Slow Update with Long Timeline

[JesseG]

Hi, all–

 

I'm currently working on a show and updates are taking a very long time (~ 20-30 seconds) to transfer to the display computers. We believe this is due to the long timeline (~ 13 hrs) we have had to use to keep timecode synchronized with other departments (each song starts on the hour).

 

It's not the end of the world that we have to wait 30 seconds for each update, but it's going to be a pain in the neck we'd like to avoid if we can. Any ideas on how to improve this without rearranging the timeline?

 

Thanks!

 

: jesse

[Mike Fahl]

I recall there's a command line option to speed up some cases dealing with very long timelines. Ask Dataton tupport to give you the details (Erik would know).

 

Mike

[Erik Rönnqvist]

The simplest solution would be to use Live Update. That way, all media is always present in all display computers. Without Live Update, Watchout analyses the timeline(s) by sampling it every 100 ms (if I recall correctly) to see which media is present in which displays. That way only the media actually needed in a specific display computer is transferred to that display computer, which in many cases speed things up. However, if the timeline is very long (many hours) the analyse process may take quite some time, especially if there are tween tracks with a continuously changing parameter present. 

If using Live Update, it will persist even if starting the show by other means (not using Watchout production software).

 

Another option would be to add the "-TweenSampleMs TimeInMilliseconds" argument to Watchpoint, where TimeInMilliseconds would be something larger than the default interval (100 ms), for example "-TweenSampleMs 1000" to increase the sampling interval to one second. The drawback of this is that the hit testing for determining which pieces of media should go to which computers will become somewhat less accurate, and you might be missing some media for a few hundred milliseconds in on or more displays. In practice, this is quite unlikely to happen in most cases, and in case it does happen, it is quite likely to pass unnoticed.

 

/Erik