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WATCHOUT USER'S GUIDE

Audio

In WATCHOUT, audio is used in a way that’s very similar to moving images. Simply bring the sound file into WATCHOUT and place its icon on the display in the Stage window where you want the sound file to play.

Audio wave form graphic
Audio waveform displayed inside cue on timeline.

Audio will normally always play through the production computer, unless explicitly disabled (see “Play Audio Media”). Audio can also play through a display computer (see “Sound”). To decide which display computer to use for audio playback use either of the following methods:

  • Place the audio icon (corresponding to the cue) inside the frame of a display connected to the relevant computer.
  • Select the display or projector associated with the desired computer explicitly inside the audio cue.
  • Which method to use is specified in the cue used to play the audio file (see “Sound Cue Specifications”).

Audio File Formats

WATCHOUT can generally play any sound file compatible with Windows Media Player. However, the recommended sound file format is WAV. There’s usually no reason to use a compressed sound file format, such as MP3, and the addi­tional decompression step adds unnecessary load. The size of uncompressed sound files is usually not an issue with the kind of computers used to play back WATCHOUT presentations.

Multi-Channel Audio

WATCHOUT can play back multi-channel audio using a suitable sound interface (see “Using Multiple Sound ­Channels”). Multi-channel sound files are saved as WAV files using the “Wave Format Extensible” file format. Some applications capable of saving multi-channel WAV files include Steinberg Nuendo, Digidesign ProTools and Adobe Audition.

Settings inside the cue allow you to route individual sound channels to their desired outputs (see “Sound Cue Specifications”).

Embedded Audio

Some video files also contain an audio track which means the sound would play from the same display computer(s) as the video.

NOTE: Using embedded audio is not recommended in WATCHOUT.

If you have a video file with embedded audio, cut the sound track out of the video and place it in a file of its own. This gives you two media files: one for video and one for audio. The video and the sound can then be added as separate cues in WATCHOUT. You can position them independently in the Stage window, allowing the sound track to play through any display computer.

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