Advanced

This tab contains some miscellaneous and rarely used functions.

Color

Ideally, all displays in a system should be properly color-matched. However, sometimes you may have to deal with projectors with different lamp life or other minor discrepancies. For those kind of situation, WATCHOUT lets you adjust the white balance of a display device, making the overall image look more uniform. Use a colorimeter or an appropriate test image when adjusting the white balance.

NOTE: Display computers need to be online for you to see the changes as you move the sliders.

Alternatively, use the color calibration features built into most projectors. These can often give better results when used by a skilled operator.

Stereoscopic Assignment

This setting applies to the “2D Display/Projector” only. Controls the stereoscopic channel reproduced by this display device. You must use separate projectors for the images reproduced for each eye in a stereoscopic presentation. Select the appropriate eye affinity on this menu. Leave this set to None for normal (non-stereoscopic) presentations.

For proper reproduction, each projector in a stereoscopic pair must be equipped with filters matching those used in the glasses worn by the viewers. Please contact your projector vendor for details on supported 3D projection technologies.

IMPORTANT: You must place the related left and right eye projectors at the same stage position. To avoid WATCHOUT attempting to create edge blends for those overlapping projection areas, place the set of left eye and right eye projectors on separate stage tiers (see “Using Stage Tiers for Complex Display Arrangements”).

Edge Smoothing

Use this option to smooth out the jagged edges that can appear when for example rotating media, or when using geometry correction. The setting has four levels: Low, Medium, High, and Off.

This setting should be used with care if you don’t have a powerful graphics card, as it may have a negative effect on performance.

Use as Synchronization Chain Source

WATCHOUT synchronizes all computers in a display cluster via the network. This is sufficient in most cases. However, in some cases, frame-accurate synchronization of display refresh cycles is required. For instance:

• When driving a large LED wall using more than one display computer, or using multiple outputs from a display computer using AMD graphics cards.
• In broadcast applications, where all displays used on set must be locked to the house sync to avoid camera interference.

In such cases, WATCHOUT can be used with hardware synchronization solutions from AMD (S400) and NVIDIA (Quadro Sync), in conjunction with compatible, professional-grade graphics cards.

Both these solutions work in about the same way:

• All display computers must be equipped with synchronization cards and compatible graphics cards.
• One computer in the display cluster is designated as the synchronization source.
• A separate synchronization cable connects from the output(s) on the source to the performer cards.
• Optionally, a “house sync” (genlock) signal is connected to the synchronization source.
• The graphics cards’ and synchronization cards’ settings are configured according to the manufacturer’s recommendation.

Once this is done, enable “Use as Synchronization Chain Source” for a display connected to the display computer acting as the synchronization source.

IMPORTANT: For this hardware synchronization solution to work reliably, you may need to ensure that all displays are turned on before the display computers are powered up.

In addition, the SDI boards of Dataton media servers feature synchronization capabilities. For details on which type of synchronization your Dataton media server supports and how to set it up, please refer to its manual.

Use Default Soft Edges

This setting applies to the “2D Display/Projector” only. Uncheck this if you decide to make custom edge blend masks manually, rather than relying on the automatically generated edge blends (see section on Image Masks in this chapter).

NOTE: The automatically generated edge-blend mask is sufficient in the vast majority of cases. Before you start creating individual edge blends manually, first make sure you projectors are well matched and set up properly. In particular, avoid any “high brightness” or “office” gamma setting modes, selecting more linear modes such as “film” or “photo” instead.

Apply masks with/without geometry

This setting allows you to specify if display masks and soft edges should be affected by geometry correction, or not.