Can SCS run on Windows LTSC?

[Chris Legare]

Question about the best way to make a great SCS computer build for stability and great performance.

Would there be any benefit in setting-up SCS on a Windows LTSC machine? (It's a Windows without the "cruft" - meaning: Kernel only and basic windows services - No Game store, No Cortana, No fluff )

On the same note: Would SCS perform better on a multi-processor machine?(read: Xeon powered workstations) or rather a single processor based machine running Intel i7 or even i9 at high clock rates?.

I'm inquiring because this is the kind of software application one wants to see running flawlessly during a show and (never) crash. We are considering a new PC build for our SCS machine. Depending on how the SCS software is written and compiled, going all out on a multi-processor machine may be pointless if SCS isn't setup to leverage those capabilities. The Windows LTSC operating system is of particular interest to us to help guarantee consistent system reliability and performances. Would there any benefits in running Windows LTSC over a Home / Professional / Enterprise version?

We would welcome insights and general recommendations on the best direction to take when it comes to custom PC builds.

Kind regards,

Chris

[dee99]

SCS should run on LTSC OK but I have not used it.
My SCS production machine is a gaming laptop with most of the "fluff" removed. If you look online there are windows power shell scripts available to do this. The machine is updated normally about a week before the show and then disconnected from the internet. Also remove as much as you can from automatically loading at start up, hint: use the startup tab in task manager.
I normally either don't have a virus checker running or if in some cases you only get the music on the day of the show (think kids dance shows)
then I will run one (Malware bytes is one good one).
Windows will try to spread jobs around the cpu cores if possible, running on a 16 core machine I have seen it use most of them.
If on a show you do need to be connected to the internet (people who use spotify playlists!) you can defer updates for 7 days and set the updates to happen outside of working hours in windows.
Speaking of Spotify...don't use it for live music. Either buy the music or download for offline playing.
Other options are to have a duplicate machine ready and/or a spare ssd drive which is either a copy or has a disk image on it.

[Chris Legare]

Hi Dee,

Sorry for the late reply here, I was away from work on extended leave.

Thank you for your reply.
We ran our windows machine with an enterprise-grade Windows license and some services turned off (Like Ms-Store, Cortana, etc...) but did not have the time to rebuild our machine with an LTSC version. (Working with my IT department is a whole other can of worms sometimes...!) So while I may have access to some pretty neat gear in this context, getting the admin rights on the machine to configure it another story.

We ran some tests and monitored core activities on a workstation grade machine we had access to (An HP Z840 loaded with Dual Zeon - 56 cores and 128GB of ram married with a pair of NVidia RTX A2000 video cards - in other words: a ridiculous amount of processing power for SCS) We wanted to better understand some occasional video glitches and hang ups of multiple video cues running concurrently. The multi-core processors did not seem to make a huge difference over a more conventional PC architecture. Only a handful of cores occasionally peaked and the rest was well within limits... so we turned to the video card settings and possible interactions with an NDI screen capture solution layered on top of SCS (along with Dante for the audio) without ever really reaching a definite smoking-gun conclusion.

We had to use such a hardware setup to push a staged emergency scenario to 7 screens while running multi-channel audio cues and other network command triggers over a 10Gbps isolated fibre network solution. We were able to pull through with our re-enactment test project for our client and wrap things up but, since I don't have much experience in software development, I was wondering if anyone else might have faced similar hurdles in one form or another.

For my own satisfaction, I would love to know what I should pay closer attention to in order to get more confidence in our system performance next time around. I realize that few may have readily access to such computer gear to run a show easily but I felt worthwhile sharing our experience about it. Our takeaway so far: Bigger multiple processors aren't necessarily a necessity to run large Show Cue files smoothly.

Welcoming any constructive feedback and war stories from anyone here.
I'm just hoping to (informally) compile a few known and verified performance machine hardware combos for me other to rely on in the future.

Cheers,

Chris

[dee99]

Thanks for the share that is very interesting and useful information.