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Jedda  
#1 Posted : Monday, September 12, 2016 11:59:13 AM(UTC)
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Today when streaming a football match I had some issues with the match clock I use in vMix. As always I start the timer when the match starts and in my recording that was at 13 minutes and 13 seconds. The first half ended when exactly 1 hour had passed, so playing time ended up being 46 minutes and 47 seconds (if the math in my head isn't totally wrong). But the time on screen shows 44 minutes and 26 seconds when the half finishes, so that means the clock has been running more than 2 minutes slower than it should.

Any idea what could have caused this? I had the same issue in the second half too, so it was not just a one time thing. Never noticed this before and the only difference I really have done for this broadcast was to add a stinger for the instant replay, shouldn't really affect this I guess. I use the vMix Universal Title Controller to control the timer, but can't see that being the issue either.
doggy  
#2 Posted : Monday, September 12, 2016 1:27:30 PM(UTC)
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or the other one faster ?
no 2 clocks are equal !
IceStream  
#3 Posted : Monday, September 12, 2016 1:44:20 PM(UTC)
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@ Jedda

Is it not also possible the game clock is not properly calibrated?
AFAIK, the vMix timer runs off the internal clock of the computer, so if your computer clock runs slow, so will the timer.
2 minutes in less than an hour seems like quite a bit, but might not be easily noticed unless you have a secondary timer, as is the case here, so perhaps you need to investigate further, both your internal clock, and maybe the game clock with a third clock or stopwatch.
Just my thoughts.


Ice
Jedda  
#4 Posted : Monday, September 12, 2016 5:43:20 PM(UTC)
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doggy wrote:
or the other one faster ?
no 2 clocks are equal !


What other one? I've checked the time in the video player of the actual video (elapsed time of the video), should be reliable enough. The clock at the stadium was also faster than the one in vMix, which was how I noticed it in the first place :) So I'm 100% sure the clock in vMix was running slower than it should this time, but as I said it's the first time I've seen this happen.
Jedda  
#5 Posted : Monday, September 12, 2016 5:48:37 PM(UTC)
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IceStream wrote:
@ Jedda

Is it not also possible the game clock is not properly calibrated?
AFAIK, the vMix timer runs off the internal clock of the computer, so if your computer clock runs slow, so will the timer.
2 minutes in less than an hour seems like quite a bit, but might not be easily noticed unless you have a secondary timer, as is the case here, so perhaps you need to investigate further, both your internal clock, and maybe the game clock with a third clock or stopwatch.
Just my thoughts.


Ice


I have no doubts that the time in vMix was incorrect this time since both the time in the video file, the referees clock (since he stopped the half before it's been 45 mins played) and the stadium clock is pretty much agreeing with each other :)

Also, I'm not talking about a 24 hour clock, just a timer that counts from 00:00 when I start it like any normal sports clock. Not sure if that has anything to do with the computer clock in general, but I will pay attention to the time on the computer and see if it seems to be normal if this happens again. Either way it seems strange that this hasn't happened before as far as I know.
Jedda  
#6 Posted : Sunday, September 25, 2016 5:16:12 PM(UTC)
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This issue has been happening every match from when I noticed it and I've used my phone to check the time (so I can manually adjust during the match when I notice there being a big difference) and I've also noticed that the longer the game goes, the bigger the difference gets. During the first half it's usually just a few seconds or maybe a little bit more. But in the second half of a match it does quickly get to 20-30 seconds difference.

It's really annoying and even if viewers maybe doesn't notice it too much when I manually adjust the time, it is quite time consuming to do it in the second half when it really starts to be a problem.
ichn1  
#7 Posted : Monday, September 26, 2016 10:23:53 AM(UTC)
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This happen with us all the time, we noticed that vmix loses frames during live shows and recording, since the timer in vmix is related totally to vmix, so this what happen, when vmix somehow overload or loses frames, everthing related to calculation or time will get slower, thats why we are using now a flash based timer that runs outside of vmix, and I guess Martin knows about that and they will fix that soon.
admin  
#8 Posted : Monday, September 26, 2016 12:54:35 PM(UTC)
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Hi,

Countdowns in vMix all use the Windows High Performance Timer which is extremely accurate on modern PCs.
vMix uses this by establishing a fixed start time when the countdown starts and determining time remaining based on that fixed time.

As a result, it is not effected at all by the performance of vMix, and in particular if frames are dropped due to heavy load.

In Windows Vista and higher a lot of work went into making this timer extremely accurate even if the hardware clock it is based on
(motherboard or CPU) is slower or faster than expected.

However, I guess it might be possible for a faulty piece of hardware to make the clock slow or fast. Best way to determine this is to
compare a countdown on another PC running side by side.

Regards,

Martin
vMix
mjgraves  
#9 Posted : Monday, September 26, 2016 1:06:50 PM(UTC)
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I a past life I was involved in installation where the timing/scoring systems clock was used as a reference for all clock displayed in a broadcast. On the CG systems at the time we implemented a serial protocol that took the feed from the Daktronics system and displayed the number in a special, externally driven, real-time clock object. The protocol was relatively simple. This ensured that the bodcast clock was never out of sync with the stadium clock or scoreboard clock.
Jedda  
#10 Posted : Tuesday, September 27, 2016 12:14:05 PM(UTC)
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admin wrote:
Hi,

Countdowns in vMix all use the Windows High Performance Timer which is extremely accurate on modern PCs.
vMix uses this by establishing a fixed start time when the countdown starts and determining time remaining based on that fixed time.

As a result, it is not effected at all by the performance of vMix, and in particular if frames are dropped due to heavy load.

In Windows Vista and higher a lot of work went into making this timer extremely accurate even if the hardware clock it is based on
(motherboard or CPU) is slower or faster than expected.

However, I guess it might be possible for a faulty piece of hardware to make the clock slow or fast. Best way to determine this is to
compare a countdown on another PC running side by side.

Regards,

Martin
vMix


Is faulty hardware the only possible problem you can think of in this case? Unlike ichn1 I don't think this is related to dropping frames in my case, casue this has not been an issue at all before. It only started less than a month ago, but is happening every time now.

Will try and run some tests this week with different clocks running on the same computer at the same time together with vMix and see if I see any difference there. But I really do think this problem only is in vMix for me. Cause I have had problem with a computer many years ago where the Windows clock was running slowly and it had to do with something in the CPU (battery?) or some other piece of hardware, but this is not anything that is happening with this computer. Maybe it could even be something in my titles or whatever which is causing it, since I'm always running the same saved setup file.
Jedda  
#11 Posted : Sunday, October 2, 2016 1:16:53 PM(UTC)
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Think I might have solved the issue in my case, looks like it might actually have been Universal Title Controller which caused this. It had somehow created mutiple clocks and I think it may have used the time from another clock which was hidden in the background where I obviously haven't adjusted the time during half-time.
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