Quick Start Tutorial

This tutorial walks you through building your first WATCHOUT 7 show from scratch. By the end, you will have a display configured, media placed on the Timeline, and content playing back on a physical screen. The whole process takes just a few minutes.

Before you begin — how WATCHOUT works

WATCHOUT separates the job of authoring a show from the job of playing it. The Producer application (running on your laptop or workstation) is where you design and program everything. One or more display nodes — separate computers running WATCHOUT Manager — do the actual rendering and send the signal to the physical screens. The Producer talks to those nodes over the network.

For this tutorial you need two computers on the same network: one for Producer (your authoring machine) and one acting as the display node. If you only have one computer available, you can run both Producer and Manager on the same machine to follow along — just be aware that in real productions these are always separate machines.

Step 1: Create a New Show

A show file is your project file — the single document that holds everything: your display layout, media references, timeline content, and show settings. Think of it the way you would think of a .pptx in PowerPoint or a project file in a video editor: it does not embed your media files directly, but it knows where they are and how to use them. The show file has the extension .watch.

1. Launch WATCHOUT Producer from the desktop shortcut.
2. From the Welcome Screen, click New Show.
3. Choose a location and name for your show file (e.g., MyFirstShow.watch). Pick somewhere easy to find, like your Desktop or a dedicated project folder.
4. Click Save.

Your new show opens with an empty Stage and Timeline, ready for you to start building.

Step 2: Add a Display

WATCHOUT needs to know about the physical screens in your setup before you can place content on them. You describe each screen by adding a display to your show — a virtual rectangle that represents the physical output. You define its pixel resolution (so WATCHOUT knows how large the canvas is) and give it a name so you can tell your displays apart when you have more than one.

At this stage you are just describing the screen, not yet connecting it to a physical device. That happens in Step 6.

1. Click on an empty area of the Stage window to make sure it is active.
2. Go to Stage > Add Display, or right-click on the Stage and choose Add Display.
3. A new display rectangle appears on the Stage canvas and is automatically selected.
4. In the Properties panel, configure the display:

• Name: Give it a descriptive name (e.g., Main Screen). This is just for your own reference.
• Resolution: Set the width and height to match your physical output (e.g., 1920 × 1080). This must match the actual pixel resolution of the screen that will show this output, so WATCHOUT renders at the right size.

1. Position the display on the Stage by dragging it to your desired location.

What is the Stage canvas? The Stage is a bird's-eye view of your entire physical setup. Every display rectangle you place here corresponds to one physical screen in the real world. If you have two screens side by side, you would add two displays and place them side by side on the Stage. The positions you set here determine how content moves across screens — content dragged off the right edge of the left display will appear on the left edge of the right display, just as it would physically.

Step 3: Import Media

Before you can place content on the Timeline, you need to bring your media files into the project. WATCHOUT does not work directly from files sitting on your hard drive the way a media player does. Instead, it imports files into a managed asset library — this lets it optimize files for playback, track which files are used by which cues, and distribute media to display nodes automatically. The Assets window is where you manage this library.

1. Open the Assets window by going to Window > Assets or pressing Ctrl+Alt+A.
2. Drag files directly from Windows Explorer into the Assets window. Alternatively, right-click inside the Assets window and choose New > Media File to browse for files.
3. Select your image or video files and click Open.

The files now appear in the Assets window. You may see a brief optimization progress indicator — WATCHOUT processes files in the background to prepare them for smooth playback. Once that completes, the assets are ready to be placed on the Timeline.

WATCHOUT supports a wide range of formats including PNG, JPEG, MP4, HAP, and many more.

Step 3b: Test Audio

If you want to test audio playback before moving on, follow these steps:

1. Add an audio file to the Asset Manager by dropping it into the Assets window.
2. Drag the audio asset from the Assets window onto the Main Timeline.
3. Open the Devices window and right-click to create a new Audio Device from the context menu.
4. In the Device Properties panel, set the Node that should play the audio.
5. Configure the audio device settings (output, bus routing) in the Device Properties panel.
6. Enable the audio device by toggling it on in the Device Properties panel.

Start playback by pressing the Play button in the Timeline window. You should hear your audio through the configured output.

Step 4: Place Media on the Timeline

The Timeline is where you arrange all of your show content in time. It works like a video editing timeline: the horizontal axis is time (left = earlier, right = later), and each horizontal row is a layer (like a track).

When you drag a media file onto the Timeline, WATCHOUT creates a Media Cue. A cue is a term borrowed from theatre — it is simply an instruction to do something at a specific moment. A Media Cue says: "start playing this piece of media at this time, for this duration." You can see it as a colored block on the Timeline, where its left edge is the start time and its right edge is the end time.

1. In the Assets window, select the media you want to use.
2. Drag it from the Assets window directly onto the Timeline window and release it anywhere on the timeline.
3. A new Media Cue appears as a colored block on a layer.
4. Drag the cue left or right to adjust its start time.
5. Drag the left or right edge of the cue to shorten or lengthen its duration.

About layers Each row on the Timeline is a layer. Layers work like layers in an image editor such as Photoshop: content on higher layers is drawn on top of content on lower layers. If two cues overlap in time on different layers, the one on the higher layer is visible in front. This is how you stack multiple pieces of content on the same display — a background image on layer 1, a logo on layer 2, a lower-third graphic on layer 3, and so on.

Step 5: Position on Stage

With a cue on the Timeline, you can now see and position your media on the Stage. The Stage window shows you a local preview — a real-time rendering computed on your authoring machine — of what the output will look like. It is not yet the signal going to the physical screen; that comes in Step 6. For now, it is your editing view.

The Playhead is the vertical line on the Timeline that represents the current moment in time you are looking at. Wherever the Playhead sits, the Stage shows you what the output looks like at that exact moment. Move the Playhead by clicking anywhere on the time ruler at the top of the Timeline.

1. Move the Playhead so it is positioned over your cue on the Timeline. You will see your media appear in the Stage window.
2. Click on your media in the Stage window to select it.
3. Drag the media to position it within your display rectangle.
4. Use the handles around the media to resize or rotate it as needed.

Step 6: Set Up a Display Node

Up to this point, everything has been happening inside Producer on your authoring computer. The Stage preview you have been looking at is a local simulation — your content is not yet going anywhere. To actually output video to a physical screen, you need to connect to a display node.

What is a node? A node is any computer on the network that is running WATCHOUT services. A display node runs WATCHOUT Manager and is responsible for rendering your show and sending it to one or more physical screens. In a typical production, each display computer is one node.

What is the Director? The Director is a service that acts as the master clock and coordinator for your show. It tells all the nodes when to play, pause, and stop, keeping everything synchronized. Without a Director, nodes do not know what show to play or when. The Director is usually running on the same machine as the Producer, but it can also run on a separate server.

Connecting everything:

1. On your display computer, launch WATCHOUT Manager from the desktop shortcut. The Manager starts and displays a splash screen on the connected output while it waits for instructions from a Director.
2. Back on your Producer computer, open the Nodes window by going to Window > Nodes. This window shows all WATCHOUT computers discovered on the network.
3. Your display computer should appear in the list. If it does not, check that both machines are on the same network subnet (see the warning below).
4. Right-click your display node in the list and choose Use Director if no Director is yet assigned, to designate that machine (or the Producer machine) as the Director for the show.
5. In the Stage window, select your display rectangle.
6. In the Properties panel, set the Node field to the hostname or IP address of your display computer. This is how WATCHOUT links the virtual display you created in Step 2 to a real output device on a real machine.

Step 7: Run the Show

With your display routed to a node and the Director connected, you are ready to see your show on the physical screen.

1. Press Ctrl+Home to jump the Playhead to the beginning of the Timeline.
2. Press Spacebar or click the Play button on the Timeline toolbar to start playback.
3. The Timeline plays forward from the Playhead position. Your content should now appear on the physical display connected to the display node — not just in the Stage preview on your Producer machine.
4. Press Spacebar again to pause, or press Ctrl+Home followed by Spacebar to restart from the beginning.

What to Explore Next

You now have a working WATCHOUT 7 show. Here are the logical next areas to learn:

• Tweens and animation — learn how to animate position, scale, opacity, and other properties over time by adding keyframes. See Tweens and Animation.
• Multiple displays — add more displays to the Stage and route them to additional nodes to build a multi-screen setup. See Display Setup.
• Cue types — beyond media cues, WATCHOUT supports control cues (play, pause, stop other timelines), output cues (send TCP/UDP/HTTP commands), and marker cues. See Cue Types.
• The full interface — a guided tour of every window and panel in the application. See The Interface.

Essential keyboard shortcuts to remember: