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Digital Signage Director

1. 0000ssssssssssseseessesessessssssessssesseeeeeeees 14 Edit a Media E Te Tu AT 16 Interactive Editing 2u0 20020000000n0nan0n nun ann nnnnnun ann nnnnnnnn nun nun nun anne 18 More Info on How to Interactively Edit SVG Files 00000000000000000nno 19 Editing Media Elements Layout sssssssssssssssssssssssessssssssssseeeeeeeees 19 Editing Media Links EN 21 Gelder EN 22 Multi Layers SVG Templates 2 02220220020000n000n00nnnonnnnnnnnn nun nun nnnn ann 22 Composing a Scene In 4 Steps u zzuu200000000000nnnnn0nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nn 23 How to Customize a Multi Layer SVG Document sessssssssssseseeeeeeeees 23 FXrample see ee 25 SEAN a TEMP EE 26 Composing a Playlist SVG Document In 5 Steps uunnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 26 How to Customize a Playlist SVG Document u22222224000200000000nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nn 27 Special News E 29 FV t 30 CONTENTS Formateur 30 Composing a Live News Document In 5 Steps uuuuunnn20000000000000nnnnnnnnnnn 30 How to Customize a News SVG Document 22222222402222222000000000nnnnnnnnnnnnn0nn 31 How to Use the Format Helpers ssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessseeseseeseeeeeneeees 32 Scalable Content and Aspect Ratio 22200220002000n0nnn0nnunnnnnn0n 33 Multimedia Effects 2220000000000020n0n0nnnnnnonnnnnnnnn
2. bouncing_text svg lf the text is too large to be displayed in the text box area then the text will bounce from left to right or top to bottom depending on the configuration When using top to bottom bouncing you can configure the number of displayed lines fit_text svg The text size will be automatically adapted to the text box area ensuring that all the text is always displayed date_time svg This helper can be used to display in a formatted manner any date and time You can configure the source for the date using the Date source entry pubDate for the publication date of the RSS news for instance The helper uses the php syntax from controlling the date format You can also use any language for printing the date by filling up the entry under the Names group By default English French Spanish Italian and German examples are provided into the template switch svg This helper let you configure different media to be displayed depending on the value of a news item This can be used to display an up down arrow for stock quotes for instance SCALABLE CONTENT AND ASPECT RATIO 33 AUTHORING SCALABLE CONTENT AND ASPECT RATIO The EXT DSC unit natively supports the SVG graphic language This language is scalable that means that the graphics are rendered on the fly according to the resolution supported by the display This guarantees a perfect rendering for texts and graphics whatever the resolution of the display
3. Pattern Timezone D Category Fire Brick e DEFINE DEFAULT EVENTS AND RECURRENCES Define a default animation The scheduler allows you to specify a default animation to be displayed when no events have been scheduled to a given date hour If no event have been specified the scheduler tries to open the following SVG file calendar_default svg If the file is available then it will be displayed To create and manage calendar _default svg e Create a new document using the right click pop up menu on the pre view panel Rename it to calendar_default svg e Open it e Drag and drop you default media video animation or image into the preview panel DEFINE RECURRING EVENTS Event can be scheduled as a single time event or as repeating events By default all new events are single time events To transform an event into repeating event you need to check the Repeat check box in the Event zone By default the event will repeat every day forever Depending on the version of DSD it might be necessary to click the Pattern button and then the OK button to confirm this repetition To Change the rule for repeating event press the Pattern button to have access 51 SCHEDULING DEFINE RECURRING EVENTS to the recurrence rule edition dialog This dialog allows you to create fairly complicated recurrence rules However creating basic recurrence like every day every 2 hours or every week
4. Beh 28 MID 00 pm 4 16 2010 0 12 20 f It is possible to change the time and the date being displayed in DSD using either the clock or the calendar control e Note that when the date is modified the locked clock icon is highlighted indicating that the document currently shown in the preview area is not using the local time e f you open another document DSD will open as if the local date and time is the one you have set Click the locked time icon to change back the time to the real local hour 53 SCHEDULING Gefen warrants the equipment it manufactures to be free from defects in material and workmanship If equipment fails because of such defects and Gefen is notified within two 2 years from the date of shipment Gefen will at its option repair or replace the equipment provided that the equipment has not been subjected to mechanical electrical or other abuse or modifications Equipment that fails under conditions other than those covered will be repaired at the current price of parts and labor in effect at the time of repair Such repairs are warranted for ninety 90 days from the day of reshipment to the Buyer This warranty is in lieu of all other warranties expressed or implied including without limitation any implied warranty or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose all of which are expressly disclaimed 1 Proof of sale may be required in order to claim warranty 2 Custome
5. These topics provide an initial understanding of DSD authoring functionalities HYPER MEDIA PROJECTS DSD offers the notion of project to author and preview content to be published later on EXT DSC units 9 AUTHORING HYPER MEDIA PROJECTS A project is a special folder that contains a master file index svg and all the media elements e g video clips images texts animations scripts that are composed together to create the Hyper Media presentation Note that not all media elements need to be copied inside a project EXT DSC can be instructed to access remote locations and retrieve content on the fly by using PHP scripts This structure is very similar to a web page where you find an index html file and all the media elements that will appear when the user browses the web site By default DSD regroups all the projects under My Projects a folder automatically created on your hard drive while installing DSD under My Documents Gefen The folder My Projects appears in the browsing area when you select the default Workspace view Note that you can open multiple views and navigate inside each of them each view will be displayed as a different tab When you open the My Projects folder you can access a number of actions by right clicking the browsing area In particular you can e Create new projects e Create new folders of type Collection of Projects so as to organize your projects in functional groups The notion of pro
6. Note that the scalable property does not apply on images or video content encoded with other formats and included in a SVG document When authoring scalable content the user should pay attention to the aspect ratio the ratio between the horizontal and vertical size of the display To avoid aspect ratio distortions or black borders the user should author its content with the same aspect ratio of the target display Digital displays may offer different aspect ratios the most common are 4 3 and 16 9 The first are those typically seen in computer monitors the ratio between the width and height is in 4 3 proportions The second is common in recent TV sets where the horizontal size is almost the double of the vertical one landscape To simplify the authoring with the right aspect ratio DSD comes with two sets of templates one created for 4 3 aspect ratios and one for 16 9 We have also created intermediate aspect ratios such as 16 10 which are less common When possible choose the aspect ratio corresponding to your displays Example of 16 9 content ASA AA ee lt CA 2 Example of 4 3 content Pr us u u 1024 x 765 sai EI ve BM AUTHORING SCALABLE CONTENT AND ASPECT RATIO lt may happen that the same content will be displayed on monitors with different aspect ratios In this case the following will happen e If you use 16 9 templates the content will be displayed using black border on top bot
7. e EI im mmer E me Er we mm wm S045 eg m i SES ee When you select a media element by clicking it four arrows appear on 19 AUTHORING INTERACTIVE EDITING the corners of the selected media You can now do the following interactive operations on this media directly with your mouse Move Click on the element to move it using the mouse Resize Click on one of the arrows to change the size of the element lf you enable the Full transform editing from the Setting menu the following operations are now possible Zoom Click on one of the arrows to modify the dimension of the element using the mouse Resize Click on one of the arrows and press CTRL to change the size of the element Rotate Click once on the element the arrows will be modified Click on the arrow on the corner to rotate the element Skew Click once on the element the arrows will be modified Click on the top or side arrows to skew the element The difference between the zoom and the resize action depends on the elements Text area Zoom will change the size of the text Resize will modify the text area thus enabling to write more text Media image video animation Zoom will change the size of the media Resize will change the size of the media area thus the aspect ratio of the media will not be modified Rectangles Zoom will change the size of rectangle including the border Resize will change the size of the rectangle
8. e Open a document that contains a media element such as an image the preview panel will display the entire scene e Drag and drop one of the effects file from My Templates Effect directly into the preview panel on the media element you want to animate Inthe case the media you want to animate are overlapping with other media and the drag and drop operation onto the preview panel results to be difficult then drop the effect file directly on the media property in the editing panel Once an effect has been added to a media it can be configured using the media editing dialog The editing panel shows a star icon next to the of the media property to indicate that effects have been added to the media To remove the effect use the popup menu on the media element and select Remove Effect 36 AUTHORING MULTIMEDIA EFFECTS There are two kinds of effects e Entry effects these effects are trigged by the beginning of the multimedia file Also know as input or entry effects they are located in My Templates effects in e Exit effects these effects are trigged by the end of the multimedia file Also know as output or exit effects they are located in My Templates effects out These transition effects are based on svg syntax and can be customized freely This makes it easy to design new set of effects using the SVG animation syntax Configuring effects Once effects have been added to a media file the media editing d
9. document and select Open or simply double click the file If possible DSD will start previewing the content of the document in the Preview panel and the Editing panel will change according to the content of the document you have open in fact DSD can recognize specific XML tags and activate appropriate editing interfaces to help the user customize the document without 14 AUTHORING CREATING AND EDITING SVG FILES any knowledge of SVG syntax lf the document you have opened was not designed to activate special editing interfaces then the editing panel will show only the XML Tree and WebDAV tabs You can still edit the document content using the interface XML Tree but you need to have an understanding of XML structure and SVG syntax If the document you have opened was designed to activate special editing interfaces then an additional Properties tab will appear This tab gives access to the user to a number of parameters that can be customized directly trom the Properties tab Changing these parameters directly modify the XML Tree structure of the document but you do not need to know SVG syntax to do it Each template document can expose one or multiple parameters Parameters can be of the following types e Value the user can type some values to modify the layout of the document Generally those are durations sizes or number of items to display e Text the user can modify some text shown on the screen The user can also selec
10. TETTETETT ATTE ER Default Width 640 Default Height 360 Default Position translate 320 180 Heer tet ett tet iets ntti ett gengt Pete t ist tet ret dh bet ett ttt t ett ie te tietis A E A Eh et ettistisisteistisinteteteiid Default Aspect Ratio xMidYMid In addition to the properties tab the multi layer document activates a Layers tab in the editing panel 24 AUTHORING MULTI LAYERS SVG TEMPLATES The Layers tab allows you to add of remove layers of media into your document The following operations are possible e Add a new media layer drag and drop any media to the Layer tab of editing panel The new media will be linked automatically to your document Add anew text layer using the r icon in the preview panel or using the pop up menu e Delete an existing layer using the pop up menu or the delete key e Change the order of the layer Use shortcuts Ctrl up Ctrl down or manually drag and drop in the list e Position scale skew and rotate the new media by interact with it in the Preview panel Each layer position and size can be edited on the Preview panel as described in Interactive editing Multimedia effects can be added to any media as described in Multimedia effects Example A typical document will be composed of a background image the first layer and a combination of media to create the complete scene For instance the following example is composed of 4 layers e A background image e Av
11. THE DEVICES DSD checks the status of the devices available in My Devices each time the refresh button is pressed 44 MONITORING OPEN A DEVICE e f the device has been discovered automatically by the Bonjour protocol itis thus available Three different icon may be shown gt The device normal mode A plus green check is displayed on top of the icon gt The device is in safe mode A warning sign is displayed on top of the icon gt The device is in recovery mode An hospital cross is shown on top of the unit e Ifthe content server is reachable it prints a green check on top of the device icon e Ifthe content server can not be reached a red cross is printed instead 001d500000fa 001d500001fe 001d5000001 001d5000018 001d5000013 To get more feedbacks about an EXT DSC device you should use the HTTP management interface of the EXT DSC Right click on an EXT DSC and select from the pop up menu the Manage command This will directly open your preferred web browser on the HTTP server of the selected device My Devices ia New collection i 8 SE S Bei Show Device Ei ip SS eP Manage gt Show Content Delete Rename Update metadata For a proper management of the status of multiple devices a SNMP client should be used The EXT DSC is given a product OID of 1 3 6 1 4 1 29888 1 1 OPEN A DEVICE To view the content server of a device access to all the fil
12. To simplify the editing task DSD offers an intuitive graphical user interface directly through the Preview panel The user can interact with media elements in the scene by changing their style properties positions sizes rotations etc and DSD automatically changes the corresponding SVG document to reflect the changes This is done in real time while the Hyper Media content is previewed resulting in an intuitive and powerful SVG editing console More Info On How To Interactively Edit Svg Files Some SVG files have editable properties This is the case of all the templates found under My Templates and new documents created by DSD Having editable properties means that the SVG document can be interactively customized using DSD When opened with DSD these special SVG files will instruct the GUI to open a property Tab in the editing panel as explained in Creating and Editing SVG files The property tab includes all the fields that have been defined as interactively editable by the author of the SVG document These fields may be text media elements or parameters Editing Media elements layout Media elements can be declared as transformable in SVG templates If a media is transformable then its layout can be edited directly in the preview area Such elements appear in the preview panel highlighted by a black and yellow border Simply move your mouse cursor on a media element to check if it can be transformed E ers arm wm
13. be 4 3 16 9 16 10 or 9 16 vertical e New Playlist Create a new Playlist files e New Schedule Create a new scheduling file with extension ics e New Collection Create a new folder e Upload Upload a document from your hard drive Note that the upload of a file can also be done by an interactive drag and drop operation from the file explorer application of MS Windows lf you right click a specific file or you right click the browsing panel while a file has been selected the following functions appear whose actions apply directly to the selected file e Open Open the file in the preview panel e Delete Delete the file without confirmation a short cut has been defined for this function shift delete e Rename Rename the file e Update metadata Update the icon of the file according to its content If you right click a Collection Collections are equivalent to Folders in MS Windows and can be used to arrange your media in a hierarchical manner in addition to the above functions you can access the Set type menu This menu allows you to specify what type of collection you want Changing the type of a Collection modifies the behavior of DSD when opening the Collection More details will be given on this subject in another document The browsing panel allows the user to copy files and folders with intuitive drag and drop operations For example copying a file from its position to a new destination can be done as fol
14. but not the border The image below shows an example of the effect of the Zoom and Resize operation on the different elements 20 AUTHORING INTERACTIVE EDITING Bree7s pu gt wp OTAH F 0 16 03 The right click on an element opens a popup menu with the following shortcuts e Full Screen Zoom the element so that it occupies the entire document e Rotate Right Rotate the element by 90 degree clockwise e Rotate Left Rotate the element by 90 degree counter clockwise e Flip Vertical Flip the element upside down e Flip Horizontal Flip the element left right e Reset Transform Remove all zoom rotation and skew on the element The other options are related to multilayer document and are described in more details in Multi layers SVG templates and Multimedia effects Editing Media links Media links can be declared as editable in SVG templates When a media from the browsing panel is dragged to the preview panel editable media link are highlighted in green and a magnet icon is shown on top of the media When the media is moved on top of an editable link the highlight is changed to red and the magnet logo is modified Dropping a file from the browsing area of such element will modify the content currently displayed by the player 21 AUTHORING MULTI LAYERS SVG TEMPLATES wl 2 a en Nr 7 J4 is br eh e br rag era panreen Banre Lira ge Mr rei KEE SET det On some d
15. concept of Hyper Media Project Read the section devoted to this subject in Hyper Media Projects e Images too large will be resized e Images in format not supported by the EXT DSC like bmp will automatically be converted to png images If an image called example bmp is uploaded it will be renamed to example bmp png Importing video All video can be imported into DSD During the import process DSD will check that the imported video can be played by the EXT DSC If it is not the case DSD will refuse the import of the video In this case check that the CODEC used to encode your video are supported by the DSC and that the video resolution is within the EXT DSC specification Once the video has been imported you can preview it directly using DSD by double click on the video By default the preview of the video correspond to the 12 AUTHORING CREATING AND EDITING SVG FILES first frame of the imported video You can change the preview of the video in the browsing area by using the snapshot icon next to the play button Importing PowerPoint presentation All video can be imported into DSD During the import process DSD will check that the imported video can be played by the EXT DSC If it is not the case DSD will refuse the import of the video In this case check that the CODEC used to encode your video are supported by the DSC and that the video resolution is within the EXT DSC specification Once the video has been impo
16. dec 001 c9101100dJocal snapshot snapshot php I Br SE chats temporary gurj weather backoround ona date sva d kene 46 SCHEDULING 5 QUICK STEPS TO SCHEDULING SCHEDULING A scheduler standard and easy to use EXT DSC natively supports iCalendar format to control when a hyper media content shall be displayed The Digital Signage Director DSD offers an intuitive interface that allows the user to associate to any type of hyper media content a schedule in the iCalendar format Using this feature the user can plan in advance when the content shall be displayed on a specific EXT DSC unit The scheduling interface implemented by DSD is very like the one implemented by electronic agendas e g Outlook each event you add on the agenda like when you add a meeting in your Outlook is associated to a starting date time and a duration or an end date time In addition it is possible to associate to an event recurring rules so as to schedule a media to be displayed twice per week on Monday and Friday between 9 00AM and 10 00AM Once the planning of the day week month or year is finalized DSD export the results into a standard iCalendar file This schedule file has the extension ics and can be used as any other media to compose your content The flexibility obtained with such an approach allows the user to schedule full screen content but also specific elements in the scene such as different backgrounds logos source of
17. is fairly straight forward For instance e Foran event repeating every day select Pattern repeat every 1 Day Eventually select a number of repetitions or the date of the last repeti tion e Foran event repeating every 2 hours select Pattern repeat every 2 Hour e Foran event repeating every Monday select Pattern repeat every 1 Week Make sure your initial event was occurring on a Monday e Foran event repeating the first day of every month select Pattern re peat every 1 Month Make sure your initial event was occurring the first day of the current month For more complex rules you need to use the second part of the dialog For instance e Foran event repeating every week day select Pattern repeat every 1 Week and check Weekday is Then check all the days from Monday to Friday e Foran event repeating at 10h and 15h every day select Pattern repeat every 1 Day and select Hour is 10 15 G Edit recurrence rule j xj Pattern repeats every d L Day Forever Until 7 End after Advanced parameters Minute Hour Occurence number 52 SCHEDULING PREVIEW SCHEDULED CONTENT PREVIEW SCHEDULED CONTENT DSD allows the user to preview scheduled content at a specific date or time This is useful to validate in advance what will be displayed in future To preview scheduled content at a specific date or time use the control on the top of the preview panel
18. 5000018 001d500 Refresh b 4 8 43 MONITORING MANUALLY ADD DEVICES TO DSD MANUALLY ADD DEVICES TO DSD To manually add a device to the My Devices do the following e Open My Devices in the workspace view e Right click on the browsing panel and select New Device e A ddialog box appears and ask you to enter a number of details on the new device you wish to add gt Serial Number if you do not have the serial number of the unit you want to add you can enter here another name however in this case the unit you add will not be automatically recognized by the Discover devices command as being already defined You may have two device icons pointing to the same unit gt IP address enter the IP address or the hostname of the device you want to add E g 192 168 1 100 you must know this info gt Type the Type of the device Currently only EXT DSC devices are supported by DSD gt Security You can also directly add usernames and password for protected devices If you do not enter a password in this dialog box DSD will ask you to authenticate yourself when trying to publish content on a protected device e The new device is added to the current folder e Once added you may change the name of the new device from the browsing panel at any time G New Device x Serial Number Device ID IP Address Type EXT DSC zu _ Password protected Box cancel CHECK THE STATUS OF
19. Looping op Inter Slide Duration 2 1 S om e gt Transition Direction left Duration id In addition to the Properties tab playlist SVG documents instruct DSD to open a Playlist tab in the editing panel This tab lets you compose the playlist and the order in which media elements will be played The following interactions are possible from the Playlist tab Add a new media There are 3 different ways to add a new media gt Drag and drop any media to the Playlist tab of editing panel If the new media is dropped on top of an existing media it will replace it Otherwise it will be inserted were it was dropped Click on the at the bottom right of the table This will open the media dialog and allows you to type the URI of your media This is useful if you want to add media from remote sites Use the pop up menu and choose Insert This will insert an empty media at the selected position The empty media can then be edited using the at the bottom right of the line Delete an existing media Using the pop up menu or the delete key Change the order of the media Using the pop up menu or using the ctrl up down keys NOTE It is not only possible to create a playlist of media files but also playlist of text box if needed Media and text box can also be used in the same playlist 28 AUTHORING SPECIAL NEWS TEMPLATES lt is possible to control the duration of each media and the nu
20. a calendar If you select multiple files in the browsing panel then all the files will be added one after the other in the calendar according to their default duration lOlxl Modify the scheduling properties of an event You can edit the properties of an event using the Event zone The following properties can be edited e URI of the event Link to the scheduled media This automatically modi fied when you drop a media on the event e Summary Title for this even By default it is equal to the filename of the media but it can be modified to any suitable name From To The start and end date of the event This can be used to fine tune the duration of the event e Priority In case two events occur at the same time only the event with the higher priority will be displayed 50 SCHEDULING DEFINE DEFAULT EVENTS AND RECURRENCES e Repeat and Pattern Allows you to specify repeating patterns for your media e Time zone Let you choose the time zone for your event You can leave it empty In this case the event will correspond to the local time of the EXT DSC where it is displayed e Category Used for improving the visual interface Let you choose a col ors for the different events This has no impact on the displayed content URI project New 20project Shiny_1 svg fal Summary Shiny_1 svg Priority 5 From 4 16 2010 22 of am x M Repeat To 4 16 2010 42 20 am
21. an discover them manually using the following procedure e Open My Device in the workspace view e Right click on the finder view and select Discover Devices e The status bar indicates the number of devices discovered so far e Ar the end of the discovery all the discovered devices are added to the current folder e Devices that were fund in a previous search are not added again Once the devices have been discovered it is possible to arrange them into collections It is also possible to delete a device previously discovered if it is no longer available To create a group of devices right click on the browsing panel and create a New Collection Then you can drag and drop devices into this collection Notes e It is possible to have multiple copy of a device in different collections This can be used to control publication lists for instance e The discovery mechanism is needed only for backward compatibility lt uses a broadcast to a multicast address 230 83 80 88 Depending on your firewall status and your network configuration it might not be possible to discover all the devices e By default the name of a device is its serial number However it is possible to configure it using the player configuration interface My Devices fa Ke New Device Kir ee New collection EN 3 New Server New Shared niet Ke E New Collection 001d5000013 Gre a6 C C Se SC Op 001d
22. anguage the sizes themselves have no importance However the ratio between the width 3rd number and the height 4th number determines the aspect ratio of the document The first 2 numbers describe the origin of the document and should be left to 0 e New Layer group for the default properties of all new layers gt Default Width the width of a new layer By default the new layer occupies the whole document and thus this has the same width of the Canvas gt Default Height the height of a new layer By default the new layer occupies the whole document and thus this has the same height of the Canvas gt Default Position position of the top left corner of the new layer By default the new layer is located at the top left of the screen 0 0 gt Default Aspect Ratio you can choose if you want a new layer to keep its aspect ratio xMidYMid or to be scaled none when inserted into the document NOTE You can change the above parameters at any time In particular if you want to add new media to your document with different sizes and default positions you can modify the document parameters accordingly for each new media that you add G BY X ack Save Revert 4 Close Title New document 16 9 Description Multilayer 16 9 Template 0 i o Duration rer 7 Document Canvas Size 00 1280 720 New Layer Quen pen en ee on en ee Eng LEEFER OG NE Ym YY Be HR A Be NN NY YS ON eG OG OB Ne A YP T ETATE
23. be used when you want to display one or multiple news on a single page Each news is shown one after the other like a slide show The following features can be configured e Supports entry and exit effect to add movement to the displayed news e Supports one or multiple news item per page e You can control gt The duration of each pages Item Duration gt The size of the document under Document gt The number of item per page and the location of each new item under Multiple items per page You can also add an offset between the display of the news on the same page 31 AUTHORING SPECIAL NEWS TEMPLATES news_ticker svg This template should be used when you want to display a scrolling text coming from an external source The size of the scrolling text will automatically adapt to the size of the document The following features can be configured e Layout of the text using the Layout entry Use SPX title and SPX description to display respectively the title and the description e Support horizontal and vertical scrolling Direction e Crawling speed in percentage of the height of the characters Crawling speed e Spacing between two news items Spacing e Background color and opacity under Background e Number of line of text shown simultaneously in case of vertical scrolling under Advanced e Vertical position of the characters Baseline under Advanced Increase this value if no charact
24. diting zone You can choose between day week month and year From this zone you can also create anew empty event 2 Calendar zone green allows you to select which day will be visible in the Editing zone 3 Event zone blue allows you to control the start and duration of an event and eventually its recurrence 4 Editing zone yellow allows you to view and edit the events in your schedule Different time scales can be selected from the Manage ment zone Use the day and week scales to interactively positions and change the durations of the events Use the month and year view to have an overview of your schedule 4 April 4 5 6 ii 2 13 14 189 19 20 21 3 26 27 28 Calendar WebDAV ADD EVENTS TO A SCHEDULE To add an event to a schedule e Open your schedule e Select the day or week view from the Management zone e Drag and drop the media you want to schedule into the editing zone of your calendar 49 SCHEDULING ADD EVENTS TO A SCHEDULE e Anew event will be added where the media was dropped e You can change the start and the duration of the event interactively by enlarging the event and moving its position in the calendar e Clicking on the event allows you to move it e Clicking on the top bottom of your event allows you to change its dura tion e The Event zone lets you fine tune the recurrence properties of your event if needed Any type of media animation video or image can be used in
25. duration of the media it will pre set the absolute duration Opacity The opacity of the media A value equal to 1 means that the media is opaque A value equal to 0 means that the media is completely transparent By default the following parameters are not shown To make them visible expand the More item Mime type The type of the media This should be detected correctly by DSD and should not need to be modified Preserve aspect ratio check box Controls if the aspect ratio of the media should be preserved when included into the master document Lock mouse editing when selected the interactive editing for this media is disabled Tag for accounting check box When checked the opening and closing time of this media will be logged in the accounting log files Initial visibility When checked the media will be visible but not animated before the beginning of the animation Freeze last frame When checked the media will be visible but freeze after the end of the animation The check box Repeat If you want your media to be displayed more than once you should check the check box You can then specify gt Count The number of time the media should be repeated or gt Max dur The duration of the repetition in seconds Size Let you control the size of the media An easier way to control these parameters is to use interactive editing in the preview area 17 AUTHORING INTERACTIVE EDITING URI G Media d
26. e action New SVG file with the desired aspect ratio DSD creates anew SVG multilayer document new svg in the current browsing view with the selected aspect ratio 13 AUTHORING CREATING AND EDITING SVG FILES T project New project 2 Zu D wi My Projects gt New project N k New SWG file Aspect 4 3 New Playlist Aspect 16 9 New Schedule Aspect 16 10 gt New Collection Aspect 9 16 Upload gp D 7 Up e Refresh Having installed DSD you also benefit of a set of pre defined SVG documents called templates You can find these templates under the Collection My Templates in the default Workspace view Provided templates include e Multilayer templates with different aspect ratio e Text templates e Playlists templates e Animated Watches analog and digital templates e Templates for displaying RSS data from web site Other templates will be provided in future releases of DSD To create a new SVG document based on one of these templates simply copy or drag and drop the one you have selected from the My Templates collection to your target project Note that among the templates there are files with the special SVGX extension These templates files require scripts in the tools collection to work properly When copying a template DSD will make sure that all the needed scripts will be copied as well Edit an existing SVG document The first step required to edit an SVG document is to open it right click the
27. ector lets you import all these individual media and order them into a single playlist It is very easy to further reinforce your graphical identity by adding your logo your slogan a background or a graphical layout on each slide of the playlist In a few clicks and without special graphics skills you can author your personalized and updated content and you can schedule its distribution on the right display and at the right time You are a graphical professional and you are using your software solution to author new media art pieces These can be exported as images videos vector graphics content and animations You will be able to import them later in Digital Signage Director combine them with additional elements and customize the final canvas for a specific application Learning Digital Signage Director authoring features The first step towards using DSD authoring features is to understand the concept of Hyper Media Project Read the section devoted to this subject in Hyper Media Projects Learning by examples is probably the shortest path to start creating your own hyper media project Follow the instructions reported in section Import and download the projects provided in the Download section On these projects you may experiment the main authoring functionalities such as Operations on files and collections Creating new documents Editing a document Editing a multi layer document Editing a playlist Managing the aspect ratio
28. ers are shown news_crawler svg This template should be used when you want to display a scrolling text and logo or when you want to have more control over the layout of the displayed news This template combines the features of the news svg and the news ticker svg templates NOTE Effects cannot be used in this template How to use the format helpers The format helpers are a set of file which can be added as a multimedia layer in the news svg and news _crawler svg file to simplify the construction of the layout To use the bouncing text or the fit text helper do as follow e Drag and drop it on your document like any multimedia file e Open it e Change the Text to SPX title or SPX description to display respectively the title or the description of your news e Press Apply or Save to see the result 32 AUTHORING SCALABLE CONTENT AND ASPECT RATIO G project Mew project news_16_ 2 9 Gefen Digital Signage Director v2 1 1 Gi A ab wm a eg O nial KHMCwgeOTAH ff X 4 16 2010 0 00 00 Pi Close E Title SPX tde nm Text 3 Sao Wie Description SPxITdeserpton NIE l ii NEE Text ew ere N0 00 00 25 aam es ePxifenciosure a 7 wellt au ona el os Be i T Be un ei T spu tempilates News iS mt ai News E New project KR BK Pa gan ze te re Toxt A date Auen E TN 88 news swg news_16_9 sY news_4_ 387g Tex Text Fa Properties Layers Inline RSS XML Tree WebDAV
29. es and folders that have been published on the device double click on a device This will open the content server in the browsing panel and the property page of the device in the editing panel 45 MONITORING OPEN A DEVICE The property view shows you information about your device Do not modify this information as this might prevent DSD to communicate properly with the device By pressing on the preview icon the camera it is possible to get a snapshot of what is currently being displayed by the device The preview is automatically updated every 30s You can use the content server to upload content on the device You can also directly edit the content on the device using DSD however it is recommended to use projects to edit the content and then upload the project to a device G wee dew et Art RON Een Gerben Digit al Signage firerbar we ell xj G TeSa o a p a ns f go 7H SD RJ x Chose AGO ADA ja SUITE KE T0046 BOSSE HOOKER OLK Fri 16 Apr 2010 21 55 49 CAT http gef dsc 001e9 101 100d ec al 81 EXT OSt i EMBEDDED PLAYER Frw 2 1 0 1 0 9847 7 m r GOEN kcal au S pi fay gt ee amip gef dse G01c9101 100d local Deej DOLERLOLLOCE N ia Spx manage href http gef dse 001e9101 100d local isa EI Ss Tgrezbrteg i E spn device ss Spa me Cl CEST 100 instaniMessage news aps tnapshor tref http gef
30. escription EB x Begin 0 00 00 Duration media eg Opacity 1 00 v More Mime type Auto E V Preserve aspect ratio Lock mouse editing Tag for accounting Initial visibility _ Freeze last frame V Repeat Count 0 Maxdur indefinite EN Width 640 Height 360 OK Cancel If you specify an indefinite duration for your media it will NOT repeat lf you want your media to repeat forever you should check Repeat with a Count of 0 and an indefinite Max dur If both a Count and a Max dur are specified the media will repeat until the minimum of the two is reached For most templates the properties should be self explanatory or explained in the preview panel when you open the template before customizing it If you need help please use the FORUM or send your questions to DSC gefen com INTERACTIVE EDITING The preview panel has two main functionalities Preview Hyper Media content and multi media content The preview panel emulates in software the display capabilities of the EXT DSC player Moreover it offers the user the possibility to interactively pause and seek the content using the timeline at the top of the preview panel itself Interactively edit Hyper Media content Hyper Media content is described with the SVG language see W3C specification SVG 18 AUTHORING INTERACTIVE EDITING language follows the XML document structure and thus can be easily edited by hand or by other softwares
31. ettings of the playlist such as the maximum slide duration and the document size and the transition between slides gt Inthe Playlist tab you see the default elements of the playlist These elements contain few instructions on how to use the SVG document with DSD that you can directly read in the preview panel 3 To compose your playlist simply drag and drop single files or group of 26 9 AUTHORING PLAYLIST TEMPLATE files any media file video images SVG from the browsing area into the Playlist tab The files will be listed in the Playlist tab Customize your playlist by changing the order of the files in the Playlist tab and by changing the duration of individual media using the icon Apply your changes to preview them in the Preview area Save the final playlist How To Customize A Playlist Svg Document The playlists created using the New Playlist menu or using the My Templates new_playlist svg let the user select a set of predefined transition between the slides This playlist template instructs DSD to expose in the Properties tab the following parameters Background Fill specifies the color of the background Can be set to none to indicate a transparent background Max Slide Duration specifies the maximum duration of one slide media If a media is longer than this duration it will be truncated This option is very useful for playlist of images as images have no duration Default Slide D
32. f the view is the name of the project You can preview the selected hyper media project directly with DSD by opening the index svg file The content will start playing in the Preview area of DSD You can pause the presentation at any time and interactively navigate with a time ladder In addition to the index svg file other folders may be found that contain media content scripts etc The index file is used to concatenate all these media ele ments and to schedule when they will be played You can also individually open the other media elements The preview and editing panel will change according to the document you have opened In the image below the project Demo720p has been opened in the browsing panel and DSD has created a new view tab Demo720p 7 project Demo720p v8 mis My Projects Demo720p SR index svg PREVIEW A HYPER MEDIA CONTENT The Hyper Media content previewed in DSD will look exactly the same as it will be played on the EXT DSC So you can use the preview feature of DSD to check the look of your project once played on the device There is however one difference between DSD and the EXT DSC Transparent background will be represented by a check board on DSD whereas it is be shown black on the EXT DSC The Coffee clipart as shown on the DSD 38 PREVIEWING PREVIEW A HYPER MEDIA CONTENT The Coffee clipart as shown on the EXT DSC 39 PUBLISHING USING QUICK PUBLISH PUBLISHING Publi
33. gt Content authoring previewing scheduling and publishing gt Device monitoring and management The default view of the Graphical User Interface GUI is presented as follow i ES DN ep e 14 Res 24 D Ik H Se o V 7 D Be UR u 4 1 I Lat 2 462010 e F O 00 20 mi YO ap workipace er wi karl x Ta K Nr My Devices My Projects My Templates Browsing Panel gt The Application Menu at the top Give access to the main functions of DSD These functions are often redundant with shortcuts or mouse interactivity gt The Preview panel beneath the Menu When you open a project index svg file this window displays the hyper media content as it will appear on the EXT DSC The advantage is that you can navigate across the project gt The Browsing panel beneath the Preview panel The browsing panel can be used to browse local or remote locations By default it opens the Workspace view corresponding to the local path My Documents Gefen which contains the following three folders e My Devices Open this folder double click to access the EXT DSC devices installed on your network This browsing area offer special function to automatically discover the installed units Access these 6 INTRODUCTION TO THE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE functions by right clicking the browsing area e My Projects Open this folder double click to access the Hyper Media Projects area In this area you can author the projec
34. i emm en SS E i p gt Digital Signage Director Software User Manual Zwnww gefen com ASKING FOR ASSISTANCE Technical Support Telephone 818 772 9100 800 545 6900 Fax 818 772 9120 Technical Support Hours 8 00 AM to 5 00 PM PST Monday thru Friday Write To Gefen LLC c o Customer Service 20600 Nordhoff St Chatsworth CA 91311 www gefen com DSC gefen com Notice Gefen LLC reserves the right to make changes in the hardware packaging and any accompanying documentation without prior written notice Digital Signage Director is a trademark of Gefen LLC All trademarks are the property of their respective companies 2011 Gefen LLC All Rights Reserved All trademarks are the property of their respective companies Rev A2 CONTENTS et dee e OC TOV E 2 Operati n RT 3 elt NEOREEREN SENSE SSERIENES 4 How to Get the Digital Signage Director 2 222u2200222200000000000000000 5 Introduction to the Graphical User Interface zuuuunu2uu000200000 00000000 6 AUNO O seen nannte AE EEA A A EE EE E 8 INELOG e de EE 8 Hyper Media Projects cccccccccsseesseeseeeeeeneeeeecnesenseeesonssenseeesenesensonesenenes 9 Browsing Panel EE 11 Importing Multi Media FileS a sanannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 12 Creating and Editing SVG Files 2 2220220022000n000n0nnnnnnnnnnnnnnannn nun nen 13 Edit an Existing SVG Document
35. ialog will look as shown below x URI video mp4 Begin 0 00 00 Duration 0 02 28 1f Opacity 100 gt More Effect Trigger Offset Du color e Fade in begin Os 1s Fade out end 15 ls 4K X cancel The Effect list allows you to remove or to customize effects It is possible to modify the following parameters e Effect this parameter cannot be modified It is an indicative name for the effect e Trigger select if the effect start at the beginning or at the end of the media file This parameter is automatically set by DSD when dropping an effect file unto a media element e Offset offset between the beginning end of the media and the beginning of the effect For exit effects the offset is generally equal to the negative value of the effect duration so that the effect finishes with the media e Dur duration of the effect This parameter let the user control the speed of the effect e Color Some effects have a configurable color which can be controlled using this parameter selecting an effect and pressing the trashcan icon will remove the effect 37 PREVIEWING PREVIEW A HYPER MEDIA CONTENT PREVIEWING Preview your Hyper Media Project as it will be played on EXT DSC From the My Projects folder you can access all the projects that are currently de fined To explore and preview a specific hyper media project simply double click its icon This will open a new view in the browsing area of DSD The name o
36. ications done on your project will be copied onto the EXT DSC 41 MONITORING AUTOMATICALLY ADD DEVICES TO DSD MONITORING Keep an eye on each EXT DSC unit on your network DSD keeps a list of the devices available in the network using the My Devices folder in the workspace view The My Device view allows you to e Monitor the devices connected to your network e Automatically scan devices connected to your network e Provide details on the status of each device e Open a device to browse it s content e Manually add a device for monitoring lt is possible to arrange your devices into folders collections in order to group devices according to your criteria lt is also possible to rename devices to identify them in a more human readable manner By default DSD used the serial number as the name of all devices Ivy Devices Se KR bh New collection 001d5000001 001d500000fa e 001d5000013 001d5000014 001d5000018 C C a 001d5000018 001d5000019 001d500001b b 8 001d500001fe AUTOMATICALLY ADD DEVICES TO DSD DSD uses the Bonjour protocol to automatically discover devices on your network When opening the My Devices folder all devices available will be listed without requiring any action from the user Device automatically discovered includes a small A on top of the green check mark 42 MONITORING AUTOMATICALLY ADD DEVICES TO DSD lf you have devices that are suing an Old firmware before 2 1 you c
37. ideo on the left e Some text on the bottom e Background music this layer is not visible as it contains only audio 25 AUTHORING PLAYLIST TEMPLATE G project Mew project new _16_9 ar Gefen Digital Signage Director v2 1 1 g 112 Sly K I we Fr Fr Cal SN T Le ki off gt 4 4 16 2010 JE 0 00 01 fiim Save Revert Close la Layers Shiny _1 svg image svg xml SES ER ta ER Dom 5 CA Y project New project 2 we bk a 16 9 Newproet Bi new_16_9 svg Shiny_l svg video mg Properties Layers XML Tree WebDAV PLAYLIST TEMPLATE The user can create a scene using the multi layer SVG document To compose an entire presentation it is necessary to display one after the other several scenes using a playlist The simplest way to create a new playlist is by right clicking the browsing panel and selecting New Playlist The playlist template allows you to create a temporal sequence of media files video images texts multi layer documents Each media will be played one after the other in the order determined by the user Composing A Playlist Svg Document In 5 Steps 1 Right click in the browsing area and select New Playlist to create a new_playlist svg file You can rename it if you wish 2 Open the newly created SVG file The editing panel will open in addition to the XML Tree and the WebDAV tabs the Properties and the Playlist tabs gt Inthe Properties tab you can customize few s
38. implify the combination of all these medias onto the final canvas and presentation Previewing Hyper Media Content Digital Signage Director integrates a real time hyper media rendering engine featuring support for the SVG tiny 1 2 standard SMIL and most video and image formats The hyper media content can be interactively previewed to validate each authoring change before its publication Scheduling Hyper Media Projects Digital Signage Director offers an intuitive and powerful interface to schedule the time when content shall be played by the target DSC device Content can be scheduled at an exact time or with specific periodicity Support for multiple time Zones is natively integrated so that you can schedule content across the world Publishing Hyper Media Projects Digital Signage Director simplifies the publishing of media content on a specific DSC device or group of devices You can decide which content will be displayed and when it will be displayed Monitoring Hyper Media Players Digital Signage Director simplifies the remote management of large network of DSC devices You can automatically scan for devices installed on your network and monitor their individual status HOW TO GET THE DIGITAL SIGNAGE DIRECTOR How To Get The Digital Signage Director Digital Signage Director is available for downloading from the Gefen Web site http www gefen com signage creator download Once downloaded on your computer Windo
39. information 5 QUICK STEPS TO SCHEDULING When you have created or imported a Hyper Media project See Authoring section you have in your project a master file index svg The following steps explain how you can define when the project will be displayed once you have published on a specific EXT DSC unit e Create a new schedule document in your project Simply right click the browsing area in your project and select New Schedule from the pop up menu A new ics file will be created in your project See Create a new schedule e Open the new ics file DSD will display in the Editing panel a calendar view where you can select the current day week month See Open a new schedule e Drag and drop from the browsing panel of your Hyper Media project any individual media you want to schedule into the calendar view in the Editing panel As you would do for a meeting in your electronic agenda define the start duration of each media and eventually its recurrence See Add events to a schedule e Repeat the previous step for each media you want to schedule and save your changes 47 SCHEDULING CREATE A NEW SCHEDULE e Open the index svg file of your Hyper Media project Drag and drop the new ics file you have created in the steps above as a new layer into your index svg file Save your changes Note that index svg may already contain layers You may decide to remove the existing layers and leave a single one associated to the new ics i
40. ject as introduced by DSD has several advantages In particular e Simplify authoring The user can create project offline preview them and keep modifying them without affecting the actual presentations displayed by an EXT DSC unit When the project is finalized it is easy to publish it on the target device Backup The user can apply conventional backup systems on the My Projects folder to reduce the risk of loosing data Multi target publishing A single project can be published on a single unit or multiple units this reduces the efforts of manage the same content on different displays Offline mode When the network connection between the PC and the EXT DSC units is slow or temporary unavailable DSD offers an offline solution to edit the project content T spx orojects 2 AEJ Y My Projects K i WF r ge backup examples HD720p NewEXT DSC 10 AUTHORING BROWSING PANEL BROWSING PANEL The browsing panel provides few basic file operations through a pop up menu that appears while right clicking the mouse The available operations changes according to where you have clicked If you right click directly in the browsing panel of a specific view make sure that no file or folder is currently selected the following functions appear whose actions apply directly to the specific view currently opened e New SVG file Create anew SVG multi layer file You can select the aspect ratio of the new document to
41. lows e Open a browsing view where your original file is located to locate the original file you can navigate the directory path from an existing view or 11 AUTHORING IMPORTING MULTI MEDIA FILES directly type the URI in the address area of the browsing panel e Open anew browsing view where your copy destination is located e Drag and drop the file from the original position to the new view Pressing shift during the copy will move the element instead of copying it The same mechanism applies for collections and groups of files and collections IMPORTING MULTI MEDIA FILES DSD graphical user interface lets the user to import all sort of media files into a Hyper Media Project or other folders from a standard MS Windows explorer The operation is as simple as a drag and drop from the Explorer window to the target DSD browsing area Eventually you can also use the special upload command accessible by right clicking the browsing area of the DSD GUI The advantage of importing media using the above procedures is that DSD can modify or transform the media automatically so as to guarantee its content will be easily displayed by the EXT DSC unit Whenever possible use the above procedures when building your Hyper Media Project Below you find more information on the current operations performed by DSD when importing specific media files Importing images The first step towards using DSD authoring features is to understand the
42. mber of times it will be repeated if needed The Playlist tables shows for each media e The media URI e The media type e The total playing time of the media A looping symbol is added to the bottom right of the column if the media will loop at least once G project New project new_16_9 svq Gefen Digital Signage Director v2 1 1 ell SI a a mn E d a aves Hu E eo RR Su MB Y Xx SE 0 00 00 Save Revert Close See Layers r Shiny 1 zeg i image svg xml ein CA u Text i Text video mp4 t vier ime iee CA WI MUSIC mp3 i fe audio mpeg vie ies Cd Di new playlist swg e Se EES Immo EzvOtsml F project New project 2 mi F wl a cy aa 1 a 16 9 Mew project Bi music mps new _16_9 svq new _playlist syv Shiny_l svg video mp4 Properties Layers XML Tree WebDAV SPECIAL NEWS TEMPLATES To simplify the creation of dynamic content Digital Signage Director is provided with a set of active templates that can be customized by the user and that perform specific actions The active templates use JavaScript to dynamically create SVG documents with specific graphical layout and up to date content In particular in this section we discuss a number of active templates we have developed to retrieve RSS content We call these templates news templates RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries news headlines and podcasts RSS documen
43. n this case when you publish your project on a EXT DSC unit the content will be played according to your schedule You may also decide to combine your schedule with a background image that would be in this case an additional layer in your index svg This choice would guarantee that for those time periods when you have not planned any content at least the background image will be displayed Of course you can combine multiple layers and multiple schedules CREATE ANEW SCHEDULE To create a new schedule in DSD e Open the project where the schedule needs to be added e Use the right click pop up menu to create a New Schedule e Anew file new ics will be created This is the scheduler e Rename the scheduler to an appropriate name for your project The scheduler can be dropped into a multilayer document or a playlist as any other media Y project HD720p i Se mi x MyDevices a HD720p 38 New SVG file d New Playlist New Schedule 5 New Collection Upload index svq Up z 2 Refresh OPEN A SCHEDULE Double click the schedule document ics to open the Calendar view in the editing panel Note that the Calendar view uses the local time settings of your PC The Calendar view is organized in 4 zones In the snapshot we have highlighted each zone with a different color 48 SCHEDULING ADD EVENTS TO A SCHEDULE 1 Management zone red allows you to change the time frame that will be shown in the E
44. nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnenn nn 36 E Tafel EE 36 Configuring Effects aaa aaa 37 PROV IC e AERERIAREESEEERGER 38 Preview a Hyper Media Content 222 20200200000000n0nan0nannnnnnnnnnnn nen 38 PUDS NO E 40 Usma Quick PODIS EE 40 MODNO e reiri Espn EE E N EEE E E EAE EAEE ES 42 Automatically Add Devices to DSD u 22 2202002200022002000nan0nanunannnnnn 42 Manually Add Devices to DSD 222220002020000000000nn0nnnun nun annun nun nn 44 Check the Status Of the Devices 2us 24000 n00nnnnnnn nun non nnnn en nun nun nenn EE open a ENEE 45 COO AG ee 47 5 Quick Steps to Scheduling DE 47 Create a New Schedule u z u 220002n000 n0n0nnnnnnnnnnnnnannnn anno nnnnnnnnnn nun 48 OBEN oC MEN E 48 Add Events to a Schedule uuz u20220202n000 n0nnnnnnnnnnnannnn nun nun nnnn nn 49 Define Default Events and Recurrences uu4us 0000nn n0nnnnnenn nun nn nenn 51 Define a Default animation 002000000000000002000nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 51 Define Recurring Events u220220020000n000n00nnnunnnun nun nun nun nnnnnnnnn nun 51 Preview Scheduled Content 22u202n0002n0nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nennen 53 WAN ANY ERBE EEE EEE EE EEE EEE ER 54 INTRODUCTION Introduction Congratulations on your purchase of the Digital Signage Creator Your complete satisfaction is very important to us Gefen Gefen deliver
45. ocuments like the multilayer template dropping a file with the CTRL key pressed will not replace the media but create a new media in the current documents This action is symbolized by a plus on the mouse cursor Editing Text Text might also be declared as editable In this case it is possible to edit its content directly by double clicking its element in the preview panel a cursor will appear The menu on the top of the preview panel will let you modify the font style color and size Arial EEN mere E E E Font Color Bold Italic Caps Grow Shrink __ P nn T Sample Text Double click to edit or use the properties tab on the right MULTI LAYERS SVG TEMPLATES By default each time you create a new SVG document by right clicking the browsing panel selecting New SVG and your aspect ratio DSD creates a new file based on the multi layer SVG template The Multi layer SVG template simplifies the task of composing a scene using the DSD With this document you can interactively add position scale skew and 22 AUTHORING MULTI LAYERS SVG TEMPLATES rotate several media elements such as video clips images texts and animations on the same scene Composing a Scene in 4 steps Right click in the browsing area and select New SVG to create a new_ AR svg file You can rename it if you wish Double click on the file to open it with DSD Add new media or text to your scene using one of the following options g
46. r position inthe scene their font properties color opacity and transparency e Interactively add and edit text with sophisticated layout e Change the relative order of each media element in the scene to create depth effects e Apply animations effects on most media appearance properties e Create ordered playlists of different media elements When to use Digital Signage Director authoring features e You are managing the digital signage of a restaurant You already have the pictures of your special menus your logo and few advertising video clips Digital Signage Director lets you import and position all these media on the same slide You can then type your menu list customizing fonts and colors In a few clicks you have created or updated your menu of the day e You are managing the digital signage of a pharmacy You already have the pictures of your products and the corresponding advertising clips Digital Signage Director lets you import and position these media on the same slide It lets you also create a playlist of all the products you want 8 AUTHORING HYPER MEDIA PROJECTS to highlight You are managing the digital signage of a Hotel resort You already have advertising videos and images of your establishment and your services You have created power point presentations welcoming special guests or presenting the next events organized in your resort You have high quality images of the major city spots Digital Signage Dir
47. rs outside the US are responsible for shipping charges to and from Gefen 3 Copper cables are limited to a 30 day warranty and cables must be in their original condition The information in this manual has been carefully checked and is believed to be accurate However Gefen assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracies that may be contained in this manual In no event will Gefen be liable for direct indirect special incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect or omission in this manual even if advised of the possibility of such damages The technical information contained herein regarding the features and specifications is subject to change without notice For the latest warranty coverage information refer to the Warranty and Return Policy under the Support section of the Gefen Web site at www gefen com PRODUCT REGISTRATION Please register your product online by visiting the Register Product page under the Support section of the Gefen Web site 54 Rev A2 ma DS D 20600 Nordhoff St Chatsworth CA 91311 1 300 545 6900 818 772 9100 fax 818 772 9120 www gefen com DSC gefen com xX Ce amp e This product uses UL listed power supplies
48. rted you can preview it directly using DSD by double click on the video By default the preview of the video correspond to the first frame of the imported video You can change the preview of the video in the browsing area by using the snapshot icon next to the play button e 720p HD ready quality at 10 frames per second Use this settings when converting a presentation with small amount of animations e High SD resolution at 30 frames per second This mode provides improved quality for the small size text If your presentation includes fonts smaller than 24 pt and many animations it is recommended to use the high quality mode e Fastest SD resolution at 30 frames per second Note the default install of DSD let you convert PowerPoint presentation in Office 2003 format If you want to convert presentation in the Office 2007 format you need to install the latest PowerPoint viewer from the Microsoft web site Importing Flash SWF files The EXT DSC doesn t support direct display of flash files SWF DSD provides import functionality for SWF files so that when an SWF is imported into an DSD project it is directly converted to video Note you need to have the Flash 9 or 10 ActiveX control installed on your PC for the conversion to work If this is not the case please install it from the Adobe web site CREATING AND EDITING SVG FILES The simplest way to create an SVG document is to right click the browsing panel and to select th
49. s innovative progressive computer and electronics add on solutions that harness integration extension distribution and conversion technologies Gefen s reliable plug and play products supplement cross platform computer systems professional audio video environments and HDTV systems of all sizes with hard working solutions that are easy to implement and simple to operate The Gefen Digital Signage Director Digital Signage Director DSD is a software application developed for Gefen to simplify the implementation and the daily management of a digital signage project It allows users to author preview schedule and publish hypermedia content on DSC devices From hospitality to advertising education and business communications Digital Signage Director gives users a simple and general purpose interface to manage content on a single DSC device or a large distributed network of several DSCs In this manual we highlight five main features of the Digital Signage Director software each is identified by a special icon that will help you navigate this document Each feature is described by a set of chapters that focus on specific subjects We are continually adding new chapters explaining the multiple shortcuts and functionalities offered by DSD Do not hesitate to discover for yourself how to use this software there are plenty of hidden shortcuts and drag and drop functions that are not yet documented in this manual but appear intuitive We
50. shing as simple as a drag and drop To publish manually a project to a device do the following e Open My Devices in a first tab Identify the EXT DSC unit on which you want to publish See the section Monitoring to learn how to do it e Open My Projects in a second tab e Drag and drop the project you want to copy to the device you want to update The above procedure will cause a copy of the entire project into the EXT DSC unit All the modified files will be updated with the new version all the new files will be added and all the files already on the EXT DSC unit but not anymore in the project will be deleted Note the publishing might take some time depending on the size of your project and the speed of the network Once the project has been published do not unplug the device without a proper shutdown or part of the content might not be properly saved on the DSC To safely shutdown the device use the http configuration interface T spx devices v ze mi v gt My Projects My Devices Si Tra e New collection USING QUICK PUBLISH Once a project has been published manually to device it can be published again using the quick publish button The quick publish is located on the address bar and is activated whenever a project is open 7 project DSC Y Ze v To use the quick publish 40 PUBLISHING USING QUICK PUBLISH e Open your project e Press the quick publish button e All modif
51. t Drag and drop the media into the Layers tab of the Editing panel gt Drag and drop the media into the Preview panel If the cursor doesn t show the sign press the CTRL key while dropping the media gt Press the r icon on top of the Preview panel to create a new text layer Modify the media gt Modify the depth position moving up or down the media in the list of media appearing in the Layers tab Use shortcuts Ctrl up Ctrl down gt Use the Preview panel to interactively position scale skew and rotate the new media see Interactive Editing for more details gt Add entry and exit effects to your media see Multimedia effects for more details Save your document How to customize a multi layer SVG document For each new multi layer SVG document you can configure the following properties Title an informative title for the document Description an informative description of the document Duration the duration of the document If set to indefinite the document will not loop If set to media the duration of the document will be computed automatically and the document will loop at the end of the playing time It is also possible to set explicitly the duration to a given number of seconds Document group for the document properties 23 AUTHORING MULTI LAYERS SVG TEMPLATES gt Canvas Size the size of the document in the following syntax origin x origin y width height As SVG is a scalable l
52. t may not perfectly fit the needs of a specific digital signage user We would like to preserve the generality of the application but if you have suggestions to improve the ergonomics please send us your comments at info gefen com AUTHORING INTRODUCTION AUTHORING INTRODUCTION There are many well known commercial software solutions available to produce professional native SVG media content e g Adobe Illustrator Corel Draw Ikivo Animator as well as excellent open source solutions such as InkScape which is available for free These are ideal tools for the authoring of the graphical elements of your applications templates layout masks custom animations Other popular software solutions to produce still image or animated media content for the DSC include Adobe Photoshop Adobe Flash GIMP open source and PowerPoint The authoring feature of Digital Signage Director is not an alternative to these media authoring tools Rather than reinventing the wheel the DSD is merely filling the gap between media elements and a digital signage application Its purpose is to make it really easy to combine and customize media elements of a different nature in order to build in a few clicks a digital signage project of professional quality What can you do with Digital Signage Director authoring feature e Combine an image background with text videos animations graphics e interactively customize imported media elements control thei
53. t the fonts and size of the text e Color the user can chose the color of an element like the background for instance e Choice the user can chose between a set of value for the property e Edit Media the user can select a media The media can be modified by dragging any media from the browsing panel Additionally properties such as duration number of repetition of the media URI can be edited by pressing the at the bottom right of the property e Edit Text the user can edit a text box Additionally the user can add a background or a border e Groups any of the above properties can be grouped Groups might be opened or closed by default Pressing on the arrow will close or open the group depending on its current state 15 AUTHORING CREATING AND EDITING SVG FILES ki K Save Revert Apply Close Coffee simple_1 svg Edit Media I w image svg xml eg 0 00 10 ze 7 Document ETETTETSTEETETTETTETTETETTETTETETTETTETETT 0 TEL ITTETTETTEIETTETITTETTETTELSTTETTETSTTETTELITTETTETSTTETTETST Value 1 0 0 1280 720 Value 2 100 Properties XML Tree WebDAV Edit a media property Among the above properties the Media property needs additional explanations The Media property allows you to control the display properties of the media linked to the current document This property is used by many templates i e multi layers and playlists The media property shows the following information to the
54. tom when shown on a 4 3 screen e If you use 4 3 templates the content will be displayed using black border on left right when shown on a 16 9 screen _ i we _ we ES 1024 x 768 RSR Ze e If you use fit templates the content will be scaled to fit the whole screen regardless of its aspect ratio This will introduce distortions that may be noticed according to the content nature e Example of content with a real aspect ratio of 16 9 which is fitted to a 4 3 display UU CH ok AUTHORING MULTIMEDIA EFFECTS e Example of content with a real aspect ratio of 4 3 which is fitted to a 16 9 display Ir _ G z Y WH 1024 x 768 DE Il icons CR bg mmm been mg NOTE that in DSD you may change the aspect ratio of the preview panel by sliding its horizontal and vertical dimensions When previewing SVG content DSD will do exactly as EXT DSC will do on real displays with the same aspect ratios MULTIMEDIA EFFECTS Adding effects The DSD software installation comes with a number of default media transition effects files that you can find under My Templates Effects These effects files can be applied to media elements such as images video or animations Effects will animate how the media will appear in the scene entry effects and eventually how will disappear exit effects DSD offers an intuitive user interface to apply effects to media elements
55. ts are XML documents with specific structure and tags which can be retrieved from the Internet or other network locations The news templates instruct the EXT DSC unit to extract from remote RSS files the content and apply a customizable graphical layout which may include the text positions in the scene the font properties the background image and the animation of each element of the 29 AUTHORING SPECIAL NEWS TEMPLATES scene Note that the same template can also use XML Text CSV or iCalendar files as data source Few examples of templates are suggested that display the text on the screen according to predefined graphical layouts All the templates can be found under the My Templates folder after DSD installation The templates are split into two categories The layout templates and the format helpers Layout templates Template name news svg Display news from RSS XML Text CSV or iCalendar in a formatted manner Support single or multiple items per pages n ews_ticker svg Display news text ina scrolling banner left right or top bottom news_crawler Display formatted news using scrolling left svg right or top bottom Can be used to display logo media in a ticker or multiline tickers Format helpers bouncing_text Text too large to be displayed will bounce let svg to right or top to bottom fit_text svg Text size will adapt to the area available date_time svg Display a date time in a forma
56. ts that you will publish on EXT DSC devices Access special functions through the pop up menu that appears by right clicking the browsing area e My Templates Open this folder to discover the Hyper Media templates Hyper Media Templates can be imported on your project to implement special animations or services e g connect to an RSS feed and display the latest news Access special functions through the pop up menu that appears by right clicking the browsing area gt The Editing panel along the right side This panel changes according to the content you have opened It offers user friendly interfaces to customize the content and scheduling of your hyper media projects gt The Status Bar along the bottom Used to notify what actions the DSD is currently executing The window size can be adapted to the size of your monitor However a minimum size has been imposed to guarantee a correct use of the interface The size of the three panels in the interface can be adapted use the special handles between them to drag their relative dimension You can enforce a predefined aspect ratio for the preview window or select a vertical layout using the Settings menu The ergonomics of the interface are improved by the use of shortcuts and specialized dialog boxes In the following sections we will refer to the elements of this GUI to illustrate how to use DSD to complete specific tasks Digital Signage Director is application generic i
57. tted manner switch svg Display different media depending on the item content Composing a live news document in 5 steps e Copy the news template SVG file from My Templates News into your project gt Open in the browsing panel a new exploring tab of your current project Open an additional exploring tab located in My Templates News Drag and drop the template file you have chosen from the news tab into your current project tab 30 AUTHORING SPECIAL NEWS TEMPLATES e Open the newly created SVG file Select your news source using the RSS Feed Source entry Type the URL of the RSS news to use an external news feed e Customize the display of your news source Press the editing button Move resize existing text media box in the preview panel Edit the text box content The SPX title and SPX description will be replaced by the content of the RSS news gt Add news text or media box using the Layer tab e Customize the settings of your news source using the Properties tab gt The Feed Type let you select the type of your input data gt The Feed Update Policy let you control when the feeds should be updated gt Additional settings can be found depending on the templates e Save the final document How to customize a news SVG document All the templates SVG files provided in My Templates News let you customize their layout using different set of parameters news svg This template should
58. uration specifies the default duration of one slide media if the media doesn t have a duration like images Enable Looping specifies whether the playlist should loop or not when reaching the last media file from the list Inter Slide Duration specifies the interval between the display of two media files If set to a value different than zero the background will be shown during this amount of time at the end of every media Default Transition group the transition settings of the playlist gt Type Type of transition between the slides The following transitions can be selected e none no transition between each media This is equivalent to a scene cut e fade the new slide fade in while the old slide fade out e fly the new slide flies in while to old slide flies out according to the direction set by the user e wipe the new slide is wiped on top of the old slide according to the direction set by the user random Select a different random transition for each slide 27 gt gt AUTHORING PLAYLIST TEMPLATE Direction For the fly and wipe transition select to direction of the effect Duration the duration of the transition effect Co wv X Back Save Revert SE Close Background Fill i none Max Slide Duration 36008 EEITEETERTT LLLEETTE TED F b H a H al Bate arranrssbatssrrsanraarearteas Eat ER Eean EE EE EES ter let lettre EES EE EE EES EES REES EE EES Enable
59. user e The media URI e g video avi or the absolute URI If the media is located in the same project as the document the URI Is relative e The media type e g image svg xml Indicate the type of media as detected by DSD e The total playing time of the media A looping symbol is added to the bottom right of the column if the media loops at least once e The starting time A timer clock with the delay value is displayed if the media starting time is different than zero e Astar indicating that multimedia effects are applied to this media The properties of the media can be edited using the at the bottom right of the media property This will open the media description dialog The media description dialog let you change 16 AUTHORING CREATING AND EDITING SVG FILES URI The URI of the media You can type a relative URI for addressing those media inside your project or an absolute URI for those media located in remote servers Begin The begin time of the media relative to the beginning the opening of the document By default all media begin as soon as the master document is opened Duration The duration of the media You can choose either to enter an absolute duration enter a time in the following form hours minutes seconds or to select Media to force the player to use the duration of the media itself or to select indefinite to force the media to play for indefinite time If DSD is able to compute the
60. will keep adding more details to this manual to its html version and to the documentation that you can access on our web site OPERATION NOTES Operation Notes READ THESE NOTES BEFORE INSTALLING OR OPERATING THE DIGITAL SIGNAGE DIRECTOR e The Digital Signage Director is a PC application designed for use with the Windows platform The minimum requirements are gt gt gt Platform Windows 7 Windows Vista or Windows XP General Requirements Support DirectX 9 0c and SSE2 instructions At least 130MB of hard disk space additional space will be needed for projects OPERATION NOTES Authoring Hyper Media Content This is a major feature of DSD that allows the end user to quickly learn how to compose a scene by combining backgrounds logos texts images and video clips Scenes can then be added to playlist to compose entire presentations The use of template documents simplifies the daily tasks and guarantees the respect of pre defined graphical layout Transitions effects can be added to each element to make the final presentation more live Most authoring features are provided graphically and thus are very easy to learn an advanced user can still edit the SVG document structure for a maximum control Professional graphic designers can continue using the preferred authoring software to create art pieces and build a collection of icons slides graphics animations images videos etc Digital Signage Director will s
61. ws OS XP and Vista have been tested you can install the software using the simple installation wizard The first time you execute DSD you are requested to activate the software You have the following options e If you simply wish to evaluate the product click the 30 day trial button to benefit from DSD for 30 days e If you have a valid license key to activate the software click the Enter product key to register the software Currently Gefen is distributing the EXT DSC units which are allowed a valid standard license to activate Digital Signage Director To retrieve this license the product must be registered with Gefen To register please got to this address http www gefen com kvm Registry Registration jsp refererURI signage creator Once registered this license activates all the authoring capabilities of DSD and is Suitable to manage up to ten EXT DSC units on the network When a larger number of units need to be managed in a professional environ ment additional publishing and monitoring functionalities are required These can be activated by purchasing a valid professional license for DSD Please contact your distributor for information on obtaining a professional license for the DSD software INTRODUCTION TO THE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE Introduction To The Graphical User Interface Digital Signage Director is designed to offer a simple graphical interface that provides easy access to all the supported key features

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