Thomas Leong

Overlooked the datarates tried, Mike! At 2 & 5Mbps, there should not be a problem. Perhaps at 15Mbps for 6 x X x 1200pixels??? Other areas I would look at are - 1. Reset the motherboard's BIOS to Default settings. Then step through the BIOS to ensure settings are what it should be for the cpu and devices attached. Though obvious, the assumption here is that the W9100 is in PCIe16_1 or PCIe16_3 (preferably PCIe16_1) and not inadvertently occupying PCIe16_2. 2. Ensure the XMP Profile for the RAM is enabled if the RAM has a XMP Profile (if available, usually it is XMP Profile 1 rather than Profile 2 if there are two profiles). Alternatively, enable the EZ_XMP switch on the motherboard per page 1-20 of manual. 3. Take a reading of the EVO with, say, CrystalDiskMark to ensure it's sequential read speed is close to specs. 4. Try the encoded videos with Windows Media Player or Quicktime Player to ensure there are no coding errors that could prevent it from playing smoothly. Note: Disable hardware assistance in both players to emulate playback conditions in Watchout per - http://forum.dataton.com/topic/1204-tip-wmp-and-qt-%E2%80%94-disabling-hardware-accelerated-decoding/ 5. Lastly, a shot-in-the-dark: since a SSD is in use, disable the paging file (set to 0), reboot, and try the playback conditions again. That's all I can think of at this time of the night (3:30am morning). Thomas

540Mb/s is not far from the the 850 Pro's rated 550Mb/s so adding one 850 Pro will not help. You would need to stripe 2 SSDs as RAID 0 with Windows Disk Manager for a quick solution. Uninstall Watchout from Drive C: and re-install into the striped disks, and transfer all the videos there. Reducing the resolution should help, but scaling up to fit thereafter will put more strain on the W9100. It might do the trick, but it means re-coding all the videos the you have. Sorry, failed my maths...so not sure how to calculate the speed you need. Maybe someone else around here can help with the maths. But logic tells me that if one SSD can play 4 videos and not more, then a striped pair should play 6. Thomas

I'll have a stab at an answer. But first a question: on which hdd are the videos stored/playing from? If from the Samsung EVO SSD, perhaps the EVO is not up to the task at hand. If from the Seagate 7200rpm 1TB ST1000DM03, this is more likely definitely not up to the task of playing 5 or 6 videos of 1200pixel height resolution simultaneously. The X99-Pro has a 32Gb/s M.2 slot (though using this disables the last PCIe x16 slot). I'm quite sure a Samsung SM951 will be up to the task with its 2150Mb/s sequential read speed, or if available now from retail shops, the new Samsung 950 Pro M.2. Stepping down a bit, perhaps even the older Samsung XP941 M.2 might do it with its sequential read speed of about 1100+Mb/s. An alternative is to first try 1 unit of Samsung 850 Pro Sata3 SSD as the playback SSD for the videos, and if this is not sufficient, then add another 850 Pro SSD and RAID 0 the two. In RAID 0 mode (even with software RAID 0 via Windows), the sequential read speed should exceed 1,000Mb/s and this should be enough to play 6 videos simultaneously. That's my best guess as to where your problem lies: hd throughput. Thomas Leong

"While AMD requires a sync card to maintain sync across outputs even within the same card, NVIDIA does so by default." Yes, could someone confirm this to be true? The Quadro M4000 (with 8GB VRAM and 4 DP outputs - similar to the Firepro W7100) cost a bit more than the Firepro W7100, but when the S400 is taken into consideration, it is a lot, lot cheaper!! Thomas Leong

Problem solved!! Phew!...3 days of hard-thinking and more white hair! As indicated in my second post above, the area was with the Task Bar speaker icon having a red X over it (tried inserting an image(s) to illustrate - png, jpg, bmp - but none were accepted for posting). After going into Control Panel > Realtek HD Audio Manager > and enabling 'Disable front panel jack detection'...the red X over the speaker icon disappeared. This is similar to just plugging in a headset, speaker, or an unconnected mini-jack plug into the 'green' audio output of the motherboard...and hereafter, Watchout 6.0 imported the wildlife.wmv video as a Video instead of 'Sound'. Watchout 5.5.2 did not have this problem. Now how the Realtek Audio Manager detect settings are related to Watchout 6.0's ability to 'see' a .wmv file as Video or Sound has got me stumped! Other file types - mpg, mp4, etc did not exhibit this problem. Kim and Erik, Thanks for the pitching in to help. Uninstalling Quicktime did not solve it, but thanks anyway. Thomas

WO 5..5.2 and WO 6.0. Videofile is the Sample Video 'wildlife.wmv' that comes installed with Windows 7. Let me troubleshoot further before I liase with support@dataton.com.

Yes, Quicktime was installed. I'll try an uninstall and reboot after, before starting Watchout. Thanks.

Mmm...this could be a clue to a possible solution. Checked my other 2 mobos in the office today - the MSI Z97M-G43 and the ASRock Extreme6 - and both, despite not having a speaker connected, do not show a red X over the speaker icon in the task notification & icons window, whereas the problem mobo does. Device Manager, however, does not flag a device driver as missing nor 'not properly installed'. The 'no problem' mobos show a 'Realtek Digital Audio' with the volume level setting when the mouse hovers over the speaker icon. I'll hook up the problem PCs again later and troubleshoot in this area further. The mystery is that WO5 does not have the same problem! Must be that WO6 handles audio differently from WO5 given its ability to handle multi-channel audio now. Thomas

This is a strange problem, and after trying with various 'solutions' to no avail, I can only put it down as a compatibility problem between WO6 and the motherboard since it does not seem to occur with 2 other motherboards I have tried so far (MSI Z97M-G43 and ASRock Z97 Extreme6) all installed with Win7 Pro 64-bit, all tweaked for Watchout use (except for some leaving items in Notifications & Icons since this pc is to be used as a Production PC, not Display PC). 'Problem?' Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 with latest BIOS v1.9 CPU: Intel i7 4790 (non K version) RAM: 16GB Kingston SSD: Intel 320 for Windows 7 Pro 64-bit (all updates installed) SSD: Intel 335 for Watchout 6 Graphics Card: Firepro W2100 Second Set has same specs except that Graphics Card is an old 4MB ATI something, and this set too has the same problem with the same wmv file in WO6, and not in WO5. Uninstalling WO6, and installing WO5, and not making any other change, and WO5 imports the same wmv file as Video when WO6 imported it as Sound only. The wmv file is the Wildlife.wmv in the Sample Videos folder that installs with Windows 7. Nothing complicated. The only solution so far has been to plug in a headset, or speaker, or merely a mini-jack-adapter-without-any-connections-to-the-adapter into the output of the on-board audio (green outlet), and voila! WO6 will import the wmv file as Video. Has anyone else noticed this phenom with their own setup? Thomas Leong

Depends what you mean by the word 'properly'. If you want to maintain the proportion of the 1920x1080, then there will be 3474 pixels of black (5394-1920). If you stretch/scale the X dimension, you will have a 'long hot dog' One alternative is to repeat the 1920 and have, say, a logo of 1554 pixels in between, or scale the 1920x1080 slightly (a'la a picture-in-picture look) and have two instances of it on screen and a motion background to fill the empty spaces. Or re-create the video to fit the full 5394x1080. best of luck! Thomas Leong

Also, should be ISEL -i as in Mike' post, not ISEL -1 as in your post.

On second thoughts, it is possible to use only one key in MIDI Buttons (as in Alex's example) if you set the property to 'Toggle Action' for the Button's Properties. In this case, Press sends one MIDI Note (to Play the Timeline), and Release sends another MIDI Note (to Pause the Timeline). Each Note would have to be defined in Watchout's MIDI Input Window. Best seen if 'Press' is assigned one color, and 'Release' is assigned a different color in the Button's Properties. If the Akai APC20 has such a feature for a Button's Properties, then it would be possible to use one button for Play/Pause of a Timeline.

Alex has shown you the way very clearly! However, to have ONE key for play/pause, it would not be possible with MIDI as the PLAY and PAUSE commands are different in Watchout. What may be possible is not to use MIDI for this, and use a macro keypad instead, assigning the 'spacebar' to a macro key. Have not tried it myself, but X-Keys may serve well here - http://piengineering.com/xkeys/xk4.php

"What would fit is the Aerocool Dead Silence CUBE mATX case." My error. Just had another look at the Aerocool DS Cube and it is likely too large for the overhead compartment of an aircraft. I like the Lian Li TU100 and/or TU200 for travelling but both at for mini-ITX boards so no slot for a capture card. The TU300 is for full ATX. Not sure if Lian Li intends a mATX for this series in the near future. Best to stick to the Shuttle you first intended. Thomas

Richard, Thinking more about it, I don't think the W7100 has a built-in EPROM for the EDID. Instead it is highly likely in the software - Catalyst Pro. So perhaps a quicker way may to be to uninstall the drivers and Catalyst Pro. Use Windows' built-in VGA driver with one of the non-Active DP-DVI adapters to do all these. Use ccleaner to wipe the registry. Reboot and hopefully system has been cleaned of AMD stuff and you are back to square one. Check in Device Manager that it is using the Windows VGASave driver for the graphics card. Now install the Catalyst Pro...and hopefully, all will be ok with using the Startec adapters now (you are right: what are the chances of all 10 units being defective?). Thomas

I've experienced a black output with the W7100 before with similar hardware specs to yours...well, at least a couple of times with different units of W7100. The W7100 comes with 2 DP-DVI Adapters (probably white heads). These are not ACTIVE, but will work. Try with these. Maybe your Startec is defective. How many do you have? Swapped them around? Also, try another port of the W7100 with your one monitor. If system is already booted up, and nothing shows, try the other ports one by one. If still nothing shows up, then leave it plugged into one of the 4 ports, and re-boot Windows. Nothing? Do the same with the other ports one by one. If eventually, the desktop shows up, go into AMD Catalyst Pro, and disable EDID Emulation if already enabled. Scroll down and delete also for each connection (whether or not connected) any EDID profile saved. Also, look for a software switch which says something like 'Delete all emulations' or equivalent. Your objective is to wipe off any EDID saved previously, i.e. let the W7100 start from scratch/fresh out of the box. Shut down. Plug the adapter in the first port (from top down), and boot up. Hopefully this solves it. If it does not, next best thing is to boot into the Windows install CD or Windows USB. Nothing shows up, try another boot up. Hopefully one of the cold boots show up the installation procedure. Wipe off the present partition and re-install Windows from scratch. Thomas Leong

Hi Tom, Think you meant Z170, not Z160? In any case, granted you, I and some others who know what to look for may not have so big a problem. However, the cost of a H series motherboard is far cheaper than the Z series, meaning not paying for features we don't use. The loss of 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes versus the Z series does not necessarily meant loss of M.2 32GB/s slot. The H series pch still has 16 PCIe lanes to distribute depending on manufacturer's choice - less USB 3, single LAN rather than 2, number of SATA outlets, SATA Express or not, etc. Since M.2 is getting popular, it is time to take those 4 lanes from SATA, SATA Express etc rather than from the primary graphics slot which is what has been happening with Z97 motherboards. Thomas

Ref: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-100-series-chipsets,29993.html The standout feature is that the H170 locks the cpu's 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes to the first PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. Motherboard manufacturers are not able to split these 16 lanes to other slots for Crossfire or SLI - features which Watchout cannot use anyway. With the Z series, manufacturers' priority has always been towards gamers who may want to use 2 or more graphics cards, so lanes are re-distributed when other slots are used, and it becomes a shopping nightmare if we eventually want to add a capture card or two. Loss of other features versus the Z series, such as over-clocking, a couple or more USB 3.0 ports, 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the motherboard's platform controller hub (pch) are unimportant to the majority of Watchout users. And to be frank the i7 6700 cpu is quite capable as a processor. I have been using the i7 4770 and 4790 with the Z97 boards, and it would seem I wasted some $ with that chipset as I do not use most of the extra features, and instead have to worry about losing PCIe lanes when I add a M.2 SSD. The H170 seems to be the answer to my prayers so that's the direction I'm going with my next build. Thomas Leong

I don't have a APC20 but I understand that when plugged into a Production PC, no device installation is necessary. Windows will recognize it as a MIDI device. Refer to Page 197 onwards in the Watchout 5 manual. Should be the same for Watchout 6 when the manual is released. In Watchout > Window > Input > + sign in the top right corner > MIDI Controller. Thereafter the popup Window is per the manual page 198-199. Should be obvious from here on. In a Task Window, specify the MIDI Controller you have defined as a Trigger to trigger/start an Aux Timeline. Or in a Tween 'f' function for Opacity, Position, Scale or Volume, the std formula is TweenValue * [MIDI Controller you defined] (eg. ModWheel1 or Fade1). Thereafter pushing a defined fader up/down on the APC20 will control the TweenValue of that media item. Hope that gets you started!

I have both the HAF XB and the Corsair Air 240. Both are nice for easy access to the motherboard, cooling system, etc...but I would not recommend either for air-travel. Won't fit in the overhead compartment. What would fit is the Aerocool Dead Silence CUBE mATX case. So would that Shuttle you first mentioned. However, the Aerocool limits you to mini-iTX or mATX motherboards. Mini-iTX boards have no slots for capture card or anything else except the graphics card. Not a problem if you do not intend to use capture cards, etc. In this respect (with mini-iTX boards and systems), you have many choice of cases - from Thermaltake, Silverstone, etc - and motherboard manufacturers with X99, Z97 and Z170 systems. Thomas

I stopped using Shuttles when one of my earlier 4 units broke down. There is just no way to replace the motherboard with 3rd party boards that would fit. Even the power supply is difficult to replace with anything other than from Shuttle. In any case, what you suggest there should work, except that because the H97 chipset does not support over-clocking, do not waste one $ on the 4790K. Just the plain locked down 4790 will do. The other aspect to check is whether the W7100's length will fit into that chassis bearing in mind that the PCie power plug is from the rear rather than the top of the W7100. The other aspect is that because the W7100 is a single slot card with heat venting from the top of the card, it tends to run hot, so one needs to ensure the chassis expulsion fans can take this heat out of the chassis efficiently, and perhaps one or two intake fans to ensure cool air goes in. my two cents, Thomas Leong

Yes, but need tests to confirm. If you have the equipment, please test with a PCIe 3.0 slot versus a 2.0 and appreciate if you can report back. Additionally, with the new Z170 chipset, the pch (platform controller hub; read: essentially motherboard) now has 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes instead of 8 PCIe 2.0 for its peripherals, and a new higher speed DMI 3.0 communication link between the cpu and the motherboard peripherals. The Z97 and X99 use DMI 2.0. How these new developments affect latency in live video capture need tests and feedback.

If I may say so, one of the weaknesses of Watchout is a feature to allow the use of a simple 'Powerpoint' like remote to start/pause the timeline, aka spacebar toggle. That would have solved your problem. [so perhaps an addition to the Wishlist' is an 'enable Remote' option in Preferences for a Powerpoint-like remote controller]. As it is, your choices are either programmable Bluetooth remotes or wireless RS-232. Think you will require to speak to an electronics engineer who should be able to build a transmitter and receiver for this. One other alternative is to ask at the Show Control Yahoo Forum - https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Show-Control/info Someone there may already have a pre-built solution. Thomas Leong

Here is a possible workaround. Have the inputs always 100% on in an AUX Timeline in pause mode. Have another layer with a black jpeg at 100% opacity on top of the input layer. Fade this black layer down to reveal/up to conceal the live layer. Hope that works, if nothing else will.

In WO6 (not in v5), under Preferences, there is a audio out device selection for the various channels. If the device selection is correct, suggest you try an uninstall, reboot and install WO6 again. Can't think of anything else. Good luck!