Watchout Director Control (WTAV)

Control a running WTAV Director Control app (a control surface for Dataton WATCHOUT 7) from Companion. This module talks to the app's semantic /api/v1 surface — timelines, cue sets and variables by name/id, independent of how the app's canvas is laid out.

The WTAV Director Control application itself (Windows + macOS) is available at https://www.avtrade.nl/wtav-director-control.html.

Requires Companion 5.0 or newer

From v1.1.0 this module is built against the Companion 5 module API. The live 0-100% bars are drawn by Companion itself, from a gauge graphics element bound to the module's own *_pct variables — gauges do not exist in Companion 4, so the module cannot run there.

Still on Companion 4.x and unable to upgrade? Mail control-support@avtrade.nl and we will send you a legacy build (v1.0.0, bars drawn as images by the module) that you install with Settings → Modules → Import module package. That is WTAV support — not Bitfocus, who neither host nor support that package. It does not automatically follow every release — we port over what is worth porting — so upgrading to Companion 5 stays the real fix. Companion 3.x and older are not supported at all.

Setup

1. In the WTAV Director Control app: open Settings and start the web control surface (default port 3333). Press Discover so the app knows the show's timelines, cue sets and variables.
2. In this connection's config, set the host (the machine running Director Control — 127.0.0.1 if it's the same PC) and the port (3333 by default).
3. When connected, the connection goes green and the timeline / cue-set / variable dropdowns fill in.

Actions

• Timeline: play / pause / stop / toggle — transport for one timeline.
• Timeline: play from position (ms) — play starting at an exact millisecond.
• Timeline: jump to time or cue — in cue mode you pick a cue straight from a dropdown of the show's cues (each already carries its own timeline, so no id typing); in time mode you pick a timeline + a millisecond. Then play or hold (pause).
• Cue set: activate preset — switch a WATCHOUT cue set to one of its presets.
• Variable: set value — set an input by its key (the external-control key you assign in WATCHOUT Producer; an empty key would hit every variable, so only keyed variables are listed).
• Surface: press a button / widget — press a specific widget on the app's own canvas, listed grouped per page (the semantic mirror of the phone remote). Only single-press widget types are offered (buttons, multi-actions, schedules, Wake-on-LAN, Companion, device).

Presets

Ready-made buttons are generated from the discovered show, grouped into sections: Timelines — Play/Pause (green when playing, amber when paused), — Stop (red when stopped), — Progress bars (live fill, press toggles), Cue sets (highlight on the active preset), Variables (a live value bar plus set-to-min/max examples), Surface buttons (one per pressable widget, per page), and Status. Drag one onto a button and it arrives fully wired with its feedback.

The two bar presets are layered buttons: a gauge element reading ..._pct, with the name on top. Everything about them is yours to edit once the button is placed — colour, horizontal / vertical / ring, the label — and you can add a gauge to any button of your own the same way, pointing it at any of this module's percentage variables.

Feedbacks

• Timeline: play state (colour) — restyle a button when a timeline is playing / paused / stopped.
• Timeline: countdown warning (colour) — turn a button red when the countdown to the next marker drops under a chosen number of seconds (default 10).
• Cue set: preset is active (colour) — light up the active preset.

All three are boolean feedbacks: they switch on and off, and you choose the style they apply. The 0-100% bars are not feedbacks — they are gauge elements on the button, fed by the *_pct variables below (see Presets).

Variables

Per timeline: name, state, current time (m:ss and ms), progress %, countdown to the next marker (m:ss and ms), the countdown marker name it is counting toward, the next cue name, and time to the next cue. Per keyed variable: value, %, and value source. Plus show_name and connection.

Readout presets come in three sections so you pick the layout: Timelines — Current time, — Countdown (with the marker name it counts toward), and — Current time + Countdown. Every readout button (and the Play/Pause preset) leads with the timeline name, so a placed button always says which timeline it is. The countdown buttons turn red under 10 s and read --:-- when no marker is ahead.

About variable feedback — an honest note

WATCHOUT does not report variable values back to controllers (its input API is write-only). So a variable bar/percentage shows the last value set (by Companion or the app) — the source variable reads set. If you configure WATCHOUT to push a variable out (an OSC/HTTP output cue) the app can capture the real live value (source = osc), and a future native WATCHOUT read-back will show as watchout. Timeline progress, by contrast, is always real live feedback.