Dataton’s Watchout is a powerful program for video playback and sequencing, but multi-channel audio support has been a bit lackluster. Show Sage has been working with a company called Merging that offers a product called Ovation with the goal of mitigating this gap by linking Ovation with Watchout.
Ovation brings a world of audio features, probably more than anyone working in video would need. The best part: it links up to Watchout via TCP for a seamless link. Ovation’s website says that this link provides sub-frame accuracy on wired or wireless networks.
Ovation offers 384 audio tracks per system, so I can’t imagine anyone will ever hit the cap. There is also dynamic control of grouping layers to different outputs, providing more flexibility than many traditional sound setups and especially more than just about any media server on the market. Sound files can be cued sequentially or fired at random with no performance loss. The program also supports any file or sample rate, so files don’t need to be converted to be put into the show.
Ovation is a powerful program on its own and can fit many jobs out there.The target of the program is obviously sound professionals. Adding it to Watchout fills the gap of multi-channel audio support in Watchout. It comes into the entertainment industry with an interesting challenge. With all of the powerful features that it is capable of, to truly take advantage of these functions, the video department would need the sound department to get on board. I’m no sound professional but I can see the value in many of the features Ovation brings to the table. If you can sell your sound guy on these features and have them integrate it into their system, or, use it as their main system which it is capable of being. You can then have a level of collaboration between sound and video which has been difficult at best before now. Many times in our industry, sound and video live in a nearly isolated world. Bringing Ovation into the mix could really change this state.
Ovation needs to gain some momentum in the entertainment industry to reach its potential but it already is the right fit in some other applications. For instance, any permanent installation such as a museum that needs more serious audio control, such as audio in different rooms, where there isn’t an entire sound system spec’d by a different department, Ovation is just right. By adding it on to a Watchout system you can reduce the need to add more Watchout servers just for additional audio support.
Ovation gives Watchout some powerful improvements but it has an upward battle to fit snuggly in the entertainment industry, specifically theatre. This isn’t due to its features or capabilities but rather the structure of the sound and video departments. If it can bridge this gap, the collaboration opportunities are plentiful.