Martin Block

Live Media

[no remote access with v.5.2]

When trying to remotely access 1 display PC in v5.2, we are getting an error from vnc (vnc cannot establish remote connection) the Watchout window minimizes on the display PC though. Once we go full screen directly on the display PC the show can be run without any connectivity issues.

Does anybody have an idea how this can be fixed? or is this a 5.2 glitch?

 

Best regards

 

Martin Block

Live Media

[Delay before video input becomes active]

We sometimes encounter delays when jumping in the timeline. an easy solution is to place a video input on top of your complete show, decrease opacity to 0 so that the video signal is permanently shown inside your show - just invisible...just in case somebody wants a quick fix without having to wait for any driver updates...