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Just images fading in and out over a quicktime video


sparikh

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Hello:

 

I am having this similar issue as this post:

 

http://forum.dataton.com/topic/848-network-connection-lost/

 

but I do not have any VNC installed. This is a fresh copy of windows 7 64 bit with the following Hardware Specs:

 

Intel i7 2600K

8 GB D3-1600 RAM

2 X 256 SSD Hard drive raid 1 for mirroring

Asus HD7850 2GB Ati Video Card

 

All the drivers are up to date as is windows update. 

 

The computers are connected via VGA to a KVM in the rack to monitor and then HDMI cable to the LCD displays. 

 

Is there any way to check a log or anything to see why the watchout software may be crashing?

 

This is a very simple show which just fades images in and out over a quicktime video playing in the background. 

 

There is no period crashing, its always random. 

 

Thank you in advance!

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That would be great! I will bundle up the show and the contents. 

 

We encoded it using the standard quicktime encoder. I wanted to try and encode it using the recommended specs but I cannot access that PDF here for some reason. 

 

I havent looked through the windows logs, which logs should I be looking through?

 

Thank you so much!

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Hi Sparikh- click the windows icon bottom left of your screen, then type event in the search box.You will see a shortcut to Event Viewer appear.Click on that and then look through the logs. Anything with an exclamation mark in a red circle should be dealt with.This may help.

 Any more info would be useful on the codec, bitrate etc as Jonas suggested.What is the file extension?

Send me a link to the file and I will have a look.In the studio all day today and tomorrow.

Cheers

Neil

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Thanks for all the info. I will go to the location tomorrow afternoon and bundle the show. In addition, I have re-encoded the video per the PDF and will upload that as well. I hope its the video codec that is causing it to crash. Thanks again for the help, I will reply tomorrow with a link to my dropbox. 

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Hi Shivam,

 
Thanks for the up-loaded files.
 
The Windows error log does not say much, the WATCHOUT log files might, though.
 
Most likely are your issues due to the graphics files, not the video.
720x480@6MBps should be no problem, apart from slight stuttering from the 29.97->60 framerate conversion.
 
Your graphics files are 3744x5616 or 5616x3744@300dpi as tiff-files. This is unnecessary high, 72 or 96dpi is quite enough.
I would guess that your system runs out of graphics memory and that's why WATCHOUT crashes/behaves unpredictable.
 
I would suggest to re-save the graphics as PNG@96dpi and see if that helps.
 
/jonas
 
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Update to this subject:

 

When doing rotated screens, keep resolution at for example 1920x1080 and rotate the screen according to your setup

in WATCHOUT:s Display properties, Do not create a 1080x1920 resolution to solve the problem.

Most graphics cards do not accept this resolution anyway.

 

Might not be the main issue here, but still worth mentioning in this specific case.

 

/jonas

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I changed out all the images and rotated the screens per your advice. I hope everything turns out ok. 

 

I did notice something odd. If I kept the stage online and didnt play the time line (so it was just on black so all the screens displayed black), The middle screen still crashed. No video playing, just waiting in online mode. 

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

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  • Moderator

Hello:

 

I am having this similar issue as this post:

 

http://forum.dataton.com/topic/848-network-connection-lost/

 

but I do not have any VNC installed. This is a fresh copy of windows 7 64 bit with the following Hardware Specs:

 

Intel i7 2600K

8 GB D3-1600 RAM

2 X 256 SSD Hard drive raid 1 for mirroring

Asus HD7850 2GB Ati Video Card

 

All the drivers are up to date as is windows update. 

 

The computers are connected via VGA to a KVM in the rack to monitor and then HDMI cable to the LCD displays. 

 

Is there any way to check a log or anything to see why the watchout software may be crashing?

 

This is a very simple show which just fades images in and out over a quicktime video playing in the background. 

 

There is no period crashing, its always random. 

 

Thank you in advance!

 

 

I do not see any mention of Windows tuning,

did you follow the instructions in the Windows_7_Tweaking_list_2.1.pdf

after you reformatted the drives and performed a fresh Win 7 install?

 

And what do you hope to gain with RAID 1?

Everything is already backed up by the production machine,

I sure would not add the unnecessary complexity of RAID 1 on a display computer.

Over the years, RAID has been a real sore spot, especially mb RAID controllers, and

especially when RAID is used as a boot drive.

We have encountered so many issues with RAID 0,

we will not build a machine with RAID without a separate boot drive,

and up until now, we have always used a PCIe hardware RAID controller,

ignoring the mb RAID support altogether. ymmv

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  • Moderator

I changed out all the images and rotated the screens per your advice. I hope everything turns out ok. 

 

I did notice something odd. If I kept the stage online and didnt play the time line (so it was just on black so all the screens displayed black), The middle screen still crashed. No video playing, just waiting in online mode. 

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

 

What does that mean - " The middle screen still crashed. "

From a single computer, how does one screen of three crash?

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Theres actually 3 computers connected via gigabit ethernet. 

 

All 3 computers have the crashing dataton problem. I do notice that on the center screen the IP and Display 2 doesnt come up when the dataton logo shows after a crash. 

 

Hopefully that makes sense. 

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If you think RAID might be the problem, we can def rebuild the computers. 

 

Also, these need to run 24/7/365

 

Is there a recommended procedure to do this? Is there something that can reboot the computers every night? Is that recommended and if so, how can I make the show autostart upon reboot?

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