RBeddig

You can find legacy versions of WATCHNET here; https://www.dataton.com/downloads/watchnet-legacy-downloads

Hi callum, domeprojection supports alignment on 3D models now as well. See this example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zL_D-bb1C8 The exact workflow has not yet been described in writing I think but it can work with WATCHOUT. The calibration process triangulates the position of the projectors and then wraps the content around the object. You should maybe contact domeprojection.com directly for more details.

Sure. Close the settings window and mark the display(s) you want to save in the stage window. Then copy and paste into a plain text file. Test the result by copying the whole text of the text file and pasting it into an empty stage.

What do the log files say? Those in the folder logs inside the WATCHOUT folder and the Windows log files for applications at least?

Well, creating an autostart batch file in the WATCHOUT folder already serves this purpose. Once Windows is up and WATCHOUT started it will load a file, check whether any other display servers in the same system are ready (if you use more than one display server in a system) and then runs the specified timeline.

It is possible to set up a display computer or cluster to automatically start a WATCHOUT show once the computer starts. This is explained in the users guide at page 176. Some BIOS versions also allow to start a computer at a certain time. Shutting down at a certain is a bit more difficult since a computer normally doesn't have any such function. While you might find a third-party app to do such things, another way would be to start an auxiliary timeline with the length of your daily program and a powerDown command at the end of the day. You'd need to set up a string output with the address(es) of your display computer(s) and send authenticate 1$0D powerDown$0D Hope this helps.

What you'd need is the actual WATCHOUT project file which was used to load the WATCHPAX. The premium partner in your region could probably help with the information of how to retrieve this file from the WATCHPAX 2 and modify it to another resolution. And yes, the only good way to store the show in 1080p would be to play it out into a capture card and record the result on another computer.

The autostart.txt file, which is used to set the static IP address of a WATCHPAX, has most probably been swapped with the update as well. The easiest way to check is to connect a mouse and keyboard to your WATCHPAX 40 and the to click once into the splash screen (to get focus on it) and then press Ctrl+W. Now you should see a smaller window with a menu on top. In the first menu you will see a link to edit the autostart file. This file has plenty of descriptions inside of how to set the IP address up etc. 169.254.224.3 is a self-assigned IP address. Self-assigned addresses appear if you connect computers set to DHCP to a network which doesn't have a DHCP server.

Erin, I've not seen such an error myself but if you trace the error on google and it could be connected to memory leaks, I would certainly get MEMTEST or any similar test (not necessarily the built-in memory test in Windows) and would run this on the production computer. The next point would be to contact Show Sage support.

Send me a private message with your email contact and I'll see what I can find for you.

To investigate this issue, I'd suggest that you first try the WATCHOUT license key on another computer, e.g. the production computer. If you connect it to the production computer you can use the built-in license manager to check whether it sees the license key. Regarding the network, the network port should indicate a proper connection if you connect it through a working and tested network cable to a network switch. This will happen even if WATCHOUT is not running or the key doesn't get detected. If the network port can connect to the switch it will indicate so. It wouldn't be the first case where a cheap network cable is malfunctioning and rendering an expensive system useless. Besides this, you should state which WATCHOUT version you're using and whether the server was built by DATATON (WATCHPAX, WATCHMAX), a premium partner or whether it is a custom server built by other companies.

Probably the best way to find out whether your web presenter can work with WATCHOUT is to connect it to a production computer first. Open a new project and go to the preferences and here to the "Video IN" tab. Then try to find it in the drop-down menu under Device 1. If it appears here without the installation of a driver you can create a Live media cue and point this to device 1 and the correct resolution. Enable "Stage Video: Live Preview" and drag the cue into your timeline. You should now see the output of your streamer in the stage window. If this works fine, you can try to do the same with your display server. You'll need to assign a video input ID on the server as well. Ctrl+W will shrink WATCHPOINT and give you access to the menu to define the video inputs.

Apart from the fact that I haven't seen this myself and can't test it in my office, the two main questions are: Which WATCHOUT version are you using? What happens if you try to go online using computer name and cluster name (if this has been set up already)? Adding extra displays when the WATCHPAX is on and running will mostly lead to loosing the connection for a little while. WATCHPOINT detects a display reconfiguration and will try to settle it. Using the power button to power it down and up again should not do any harm. Have done this quite often myself. What happens if you power the WATCHPAX down, then connect all needed displays and then power it up again?

Since the C drive on all WATCHPAX servers is write-protected, I would suggest to install Dante DVS on the production computer instead. If this is running in your show anyway, it should be no issue to do it this way.

The best strategy has always been to first test your communication and important strings from a Telnet client like PuTTY. Then of course very often a carriage return as mention by Jim is necessary. How did you test the PJLink commands outside WATCHMAKER before? Projectors nowadays very often use password protection. If the software you used to test PJLink before asked for a user and a password this would be a strong indication. In this case the solution would be to disable the password protection when you want to control it from WATCHOUT.

The benefit of running 40 outputs from one server is of course that any hardware or software problem during the show will lead to a total blackout on the screen. Maybe building smaller server and one for backup purposes might be more suitable.

If you have a network connection to the location, yes. You'll need to drop the WATCHNET bundle (basically a funny named ZIP) into the first page of the WATCHNET server application. Then you can either schedule a refresh using the calendar function or maybe build a second maintenance web page with a button to trigger the update. WATCHNET will then add the new media files and any other changed data on your display server.

The main differences between using WATCHNET or Blocks, Universe, Medialon, AMX, Crestron are probably: To run WATCHNET, you'll need a license key which holds WATCHOUT versions 5 and 6. The larger silver keys can be "upgraded" to also hold version 5 for a rather small fee but you'll always need this dongle in a computer running WATCHNET. The computer though can be very basic indeed. WATCHNET is merely a special web server. "Programming" WATCHNET is pretty simple and merely done by drag-and-drop actions and drop down menus. Since WATCHNET automatically retrieves all timeline names, cues etc. from your WATCHOUT project there is actually no real coding involved. WATCHNET only sends data! While you could control TCP/IP or UDP based devices from WATCHNET too, you'll not be able to link any WATCHNET action to any incoming signal. No inputs at all! Control systems with more sophisticated WATCHOUT drivers will also be able to retrieve some information from your WATCHOUT project. Examples for those are Blocks, Universe or Medialon. Using Crestron, AMX, etc. is usually more basic and way more coding. The biggest benefit using WATCHNET might be that you could take your project onto a remote WATCHOUT production computer and do your monthly changes there (if you do not need a display computer - even without a dongle) and then save those as a WATCHNET bundle. The first bundle holds the complete show and media and will be pushed into the WATCHNET user interface. Any later bundle version of your show will only hold the new content files and new information and will usually be way smaller. As Eddy Yanto already pointed out, WATCHNET will not see any further development and therefore it can happen that the "create WATCHNET bundle" feature will be dropped in future versions of WATCHOUT as it will only be a legacy feature. Not everybody may know this but if content updates are basically still images only, you could place the relevant files on a URL path and use a media proxy to link those to WATCHOUT. WATCHOUT would then always retrieve the image from there. If we're talking about videos and the videos can have the same length and physical dimensions, you could also try to copy an updated version to the project and media folder on your display computer. As long as you don't connect the system to a production computer for your daily playback, WATCHPOINT (the display part of the software) will normally not do any version checking. Hope it helps. Rainer

Simply use the same universe for DMX inputs and outputs.

One option is to use the high performance workstation graphic cards from Nvidea. AMD introduced some power saving functions in their drivers a while ago and when you play a HAP file for example, you'll notice that the CPU load is around 2%. This tells Windows that actually nothing really important is going on and the graphic card gets to know about this and throttles down to save the planet. I've been in contact with the AMD technical support about a couple of issues over the years and this question would be one to ask them too.

OK, when you can't send a note change with a fade time or a midi control command with a fade time, a work-around would be to trigger a tiny aux timeline which just has a faded DMX channel. Then bind your opacity to the DMX channel and trigger this helper timeline by your midi. DMX can work as a sort of variable since you can listen and send DMX values in WATCHOUT.

You can do so by connecting your midi channel with an opacity tween of your media cue. Just select your media cue, right-click and select tween - opacity, then click on the little "F" in the tween channel and change this to "Tweenvalue * yourMidiChannelName" You just need to make sure that your midi channel is always on 100% when things go right.

Depends on the control side. If you use an external controller (WATCHNET, Blocks, Universe,...), you could use an opacity tween on your media cue and then first send a command to fade the media down and then to stop the timeline. Another option would be to define some standard media (preferably a still) in a standby layer and then activate the standby layer. While the standby layer is visible, you can clean up the timelines and then leave the standby layer again.

From the specs, the server should be fast enough I guess. Maybe you could contact ShowSage and give them a little test show to double check on their side too. Another thing to check could be your network. May sound a bit odd but the production computer is sending out strings to the server and if those get delayed somehow or the WATCHOUT heartbeat doesn't get through correctly it might cause issues as well. I've seen installations where in the end a cheap network cable was the reason for issues and also switches can sometimes bring in trouble.