Watchout Video Encoding

[Walter Soyka]

[Erin Stargel] “We are new to Watchout and I am trying to create a video that will fill the entire screen we will be using. The screen resolution is 4474×1080.”

For movies this large, you should pre-split the movies for each display. See p. 42 in the WATCHOUT 5 User Guide for more.

[Erin Stargel] “What is the best video codec to use for Watchout v5 and how can I create a video that large? I was able to export from FCP but the largest sequence size that FCP allows is 4096.”

Both Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro can deal with large rasters and custom aspect ratios.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Erin Stargel]

I did come up with a solution and split the video in half and was able to create H.264 videos. My boss didn’t necessarily like that idea.

I did figure out in Premiere and After Effects and have been able to create videos that size, but not in the codec I wanted. I created a ProRes file which played but was choppy on the machine that has the Watchout system on it currently. It also was 30 secs long and 1.44 GB.

I really like how the H.264 video looks vs. the size of file.

Is there another codec that works with Watchout that creates a smaller file size?

Thanks!

[Walter Soyka]

[Erin Stargel] “I did come up with a solution and split the video in half and was able to create H.264 videos. My boss didn’t necessarily like that idea.”

Rather than splitting the video in half, you should split it into chunks pre-sized and pre-split for your displays. This is the best and most reliable way to get wide video into WATCHOUT.

For example, if you are blending three 1920×1080 with overlaps, you should render out three 1920×1080 videos; one for the left edge, one for the center, and one for the right edge. There will be overlap.

Change the name of each of these files so it matches the name of the display it should appear on (for example, name the left movie “Display 1”), and place them all in a folder. Use WATCHOUT’s Media > Add Video Proxy feature to import that folder as a pre-split movie.

This is all detailed in the section of the manual I referred you to.

As for codecs, MPEG-2, WMV, and H.264 are all natively supported. Personally, I generally prefer MPEG-2 for reliable playback and looping of pre-split movies.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Erin Stargel]

Thanks for your advice.

What encoder do you recommend to produce MPEG-2 videos?

[Walter Soyka]

[Erin Stargel] “Thanks for your advice.”

You’re welcome! I hope it is helpful.

[Erin Stargel] “What encoder do you recommend to produce MPEG-2 videos?”

I like Telestream Episode.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events