Important

The Important Settings view displays the most important settings needed in order to run the Graphics Plugin.

• Viz Engine Host: Sets the hostname or IP address of the Viz Engine renderer.

• Viz Engine Use Connection Broker: Enables use of the Connection Broker, see Connection Broker.
  

• Viz Engine Connection Broker host: Sets the host of the computer running the Connection Broker, see Connection Broker.
  

• Media Sequencer Host: Sets the host of the computer running the Media Sequencer service.
  

• Graphics plugin User Interface: See User Interface.
  

• Viz Engine Network compression: See Network compression.
  

• Viz Trio NLE Host: Defines the hostname of the machine running the Viz Trio NLE. Typically, this hostname is localhost.
  

• Viz Pilot NLE Host: Defines the hostname of the machine running the Viz Pilot NLE. Typically, this hostname is localhost.

Graphics Plugin

• User Interface: Sets the interface to use for selecting graphics templates.

  Templates using the same scene but opened from Viz Trio, Viz Pilot or Viz Pilot Edge are different entities. Once an editor is set and used to add a graphic effect to the timeline the effect is also bound to that editor. To create an effect with a template from another editor the old effect must first be deleted, a new editor configured, and then a new effect created.

• Log level: Set the log level in order to provide an error report to Vizrt. Only use it when it is specifically needed to make a report as it will slow the effect of the plugin. See the Log Files section in the Graphics Plugin Admin Guide for more information on log file locations.

  If set to None, the plugin will only log errors, which is the default behavior.

  If set to Report, the plugin will generate dated log files. It will in almost all cases include enough information in the log files to let Vizrt figure out the cause of problems.

  If set to Extreme, the plugin will generate a very large amount of logging information.

• Log directory: Use this setting to override the default logging directory. See the Log Files section in the Graphics Plugin Admin Guide.

• for more information on logging.
  

• Should log fields/frames: Enables the plugin to dump all frames and fields it renders to the file system allowing the user and Vizrt support to identify issues related to the graphics. Files are dumped in a sub-directory of the Log directory.
  

• Color correction: Enables broadcast-safe colors. Set cap-601 to cap high and low values directly to get 16-235. Set linear-cap-601 to perform a linear recalculation of the data to 16-235. The default value is None.
  

• Premultiply alpha: Configures whether the plugin will pre-multiply alpha or not when rendering. In some cases, the Viz Engine has already multiplied the color channels with the alpha channel.
  

• Anti-aliasing: Determines whether requests for small frame sizes should be anti-aliased on the Viz Engine.
  

• Untrusted SSL: Determines whether HTTPS servers with self-signed certificates should be trusted.
  

Viz Engine

The Viz Engine Settings view is shown below:

• Host: Sets the hostname or IP address of the Viz Engine renderer.

• Use Connection Broker: Enables the Graphics Plugin to connect to the Connection Broker for graphics rendering.
  

• Connection Broker host: Sets the hostname or IP address of the Connection Broker (see Connection Broker).
  

• Network compression: Sets the compression level. It is recommended to use no compression on gigabit networks, and compressed formats on slower networks (e.g. 100mbit). The default value is RLE.
  No Compression for gigabit networks will send all frames across the network uncompressed.
  PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless compression format.
  RLE (Run-length Encoding) is a lossless compression format. RLE is only supported by Viz Engine 3.2.2. and later versions (see the Software Requirements section).

• Prefetching: Prefetching, also known as caching, greatly increases the rendering speed when using a start to stop rendering, like Pinnacle's yellow slices, or Avid's pre-render effect mode.
  Failsafe mode is off.
  Default value is on.

• Prefetch size: Use this setting to indicate how many frames or fields the plugin should pre-fetch. A higher number improves start to stop rendering (pre-render) performance but reduces the scrub performance.
  Note that this option is only available if pre-fetching is enabled. Prefetch values above 50 are ignored.
  Default value is 20.

• Network timeout: Sets the time for how long Viz Engine connections should wait for replies.
  Unless network measurements for the Viz Engine have been performed, this setting should not be changed. Default value is 45 sec.

• Information timeout: Sets the time for how long Viz Engine should wait for reply for initial information.
  Unless network measurements for the Viz Engine have been performed, this setting should not be changed.

• Network cleanup: Sets the time for how long the plugin should wait after last use before considering tidying up loose connections to the Viz Engine.
  Unless the actual use of the plugin has been measured, this should not be changed. Default value is 8 mins.

  Host port number restrictions when previewing templates on Editor Viz engine port 50007 or 50107 must be used in order to preview templates on Graphics Plugin Editor, Viz Trio, Viz Pilot or Viz Pilot Edge. These ports connect to preview ports 50008 and 50108, respectively. See Network Requirements for port numbering information.

Editor Settings

Toggle settings view to display settings for either the Graphics Plugin Editor, Viz Trio, Viz Pilot or Viz Pilot Edge. Common settings will be presented first, followed by editor-specific settings:

• Host/URL: Sets the hostname or IP address (URL for Viz Pilot Edge app) of the machine running the Graphics Plugin Editor, Viz Trio or Viz Pilot.

• Network timeout: Sets the time for how long connections to Graphics Plugin Editor should wait for replies.
  Unless network data for the Graphics Plugin Editor has been measured this should not be changed.
  Default value is 90s.

• Grace period: Sets the time for how long the Graphics Plugin should give the editor to start everything without interruptions.
  Default time is 2s.

Startup Variables

Options are used as variables for the actual value set for the plugin. The options can be used as part of an editor’s startup options.

The following options are available and configurable:

• MSE_HOST: References the active Media Sequencer host.

  • Example: -mse MSE_HOST

• LOG_PATH: Refers to the currently used Plugin log directory.

  • Example: -logfile-path "LOG_PATH"

Shared System Settings

This section covers the shared settings feature that is available to Windows users in the system registry.

The system stores the settings in a per-user directory, for example under C:\Documents and Settings\<username>. Placing the same file in a shared directory allows multiple users to use a standardized setup overriding per-user settings.

By adding a Windows registry entry with a path to the master configuration file, the settings in that file will take precedence over the default values for the various settings, but the individual settings that the user changes in the Graphics Plugin configuration tool will take precedence over the master configuration file.

Given a particular setting, the following rules apply:

1. If a setting has been set using the Graphics Plugin configuration tool, that value is used, otherwise;

2. if it has a value in the master configuration file, that value is used, otherwise;

3. the default value for the setting is used.

To add a shared system setting

1. Start Graphics Plugin configuration tool.

2. Configure the Graphics Plugin using the configuration tool.

3. Save and exit the configuration tool.

4. Find the file vizplugin.xml in the current user's Application Data folder.

5. Copy the file to the designated shared location.

6. Set up the SettingsDir registry entry to point to the shared directory location where the copied file was placed.