vnc on ims3000

[Torsten Juergens]

Is it possible to use vnc on the ims3000.
We are now using an android tablet with difficulties in visualizing the cinelister menus in the browser.
And we've already tried almost every browser.

[Leo Enticknap]

Not on the IMS2000 or 3000; sorry. I believe that the ShowVault was the final DolRemi server that has a VNC UI. Not sure if the IMS1000 does or not.

[Steve Guttag]

I do miss VNC for being able to actually train people or see what they are doing wrong. There is benefit to everyone looking at the "same" screen. But Leo is correct. None of the IMS servers support VNC. There is no desktop interface.

What can be done, if the site has a TMS/LMS is to install a VNC server on that device and then VNC into that so again, everyone is sharing the same screen. We've done that with TMS systems where we have a support computer on site as well.

[Nate Alchesky]

What can be done, if the site has a TMS/LMS is to install a VNC server on that device and then VNC into that so again, everyone is sharing the same screen. We've done that with TMS systems where we have a support computer on site as well.

This is exactly the scenario I've used at times to help explain things to people at sites I can't be at. It definitely helps to be able to see what the person is doing when directing them for the first time.

[Elia Orselli]

With IMS3000 you may use a usb bluetooth dongle and the dedicated Cinema Server Control app (I've never tested it)

[Steve Guttag]

I've had a 100% failure rate with that app. It is very fussy about the device you are using. So far, the devices I've tried have not met the requirements. Originally, I was supplying the Bluetooth dongle (ASUS, as I recall) but nobody was using it. Most just bookmark a page on their web server. Really, there is little to be gained, in a multiplex, to walking around to each screen as if one has to be next to the server/projector in order to operate it.

[Carsten Kurz]

Yeah, when I heard about that bluetooth dongle and app first, I thought, WHAT? A weak low range point-to-point connection, instead of just Wifi/Webbrowser throughout the complex?

[Steve Guttag]

The idea was if you had an iPAD...you could carry that about and when you were at the projector, it would connect to that dongle. I guess it allows a low-cost user interface for places like screening rooms.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I do miss VNC for being able to actually train people or see what they are doing wrong. There is benefit to everyone looking at the "same" screen. But Leo is correct. None of the IMS servers support VNC. There is no desktop interface.

What can be done, if the site has a TMS/LMS is to install a VNC server on that device and then VNC into that so again, everyone is sharing the same screen. We've done that with TMS systems where we have a support computer on site as well.

I've done the same with Teams and Zoom lately, with the built-in screen sharing options. Works pretty well. People can share their own screen and you can share yours. You can even allow to interact with your local screen.

As for Torsten's problem: We have a Windows management PC for this kind of operations, which can be taken over via VNC and RDP. You can start a browser session from there with your favorite browser (we even have Internet Explorer on there for some stupid legacy web-interfaces that require outdated Java applets and whatnot...). While a bit clumsy on a tablet, it avoids any rendering problems with mobile browser versions.

[Torsten Juergens]

Well, I also have a windows computer on site for training.
However, if there are problems during operation, I would like to be able to see the active browser myself.
Thanks anyway, you can't have everything.

[Jesse Crooks]

I have found the ability to have multiple users logged in via separate browsers to be a point of annoyance with the IMS3000. I've instructed our projectionists to log out as soon as they're done every time, but invariably it will be left up on multiple workstations, so changes will not be reflected for one of the users, etc. I've also had issues with the web browser apparently timing out (not sure if that's the right terminology) while the user session remains active, resulting in incorrect information being listed in the browser when you start using it again after an extended absence (the clock being off by hours comes to mind). I definitely prefer the single instance of the GUI with our DSS servers.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I'm a big fan of web interfaces. It's not too hard to keep multiple users in sync by just updating all the displayed data once a second or so. In some products we did, the browser would request a delta word that had bits set indicating which screen elements had changed. It would then fetch them. In the JSD products, we often did three sets of interface code: the front panel, a Windows over USB interface, and a web interface. In the last product I had a lot of design input on (which ended up being an OEM design for another company), we did JUST a web interface. The front panel interface was a web browser that accessed the same pages that any other user would get. This was "code once, use everywhere." Keeping multiple UIs in sync is a pain! So, a server VNC would show you the server screen, assuming there is one. The server COULD have a web browser that accesses the same web server everyone else does. You could then VNC to that.

Anyway... I'm not designing this stuff anymore, just have opinions on trying to make stuff simple and maintainable. "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Harold

[Leo Enticknap]

I definitely prefer the single instance of the GUI with our DSS servers.

It's only a single instance if you are using the monitor/keyboard/mouse hooked directly to the server, plus a VNC connection: those two shadow each other. If you actually use the Show Manager client running on a remote computer, though, this will not affect what appears on the local and VNC iteration of the UI. For this reason I prefer to put the Show Manager client on our remote PCs, so that if I have to troubleshoot anything remotely, what I do will not disrupt anyone using the server locally.

[Jesse Crooks]

I can see how that would be preferable for remote support, but for daily use I like having a single instance so you can tell if you're interrupting someone else's work (plus it's always live and you don't get glitches due to the browser). We are probably an outlier in that we usually have two projectionists per day, and except for our single screen theater all of our venues have multiple workstations that can control the projection system. At the one site where we have an IMS3000 we have two projection booths with their own workstations, plus one in the box office and a dedicated laptop for use in the auditoriums. The projectionists are pretty good about coordinating their work but you can accidentally step on one another's toes. While the IMS3000 UI will tell you if another user is logged on, this is often inaccurate if people forget to log out. I'm pretty sure that you can close the browser or let the computer go to sleep without logging out and it will still consider it an active session for a certain period of time.

[Steve Guttag]

The IMS3000's user time out is adjustable. The vast majority of our users like a long time-out so that they are not constantly having to login. This is especially true for screening rooms where the they are using the web UI as they would a traditional server interface. Probably, with that many instances, the timeout should be shortened.

Another possibility is to dedicate a computer to interfacing with the servers and then put a VNC server on that and have all of the other computers VNC into that computer so you have a single-instance of ANY ui, web or otherwise.

As to Leo's point...for Dolby DSS servers, we maintain both the Jupiter Client for "behind the scenes" work and VNC for visible work. I'd say that 95% of the time, I use the VNC. A downside to Jupiter is that one has to keep it current to what is loaded on the servers...which made distribution of it very impractical. Furthermore, if you don't use Dolby's "TMS" scheme, one has to constantly change which server it is pointing do in an "ini" file...which also makes it user unfriendly. Mostly, I use the Jupiter Client for pulling full-logs.