RBeddig

It's just a matter of placing the cue at the right position. We usually place a pause cue 0.2 sec before the next media starts. This normally makes sure that the next media does not show up on screen unintendedly. If you place the cue at e.g. 10.000 and the next media starts at 10.000 it will surely be visible and it has to since it starts at that time.

I would follow Morgan's advice and use ARTNET instead of the Kiss-Box protocol. WATCHNET is an ArtNet node and can send this directly into the Kiss-Box if you set this to ArtNet. With ArtNet it is no problem to send more than one relay at the same time.

It is there, but it is a bit more hidden now. When the installer asks whether you want to install the NDI software you will see two tabs on the top of the window. The second tab allows to select a different drive/location for the installation. We always install WATCHOUT on a separate disk.

Hi, You are programming the show on one production computer with a tier for the main display server and a second tier for the backup server and then you copy the show file to the backup production computer and run your show? Did you turn the unwanted outputs off in each system, i.e. the displays of the backup system are turned off in the main system and vice-versa? Are both display servers identical? What sort of graphics card do you use and how many outputs on the graphics card? If you use DP>DVI/HDMI adaptors, are they active or passive? Do you see any error message on the production software when the backup server restarts WATCHPOINT by itself? There are a few situations where the WATCHDOG of WATCHPOINT would restart a server: - when the display configuration changes (EDID information changes due to bad cable, wrong adaptors, flaky input, bad CAT or fibre extenders,...) - hardware issues on the display server - software or codec problems on the display server I would further recommend to change the name of the backup show file and use a separate network switch, especcially when you have two complete systems anyway. Switches are cheap and you can isolate the WATCHOUT timing signals of both systems.

Sounds strange. I would try to isolate the problem a bit: a) take WATCHPOINT out of autostart and check what the network card is actually doing. You will see in the little icon that it is still searching for the network connection, but you can open the network settings and check how long it really takes until the network is stable. Once it is stable, start WATCHPOINT and check whether it then shows the IP address without further delays. This should give you an indication of where it consumes too much time. If the network card takes too long to establish a connection, you should check that the driver is working correctly or check for newer drivers. c) Check the communication speed of your network card? Does it establish a 1Gbit/s connection or maybe less? d) Check the cable. Is it working correctly? Is it fully plugged in? e) Try another PCIe slot. Same as before? Hope it helps to narrow down this issue.

Another point to look at might be the registry. Since you probably did not physically remove the broken network port, Windows will most probably still know the IP settings of the port. If you now add a new card and use the same address, it might lead to address conflicts in Windows. If you still have access to the settings for the old broken port, try to set this to automatic address polling (DHCP) and try again. Also you could try to disable the broken port in the network settings. It is always important that the display computer has only one network port. All others should be disabled.

Hi, We are using the WX7100 model in our current rental servers and for customer builds. It works fine and only needs one slot. The only issue you might have is that it will not play more than 3 outputs with 4K when the OS is Windows 7. This is a known bug of AMD and is related to all AMD Fire Pro and Radeon Pro cards. We do not use any consumer cards due to the lack of support and the risk of rather short product cycles. Greetings from Berlin! Rainer

I've done a lot of tests with 6.2.1 and also our Academy Training is using this version. There are many opacity tweens in that show. They all work as expected. Can you give us some more details on the system you're using. Hardware specs, Windows version, other installed applications which might interfere? Best regards

Hi callum, Thanks for the update on this. Conditional layers are actually a very good way to influence the playback of WATCHOUT. BTW, it also works with control cues in a conditional layer which can be a solution for leaving a loop in a timeline or change the bahaviour of the show completely. Best regards, Rainer

Hi all, It's getting a bit off-topic here, but in reality a lot of people are using the alignment inside the projectors and not in WATCHOUT or other servers. The reasons for this are: - the projectors often do it with 10/12bit colour depth, which can lead to better overlaps - they use a seamless switcher / scaler in between WATCHOUT and the projectors And some of the larger event projectors actually have a setting for black level correction built in, e.g. those of Panasonic. This black level correction will make everything more grey of course but will hide the overlaps for dark content. To enable this feature the projector also needs to do the overlap internally (to know the exact overlap). Best regards, Rainer

Hi Jim, The best is always to make the setup as simple as possible to start with. This means, take your production computer to the display side and start with the two identical computers. Ideally skip the extenders out for this test too. Are they running in sync? Then add one component at a time and test again..... The Radeon cards are consumer cards and will never be framelocked (genlocked) which means, you will see a slight variation between the outputs, probably in the range of 2 lines of a 1080p picture. Are the CAT-5 extenders identical? CAT extenders are one of the main causes for support calls. Rainer

Do you add the port number to the ip address when you control it through your browser?? If not, the browser uses port 80. Very often those web servers use standard ports and in this case it would be port 80 for html.

Our experience with the S400 card is that the card will not sync outputs where the EDID resp. the actual frequency is not matching. I've just done a test this week for a project where we will need two outputs UHD in sync and another full-HD for separate screens. All from one server. If I take the frequency from one 4K output I can genlock the second 4K output but the full-HD output remains greyed out. The S400 syncboard expects the identical frequency when trying to sync. You might be lucky using the 60fps of a black burst generator but I'm not sure whether this will the still work through the RJ45 connectors. It's an interesting question.

If things don't work from the start, I would always use a Telnet software, e.g. Putty, to analyze the problem. If I'm lucky, the system I want to control sends some answers to my command which can help to analyze communication problems.

Have a look at Visual Production B-Station. This device can be setup through it's internal web server. You can define which button should send out which sort of signal. You could e.g. select that a button sends out an artnet trigger which could then be seen by your main system and your backup system at the same time. We have been looking at Visual Production's hardware interfaces - they also have nice i/o boxes - and decided to add those products to our offerings.

2D screens and virtual screens can only sit on Z=0. The vanishing point is actually a feature for 3D stereoscopic projections. One solution for your setup might be to use 3D projectors, where you can and have to set the vertical shift correctly, and 3D objects with UV-meshs as screens. 3D objects can be controlled through tweens which could help to move or rotate them according to your timeline. Have not tried that myself in this way though. Be aware that moving screens nearer or further away from your projectors will change the focus point and this of course can neither be corrected in post-pro or WATCHOUT.

Is your production computer tweaked to allow all TCP/IP and UDP traffic? Is UAC turned off?

If you're hitting the screen with keystone and the screen is curved you will probably need "full" geometry correction to get this done. If it is a short lens (e.g. those very short mirror lenses) the task is even more demanding since those lenses are not calculated (designed) for curved screens at all. I've done this on very curved screens but it takes time and patience if you do not use camera calibration.

Do you have full administration rights for the user when you try to install? Have you tried to deinstall WATCHOUT 6.1.5 manually through the Windows settings "Programs and Features" part?

Our experience is that the crucial point of looping a video in a timeline using control cues is to NOT place the first cue at the real beginning of a media and the loop point NOT at the very end of the file. When the loop point sits right at the end of the file WATCHOUT releases the media and then has to reload it at the beginning again. This does not happen if you loop inside a video cue. I usually place my start cue about half a frame inside the video and start the loop half a frame before the clip reaches it's end. Has always been working for me. With 50/60p content it might make it easier to double the last first/last frame, making it identical.

Just a little add-on to the concepts described above. This will work with my concept as well as with Walter's. Instead of using a fader box to "free" the continuation into video three through MIDI or the external Telnet command to enable/disable the loop control cue, you could now also use WATCHNET side-by-side with WATCHMAKER and send a Generic Input value instead of the midi fade value or handle the conditional layer settings for the loop control cue. WATCHNET can now control WATCHMAKER and can run on the same computer, but it needs an extra WATCHOUT dongle of course. It is also a good way to build a good control interface to run your shows with big buttons, faders etc. while still enabling you to access the project in WATCHMAKER.

Thomas, How do you make sure that e.g. the last 50 frames of the loop transition cleanly into the first 50 frames of video 3 if the videos are rendered to transition seamlessly? E.g. when the end of the loop of video 2 is exactly the same as the beginning of video 3. If I understand your solution right, you would watch your video three until you feel that the loop point is near and then manually trigger the transition into video three. My solution might be a bit more complex but all you would need to do is to fade the MIDI fader up whenever the show caller calls the next scene and then just wait until video 2 automatically transitions into video 3. /Rainer

Hi Michael, Can be done if you do not need DMX in your show. Put your looping video into a composition and loop the composition in your timeline. Create a DMX input and a DMX output with the same name and set DMX in and out to the same universe. Place the DMX output cue into the composition at the end where you want to start to fade into video 3, or just a fraction before that. The cue just briefly goes from 0 to 100 and then back to 0. Create a MIDI input if you have a fader box available. Create an aux timeline with a cue at 0.1 sec. to run the main timeline again and a second cue to kill the aux timeline shortly after that. Set a trigger condition for this aux timeline like this: "dmx>0.9 && midi>0.9" Now run your main timeline from video 1 into video 2 until a pause cue. The composition will loop and at it's end briefly set the DMX value to 100% and back to 0 again. Once you're ready to run video three (after reaching it's end) you just use the fader box and fade the MIDI input to 100%. As soon as your video loop reaches the dmx trigger cue it will restart your main timeline and fade into video 3. I'll send you a watch file to your email address to better understand the concept. Happy New Year

If your Artnet meter (we use Artnetominator) sees the output of WATCHOUT you should check the device you want to control. Are you on the correct universe and channel? Some devices start counting from 0, others start counting from 1. If you have a second programming computer you could also try to send outputs from one instance to inputs on the other instance of WATCHMAKER.

Not in the above list, but on the website.... Dataton Academy in Berlin (in German!) January 15 - Overview Session January 16+17 - Certified Session