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Video screens to Watchout Logo issue


Diego Consul

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Hi,

I have a strange issue with 2 watchout displays. The show is played correctly, but when the displays computers are shutdown for some days (2-3 days) and then it are power on and load the show, it is played right for 7:30 seg and then the video reproduction fail showing the watchout logo on all screens of first watchout display computer  and 2 seconds after the watchout logo is showed on all the screens of second watchout display computer. Note that when it occurs, it is always at this time.

Audio and UDP events continue to play correctly. If I reload the show, the screens keep showing the watchout logo, so audio and UDP events continue playing correctly.

To solve the issue, I must to restart both displays computers or relaunch the Watchout Display software.

Once a restart has been performed after a failure, this failure does not occurs again until several days have elapsed without using the system.

Any error was showing on displays computer.

There aren't any error showed on log of watchout displays computer.

I have these issue since several month ago. I have updated the Watchout version some times and the issue persist. Now the Watchout version is 6.4.

 

Could anyone give me any idea why this might happen?

It seems like a problem with video playback, but it only appears after several days without playing. Is there a video cache into Watchout that takes place after several days without playing? 

Can you think of any more tests I can do?

 

Information about the system:

Videos: mp4  Advanced Video Codec , Main@L5,  CABAC: No, RefFrames: 2,GOP: N=1, Códec: avc, 25fps

Display computers have 4 outputs each (1920x1200px resolution each output)

SO: W 7 tweaking

HDD: 2xSSD (one SO and other for Watchout app and medias)

 Attach show timeline image.

Best regards

 

 

Timeline show.JPG

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Did you place a Watchpoint shortcut directly in the Startup folder of your Windows system?

When your Watchout Display PC boots, probably not all Windows tasks have been started up.

You might use a DELAYRUN function when starting up the Watchpoint. This enables Windows to complete it's booting before Watchpoint is launched.

(Page 187 of the manual).

 

 

Hugo

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Thanks Hugo for your contribution.I don't know if that you say will help, because it fails after 7 minutes. The playback always starts well, but just in case, today I just added "-Delay 15"

On Monday, I also changed the preroll to 10s and staggered for the 4 videos  that would have to be played after the player fails.

For the moment, no failure have been detected.

 

Diego

 

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Can you try to transcode some of the videos to e.g. HAP or MPEG-2 and try again?

We have seen issues when a certain number of MP4 files tried to play at the same time. You're loading files around that time while others are still playing.

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re: mp4 videos. Certain mpeg4 / h.264 encoding settings will result in unstable movie files that have been known to crash WATCHOUT, specially when looping. The notorious bi-directional frames are the biggest offender. Disabling them will result in a more stable file. Unfortunately, many encoding softwares do not provide a simple method of disabling bi-directional frames and they are almost always on be default. Often, coding profiles along the lines of Best Quality indicate the use of bi-directional frames and something along the lines of Good quality disables them. The profile names are misleading. It is possible to achieve the exact same quality with or without bi-directional frames, the difference is file size and bit rate. Basically, your encoding guru needs to know how to get the encoding tool to handle this setting correctly. If all that is to confusing, HAP avoids all of this as there is no equivalent to those frame types in HAP. But HAP files are MUCH larger than mpeg4.

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Since this happens only after a full restart, and once the system is up and stable does not happen again until the system is restarted, my guess is on some other program, driver or similar running in the background on the display computer. That "other" thing does something that kicks WATCHOUT out of full screen mode after a several minutes.

If the problem were caused by some video codec bug, it should manifest even after running successfully ones, since what then happens is pretty much the same on every run of the show.

Of course, the tricky part is finding out what that "other" thing is. Especially since it happens so rarely.

Mike

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/9/2020 at 4:36 AM, jfk said:

re: mp4 videos. Certain mpeg4 / h.264 encoding settings will result in unstable movie files that have been known to crash WATCHOUT, specially when looping. The notorious bi-directional frames are the biggest offender. Disabling them will result in a more stable file. Unfortunately, many encoding softwares do not provide a simple method of disabling bi-directional frames and they are almost always on be default. Often, coding profiles along the lines of Best Quality indicate the use of bi-directional frames and something along the lines of Good quality disables them. The profile names are misleading. It is possible to achieve the exact same quality with or without bi-directional frames, the difference is file size and bit rate. Basically, your encoding guru needs to know how to get the encoding tool to handle this setting correctly. If all that is to confusing, HAP avoids all of this as there is no equivalent to those frame types in HAP. But HAP files are MUCH larger than mpeg4.


I had an issue like this today. running a spanking new watchmax2. WO logos up all over the wall during show.
No issues before and this is show #15. Ive been using h264 encoded files for a while now, and have had some similar issues every now and then. So this makes me wonder if the codec makes it unstable.

The error code received on production computer is
'Rendering error: -2005530508;[Facility 34934]
and then at the same time
Network error;Display Computer: Connection lost.  (well. it obviously crashed)

any thoughts on this? it was playing 6 x h254 files simultaneously at the time of error.

I encode with Adobe Media encoder, but I can't find any bi-directional-frame settings in there at all. Is it a bad software to use for this?
What converter-software do you guys reccomend? or just rather go HAP or mpg2?
 

 

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