Michael Scheck

Hi all! Just disovered that the Panasonic UE150 remote camera outputs tracking data in form of a "FreeD" protocol, that can be used to drive 3D engines to output images for VR and AR purposes. Unfortunatly the compatible 3D systems are quite costly. I am wondering if anybody has worked on this field and if it would be possible to get the tracking data out of the camera to drive perspectives of images in Watchout. I am thinking of simple use with a greenscreen beeing able to pan and zoom with the camera and the background changing accordingly. Michael

Hi all! I am wondering if anybody has used Watchout for a typical touchscreen-presentation. Meaning a presentation where the presenter drags elements, zooms by pinching and swipes thru pages, or opens and closes flying menus etc. Or where 3D elements are rotated and scaled by touch or multitouch. Specifically it would interest me if somebody has used radartouch with Watchout to do an interactive presentation. We have a project coming up where the customer would like to have such interactivity... I´d apprciate very much if you would share some ideas or experiences in that direction . Kind regards, Michael.

David, I just looked up "MPCDI" and it sound promising. What will we be able to do with this inside WO? I have a show coming up in September with a curved screen where I am going to be looking at camera-based auto-alignment of Multiprojector setups. Would MPCDI be something that goes into that direction? Regards, Michael

Arrrgh! Of course! I looked in the wrong dropdown box, it was the presets, not the codecs. I think I´m getting old. Thanks, Wiesemann, for pointing to the solution. The Aftercodecs thingy is interesting too, I´ll try that one... Michael.

Hi Rainer, I have both QT as well as the HAP-codecs V12 installed. This is on a newly setup machine, so it has freshly installed Adobe CC programs on it. In Quicktime Player Pro 7.7.9 the HAP codec is selectable, but in Adobe Encoder it is not. There have been warnings in the log of Encoder for the last 6 months or so, saying that QT 32bit Codecs are going to be phased out in the future, and I guess exactly this happened now. Perhaps also thru the new install (not having leftovers from older installs that where constantly updated but still there). So I am curious how others work now. Or otherwise, if there is a way of getting HAP back into Adobe Encoder. There is also the issue that now I cannot export ProREs out of CC-programs any more, since ProRes is only nativly supported by Adobe on Macs, not on Windows. And I use Windows only. This isn´t really a problem for me, but HAP is. Although I can go without HAP (and use H264 instead), I cannot miss HAPalpha any more. I use it a lot for masked videos. Oh, and I just discoverd that QT Animation is also not there any more! See my screenshot. https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxe1n354zoai69m/scnreenshot.png?dl=0 Regards, Michael

I just discovered that the HAP-codec inside Adobe Encoder has disappeared. Is this because Adobe dropped 32bit support? Usually I create content in Premiere or After Effects and then export Quicktime with HAP or HAPalpha codec thru Adobe Media Encoder. Although Quicktime still exists as a format, the HAP is missing in the list of codecs. Inside QT-Palyer I have HAP available. So now the question is how to get HAP-files and especially HAP-alphas out of the Adobe CC-programs in an elegant way. Any ideas? Regards, Michael

Miro and Erik: Is there a date for the mentioned "upcoming bugfix release" yet? Regards, Michael

Hi all, thanks to all for your suggestions, it has brought me on a complete new track using multiple conditions/expressions. Thanks to Rainer for the demo he mailed me. Guypriz asked me to send these files, but Rainer, since you created them, I do not want to spread them around, it does not seem appropriate. With Walters concept I frequently have short dropout when the timeline jumps back in time to the begining of the video, mostly on the first repeat. Also with Rainers concept I had a short hickup of the video when the first video goes into the composition with the loop. Inside the comp the video starts at zero. Maybe there is no time for a preload? I got around that problem by putting the same video on top of the composition for 2-3 seconds. But maybe my display-machines are too slow? Thought they where pretty good. Well, I don´t want to discuss hardware and tweaks now, that discussion is endless, since there is always something better/faster/nicer. Thomas, you mentioned "(Note: Won't work with 6.2, until 6.2x)". What do you mean exactly? Is there a bug in 6.2 I don´t know about? Regards, Michael

Hi guys, has anybody have a solution for this: a video-section plays and goes into a second video wich is a loop. The loop plays until a button is pressed or some kind of trigger is given. Then the loop should play until its end and then go into video section 3. I have done this with blends out of the loop into the following video, but I asked myself (or rather a customer insisted for me to find a sollution) how to do it seamlessly. Any ideas are welcome... Michael

One more addtion: In the show I mentioned, I had a production PC and two Display-PCs with one output each. What struck me was that the two display-PCs where in sync with each other, but the production PC was one or two seconds off. I don´t remember wich one was ahead.....

Hey guys, thanks a lot. Great information, very valueable! Michael.

Interesting to read this. I had a delay of exactly that kind on a show about 10 days ago. It happened two or three times. I didn´t follow it up because I had lots of other issues (human errors) with the show and in the end it went ok. It was 6.1.5 on a rig that is used often. First time ever I saw this kind of thing, didn´t believe it at first. I think it went away after going offline and then online again.

I would try to do that without the comp, putting the png and live-input either in the aux timeline or the main timeline. If that works, it is something with the comp. I concur with zackboyd that comps can behave weird. Regards, Michael

Hi all, I have been reading about M.2-SSD that connect through PCIe and can read 2-3GByte/s. I tried one, the speed is really good. Now, is it a good idea to have this device in a WO-display computer or should one rather stick to SSD-Raid0 thru SATA? Regards, Michael

OK, solved, 0,1SPCtk $0A is the right command. In the protocol the screens start with zero, so screen one is zero, not one.

I´m trying to send a "Take"-Command to an Ascender, but it does not work. I am sending 1,0,1SPCtk $0A (this should be the Take all Screens followed by Linefeed) but nothing happens. Has anybody done this and give me a quick solution? I have an output TCP over Port 10600, as stated in the manual... Regards, Michael

Hi all, same problem on my production-notebook with win10: If I play a wav-file I get a direct show error that pops up in watchout. In preferences I can choose the audio-device, but it always switches back to "no device". Funny thing is that mp4-videos with sound play ok and I can hear the sound. It just seems to be the wav-files that do not work. I tried a reinstall of the audio-driver and also of Watchout, no change. Other than that I have a feeling that WO-production runs more stable since I upgraded the computer to Windows 10. No luck with Wo-display, that definatly does not work on win10. Regards, Michael.

OK, that makes sense. I´ll do that, thanks for the advice! Regards, Michael

Hi all, we have a project this summer that is going to be a game show. I am thinking about programming the interaction in Watchout. We will have two buzzers that should trigger some things, but most important should reliably show who pressed first. I am thinking of using a GPI to Midi interface into Watchout. Each buzzer should trigger a timeline that then should start some grafics, send out a midi-command to the light desk, play a sound and also disable the other buzzer. My question is: Would WO be reliable enough to distinguish the first "hit" of the two buzzers or should I put some electronics in between that detects the first hit? Any experience on these kind of things? Regards, Michael

Hi all, in the meantime I tried Prores 444: It worked in 6.02, but did not look very smooth in movement. Seems to overload the system. Our customer provided us with HAP-Alpha videos, they work fine and we will do the project with this codec for the transparent videos. I installed "Hap.QuickTime.Codec.for.Windows.v8.msi" (see the link from Brana, thanks!) on my machine and then could choose the various HAP-Codecs in After Effects Render Liist and also Adobe Media Encoder CC. Note that you have to choose Quicktime as format and within the settings of Quicktime you can choose the HAP codecs. Regards, Michael

Hi all! A customer is going to provide footage with alphachannel for a project beginning first thing in january. I have worked with QT Animation Codec quite a lot, but the footage that is coming in will be quite large, so a more effective codec would be nice. The client suggested Prores 4:4:4:4. Would that work in Watchout 6? In other post the HAP Alpha is suggested. How do I make a HAP movie, do I need a special encoder? How would the workflow be if I have an animation in After Effects for example, what is necessary to get a HAP as output file? I checked all my Encoder software (all Adobe CS-packages, Telestream Episode) and did not find any "HAP" happening there..... Kind regards and merry christmas, Michael

Yes, I can confirm that WO 5 and 6 Production works great on Windows 10. With WO 5 I experienced that it was even more stable on Win10 that on Win 7 (same machine, after an upgrade from Win 7 to 10 there where no more hickups at all). But my question was about a Display-Computer. I needed a Display machine and only had a Win10 computer, so I installed the software and got the error ""Operating System Error: - 2147467259 unspecified error; Too complex effects" that Zak also had some time ago. I´ll give it a try today with changing the display card driver, if that doesn´t work, I´ll take a "real" display computer (Win7 tweaked to the WO-specs...). I was wondering if anybody else came across the same error and found a solution. Regards, Michael

I have the same error on a Win10 Display machine. It has a Radeon card (do not know which one) and I am pretty shure that the newest ATI drivers are loaded. What is the recommended procedure to get rid of the problem, deinstall and then reinstall the graphics driver? Zak, have you been able to solve the problem? If so, how? Regards, Michael

Deltacast have announced products with "incredibly low latency". Since I´m always after speeding up capture of live Video in Watchout, this is of interest for me (my goal is under 80ms for the total system, currently I am at about 120ms). Do the Deltacast Cards work with Watchout? A post from 2011 on that Topic says no, but maybe that has changed. Any experience with these products? Regards, Michael

I do these Kind of Loops as a composition, works fine. Try placing a composition in an Aux timeline, do a fade in and fade out, place a Pause command just before the fade out, set the comp to freerun and Loop. That should work.