Helpful tip: Can't establish remote access connection

[callum]

Hi All,

Just thought I'd share a bit of a helpful finding (as I couldn't find any info before) re. connecting to display PCs via the in-built remote access.

I was unable to connect to my display PC and was getting the error "Can't establish remote access connection"

 

If the external displays on your display machine are at a different resolution/frequency to your Watchout show-file (I know this isn't great practice, I just hadn't noticed apart from this remote access issues!). Watchout just changes the external display settings to match the show-file when you take it online. When you remotely connect it looks like the exiting from full-screen causes the system to go back to the OS-resolutions, not the Watchout resolutions/frequencies. The fix for this is to make sure all your displays are running the same settings as they do in the workspace.

 

I'm not really expecting any sort of tips/input here but I though I'd better share it given someone in the future may run into this problem.

 

Cheers

Cal!

 

 

[jfk]

3 hours ago, callum said:

Hi All,

... Watchout just changes the external display settings to match the show-file when you take it online. When you remotely connect it looks like the exiting from full-screen causes the system to go back to the OS-resolutions, not the Watchout resolutions/frequencies.  ...

Has always been that way.

Have used that behavior when a cheap rack mount monitor on a KVM could not display the resolution used by the actual displays. In full screen mode, the rack monitor could not display the signal, but in the lower resolution that was set for the desktop, the rack monitor could be used to change settings while in window mode.

[callum]

Interesting. I certainly aim to run my system with all my displays configured correctly but on this show I've got 16 outputs spread across 4 computers and didn't noticed one have an incorrect frame-rate on one of the outputs in windows.

It would be useful if the software was able to generate a more helpful error message (like "Verify displays configured in Windows OS match display settings in Watchout") but Ultimately I'm guessing Watchout itself isn't getting a very helpful error message from the VNC system to identify what's gone wrong.

 

None the less I thought I'd share my observations with the forum to let a future-me save a bit of stress not being able to get their remote access up and running.