These pages give instructions on how to use the applications of the ~sedna software suite.

The suite consists of the following applications:

Creator, the versatile content editor and scheduler

Player Gold and Platinum that deliver rock solid playback performance under any environment.

Failsafe software module for all Player Gold and Platinum Licenses to make two Players act as mutual backups to ensure continous playback.

Report Generator to easily manage files from multiple Players and merge them into a single report.

If you are new to ~sedna applications, we recommend first reading the Basics section to learn about the basics of the software and to get an idea of the general workflow.

If you’re already familiar with ~sedna applications and just need details on specific features, try using the search function or browse the Help Topics to find the information you’re looking for.

The most up-to-date support information for the ~sedna software suite is provided online. We are continuously considering which information you might need. As we recognize topics and features that need more explaining, we’re updating the corresponding sections as soon as possible.

While using ~sedna applications, you may encounter issues that are not described on the following help pages. Check your operating system version and the version of the ~sedna application you are using. You will find the related release notes for every supported version in your Cloud account under Resources.

As there is a large variety of possible setups and system configurations issues just can’t be entirely prevented.

If you find yourself in such a situation, you are welcome to contact us directly for support.
You also might want to consider contacting your local reseller.

Also, if you’d like to give some general feedback or have any suggestions for improving our applications and services, write an email to feedback@sedna.de. We’re listening.

The purpose of this section is to help you get acquainted with the concepts, the workflow, and the interface of ~sedna applications. The topics in this section are put in the same order you are likely to encounter as you proceed working with ~sedna applications.

If you are already familiar with the ~sedna software suite and just need some details on specific features, try using the search function or browse the Help Topics to find the information you’re looking for.

The ~sedna software suite is comprised of two main applications: „Creator“ and „Player“.

The main work is done within „Creator“. Creator is the content management component of the suite. Create your digital signage projects by arranging and sequencing images, videos, sound, text and other assets. Schedule your Projects for playback on Players that control various display types.

„Player“ is the window to your target audience. It plays back your signage projects for the public to see, thereby running rock-solidly in any technically viable environment. The Player comes as Player Gold 1/2 and Player Platinum 2/4/6 edition.

 

Player Gold

 

 

Player Platinum

High performance and high resolution media playback in combination with advanced API features for customised solutions.

Player Platinum 2 is available for Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Intel NUC

Supports up to two 4K@60Hz outputs, Frame-Lock and optionally Gen-Lock, Scalable up to sixteen gen-locked Units, Multichannel Audio,
Multi Video Capturing, Advanced API Features

Player Platinum 4 is available for Mac Pro, ~sedna Media Engine 8K

Supports up to four 4K@60Hz outputs for 8K media playback,
 Frame-Lock and optionally Gen-Lock,
Scalable up to sixteen gen-locked Units,
Multichannel Audio,
Multi Video Capturing, Advanced API Features

 

Cloud

sedna.cloud allows you to manage your

• licenses and applications
• users and roles
• content
• content distribution and assignment
• content calendars and schedules

from an Internet Browser.

You have to make sure that a Cloud player can connect to the following URLs by using port 80 and 443: www.sedna.cloud

If you use other websites or streaming URL’s in your ~sedna Project, please make sure that your firewall settings are set correctly that you are able to reach them.

If you like to use the standard or advanced API please make sure that port 27182 and port 17236 (for HTML commands) are not blocked by your firewall.

Failsafe software module uses Port 8090 on the Player.

To synchronize playback throughout your Players you will need to allow multicast in your network. Contact your administrator in case you do not manage the network. Read more about Sync Groups here.

The basic workflow of ~sedna applications is quite easy to understand. Content flows into Creator as Assets, it is structured in Playlists and/or Arrangements, scheduled and then published to a Player to be viewed by your audience.

Use your branded content
to take the stage.

The workflow begins by adding your content into Creator and that content can be in a wide range of formats and resolutions: no need for expensive editing or re-encoding. Just drag and drop your files and you’re ready to start designing your Digital Signage environment.

Easily adapt content
for the Digital Signage platform

With your brand content loaded, you can easily make any adjustments such as scaling and cropping to prepare it for playback. Trimming and adjusting timing are easily accomplished as well.

 

Create engaging Digital Signage with a spectrum of powerful features

Creator is your canvas for creativity – convenient features such as layers, zones, scaling, and rotation allow you to create your own compelling templates. Turn your content into exciting signage formats such as video walls and even interactive kiosks. Advanced features, like layer animations, drop shadows, frames and more make it possible to create a totally unique media playback experience.

Need audio? You’ve come to the right place. Separate audio layers and audio routing with up to 64 channels. We’ve got even the most demanding environments covered.

 

Manage your content
with dedicated campaigns and Playlists

Once your content is adapted for your displays, you can schedule the material for distribution. Thanks to a variety of Playlists and powerful campaign features, your content can be easily bundled and played back right where and when it needs to be.

 

Distribute your content
with just a click.

Push your content to any number of Players. Creator allows for multichannel and multilocation distribution and features such as Watched Folders and Cloud Playlists make it possible to easily keep Player content up to date dynamically.

 

In this section we want to show you how to quickly create and publish a Project without considerations about details. The objective is to show how to have a simple Project with just one Asset published as quickly as possible.

A few prerequisites have to be met. Creator and Player must be installed and set up. Read more about how to carry out software installation in this section.

Also your Player must be running (“Start Player” in the Player application).

1. Create a New Project

In Creator go to the “File” menu and click on “New Project…”. As an alternative, you can also use ⌘ + N as shortcut. Give the new Project a speaking name and save it.

2. Add Player Via Bonjour

Click on the button to open the Project Settings. Go to the Targets tab and click on the button below the list. Select Add Player (Bonjour)… from the list and pick the Player you have set up previously.

Note: Player must be in playback mode, otherwise it will not be detected by the Bonjour service. You may be required to enter the password of the user currently logged in on the Player Mac. A green dot to the left of an entry indicates the corresponding Player is ready.

3. Add An Asset

Browse your computer and take any media asset you would like to see on the Player. Drag and drop the file in Creator onto the Assets pane at the upper left hand side.

4. Create a Playlist

Go to the Arrangements & Playlists pane at the lower left hand side of the interface. Add a Playlist by clicking on the button below the pane and selecting Playlist, or by right-clicking on the pane and selecting Add > Playlist. You will be asked if you want the new Playlist to be the default content. Click on “Yes” for otherwise no content will be played back.

5. Add Your Asset to the Playlist

Drag and drop the Asset you’ve previously added from the Assets pane into the Editor pane in the center of the interface.

6. Publish

Click on the button at the upper right hand side. Watch your Project play. The Playlist set as default content in step 4 will play continuously until you schedule and publish something different.

The interface of Creator is designed for intuitive use and to help you effectively visualize playback as you create it.

• Editor Pane: Edit or adjust Assets and Arrangements.

• Toolbar: Preview playout, Project settings, Campaign Editor, Calendar pane, Live Test and Publish.

• Assets: List of all of the Assets that are imported into the Project.

• Commands: List of commands for controlling Players and Projects.

• Effects: List of effects for Assets and Playlists.

• Arrangements & Playlists: Create or manage all Arrangements and Playlists for this Project.

• Day Templates: List of Day Templates for the current Project.

• Calendar: Built-in calendar for managing content over long periods of time.

• Visualizer: Previews Assets or visualizes a selected Arrangement.

• Inspector: All settings for Assets, Playlists, Layers, Arrangements and other components.

Drag the edge of any pane in the interfaces to create a setup that best suits your personal workflow.

Assets are the most basic content components in ~sedna software. Before you can work with images, videos, colors, texts, etc, you must import or generate assets in the Creator.

Importing assets is easy. Just drag and drop assets on the Creator interface. They will be automatically loaded into the Assets pane. To generate assets, click on the button at the bottom of the assets pane, select Generator and the asset you want.

To adjust your assets, you can use the Inspector, which you can learn more about in the next section.

Note: Placing an asset in an arrangement or playlist creates an incarnation of it with the original settings applied. To change the original settings select the asset in the Assets pane. Alternatively, double-click the asset in the Editor pane, while a single click on the latter will produce the incarnation settings in the Inspector. Changing the settings of the asset incarnation won’t affect the original settings.

 

 

 

The Inspector is where you can fine tune nearly every aspect of your content. The Inspector is located on the bottom right. The settings that you find here change according to what item is currently selected. If you have a video asset selected, you’ll be provided with a Deinterlacing option. If you have an HTML asset selected, you’ll have a URL option, and so on.

 

Because the options and possibilities in the Inspector vary according to the item you have selected, it’s not possible to describe them all in this Quick Start Guide. As you work with new items, we suggest that you refer to the various help topics for more detailed information.

Templates are a great way to get started with Playlists and Arrangements in ~sedna software. By using a template, you can easily see how completed Playlists and Arrangements look and align your Projects with existing ones.

We highly recommend taking advantage of the templates provided to learn how to structure your Projects. You can simply exchange the content of templates by deleting what you don’t need and replacing it with your own content.

Download templates from your Cloud account.

Creator provides best overview and performance with Arrangement-based Projects, but Playlists can be a fast and easy way to schedule lots of content at once.

Playlists function as a simple ordered list of content. You can fill Playlists with Assets or even other Playlists, adjust the settings in the Inspector and then add the completed Playlists to an Arrangement.

To create a Playlists click the button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Playlist. Once you’ve created a Playlist, you can add Assets to it. Just drag the asset needed from the assets pane and drop it on the playlist. Then adjust its time and play order.

 

In Creator, creating Digital Signage is visual and intuitive. Projects are designed graphically by placing layers within an Arrangement and adding content to these layers.

You can create Arrangements by clicking the button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane and selecting Arrangement.

An Arrangement is composed of layers, into which content is added. There are two separate editors for creating and working with Arrangements. Once you’ve created an Arrangement or double-clicked on an existing one, you can switch back and forth between the two editors by clicking the button on the upper right hand side of the editor pane.

Arrangements Layout Editor

 

You can use the layout editor to determine the geometric placement of your layers in an Arrangement. You can add or subtract more layers by using the or button at the bottom of the editor pane. Then adjust the layer by simply dragging them into place and resizing them.

Please notice that Player Silver is supporting one content layer, Player Gold ten content layers and Player Platinum unlimited content layers.

Arrangements Timeline Editor

You can use the timeline editor to fill the Arrangements you’ve created with content, such as Assets, Playlists, or even other Arrangements.

The timeline editor shows a column for each layer you’ve created in the selected arrangement. To add content to that layer, simply drag and drop it into the column and adjust the size and the play order.

The arrangement timeline editor and arrangement layout editor are where you can get both the organizational and the creative aspect of your signage project accomplished in a quick and efficient way.

We encourage you taking the time to get acquainted with the various settings and functions of both editors — the better you can use them, the faster you’ll be able to create new and engaging digital signage presentations.

Creator offers an integrated Calendar to help you schedule content over longer periods of time. It is always displayed at the bottom of the interface.

Day Templates are the basic unit for scheduling content in the Calendar. Structure the day’s schedule and its contents and use it as often as you want. This will help you stay consistent and organized.

You will find more information on the Calendar here.

 

The Creator offers integrated preview options to help you visualize your signage playback as you create it.

 

You can either choose the  preview option to view the selected content directly on your Creator Mac or you can preform a live test by clicking on  which allows you to view your signage playback on the Players configured in your Creator.

 

Both options help you visualize what the audience will see when you publish the content to Players. To close the preview window, press ⌘ + Q on your keyboard.

Once you’re satisfied with the appearance of your signage project in the Creator, you can publish it to your Players for playback.

Publishing means transferring the content and project data from Creator to Players through one of the available networking options.

 

To publish content to your Players, simply click the green publish button on the upper right hand side of the Creator interface. If the button is grey please add first some target player to your project. If the button is yellow or red, please check your network connection, password and if the „Remote Login“ is enabled for the used player user in the System Settings > Sharing .

The Player comes in a few editions, each with different capabilities and features. All Players have the same purpose though: to solidly play your signage projects on any utilized displays so that your can present your content to your target audience.

 

The Creator is provided with a built-in Player, which will allow you to playback content on the same Mac. Having other Players will allow you to build more intricate and larger scale setups. To close the Player, press ⌘ + Q on your keyboard.

 

The hardware requirements for Player Macs vary greatly depending on the setup and the content that you plan to present. This is a good thing to discuss with your local distributor or reseller when making the decision as to which hardware you should purchase for your Players.

The ~sedna team would like to thank you for choosing our software. We hope this Online Manual will answer your questions. However, you can contact us with any additional questions you may have.

To maintain our usual high standard of quality, ~sedna is committed to taking the time and planning necessary to offer you the best possible product.

Your feedback is absolutely essential to this process. Write us at feedback(at)sedna.de.

We’re listening.

This section describes how to install and activate ~sedna applications. The steps described are valid for both a full retail and a demo installation. For a full retail installation you need to purchase the corresponding licenses, whereas for a demo installation you just have to request a demo with ~sedna.

If you plan to operate or test the full workflow, we recommend installing Creator and Player on separate Macs. If you want to try the workflow on one Mac, you can use Creator’s integrated Preview Player to check the look of your project.

In addition, you can use the Mac that the Creator is running on for live playback since a fully functional Player is integrated in the Creator. There are a few restrictions that apply to the built-in Player, for instance network commands are not available. However, these restrictions mostly affect setups with multiple Players, and the built-in Player is mostly used stand-alone.

Since version 4.0, ~sedna applications feature online license and installation management. Therefore, a demo installation requires the creation of a Cloud Organization assigned to your company and an Initial Manager account that allows you to manage and license the corresponding software. Learn more about sedna.cloud in this section.

Installation Steps

~sedna applications need an Internet connection to get activated and to run. However, once activated, both applications run for a certain time without Internet connection.
These are the steps needed to accomplish a (demo) installation.

1. Acquire some licenses (or request a demo installation) by contacting us.

2. Sign up and log in to sedna.cloud.

3. Download the installation package and carry out the installation.

4. Start and activate the software.

5. Assign the corresponding licenses to the installed products.

6. Run the installed application.

1. Acquire Licenses or Request Demo

If you wish to acquire ~sedna licenses or a demo, get in touch with our sales team. After you have purchased licenses, or placed your demo request, ~sedna staff will create a Cloud Organization for your company.

2. Sign Up to sedna.cloud

To give you access to your Cloud Organization, an online account will be created. You will be sent an email containing a link to sedna.cloud. Click on this link and follow the instructions given to sign up to your account.
After the sign-up is completed, go to the sedna.cloud login page and log in to your account. Proceed to the next step.

3. Download and Install

To begin with, we recommend you to make yourself familiar with Cloud. With a growing number of signage installations, you will do much of the important administrative work here. To learn more about Cloud, go to this section of this manual.

To carry out the installation, go to the Resources section of your Cloud account and download the installation package.

Copy the package file for the application to the device you wish to install the software on and start the installation. Read the license agreement and accept it. Otherwise, the installation will be cancelled.

The installation of either may require the restart of the corresponding device. Note that you don’t need to remove previous versions of ~sedna applications. Just start the corresponding installation procedure.

 

Important: Please make sure that you have enabled the Remote Login option in the macOS System Settings > Sharing for your Mac devices.

 

 

4. Start and Activate

Open Finder and go to the Applications folder.

Double-click on the Creator icon.

When you start Creator, Player or Report Generator for the first time, the Activation dialog is displayed.

Here you have the following choices:

• Cloud…: Click on this button to start the activation process for a full retail installation.

• Demo…: Click on this button to start the activation process for your demo installation.

After making your choice and clicking on the corresponding button, a dialog like the one shown in the following image will be displayed in both cases.

 

The dialog does in both cases essentially the same, except that the data is sent to different instances of the sedna.cloud server. If you have clicked on the Demo… button, like in the above image, the data is sent to the demo server, otherwise the data is sent to the full server instance of sedna.cloud.

In this dialog you need to enter three items:

• ~sedna ID: You can find this ID in the My Organization details on sedna.cloud. The ~sedna ID ensures that this instance of Creator is linked to your organization.

• ~sedna Key: You can find this key in the My Organization details on sedna.cloud. The ~sedna Key is a daily changing identifier that legitimates the use of the ~sedna ID.

• Instance name: Give the installed Creator, Player or Report Generator a name. When working with multiple instances of ~sedna software, it is a good idea to give names that you can easily identify in your Cloud account.

To complete this part, please click on the Connect… button. Creator, Player or Report Generator sends the data to the sedna.cloud server requesting a license for operation. A manager of your Organization will have to assign the requested license to this instance on the sedna.cloud webpage.

After having sent the data to the Cloud server, Creator, Player or Report Generator starts waiting for the Cloud server to respond to the license request. Only after the next step will the installed application be ready for using it.

5. Assign a License

In the previous step, you requested a license for an installed ~sedna application when you started the software for the first time. In this step you do the license assignment on sedna.cloud.

To assign the license, you can either respond to the computer requesting a license in the dashboard Products section of the Cloud ~sedna ID you just entered.

Look among the displayed items for the application with the corresponding instance name, and assign a license to it. To do so, click on the three dots next to the application or on the application name to get more details. Choose e.g., „Activate Player“ from the context menu and select one of the license keys that you’d like to use for this computer.

The server will then try to send the activation message to the corresponding application. If the application is not available at the moment, the server will activate it next time a connection is established.

6. Run the Software

Now your installed software, whether a full retail version or a demo version of Creator, Player or Report Generator is ready to go.

Note: Please don’t use a demo installation to prepare live signage projects for later use. Projects created with the demo version of Creator can’t be opened, edited or played back with the retail editions of Creator and Player.

The following is a comprehensive list of supported formats.

Restrictions may apply depending on operating system, Player edition (Silver, Gold, Platinum) or hardware performance.

Note: If you want to play back Apple ProRes files we recommend using Media Engine 8K, Mac Pro (latest generation), or Mac mini M1. Using other hardware is not recommended.

For more info on edition differences please review the Player details or contact our support team.

Creator and Player for Mac support:

Image files	JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF (animated GIFs only via HTML asset), TIFF, TIF, TGA, PDF
Video containers	AVI, MOV, MPG, MPEG, MP4, MPG4, M4V, VOB, WMV, MKV
Video codecs	MPEG2, H264, H265, Quicktime, ProRes (alpha channel supported)
Live video input	BlackMagic capture devices, AJA U-Tap, USB web cams, various others
Video streaming	Via URL or SDP file
Computer capture	Directly via HDMI, DVI, VNC via LAN (PowerPoint, Director, Office, etc.)
Audio	MP3, M4A, MPA, WAV, AIFF, AIF, MP2, WMA, CAF, iTunes Playlists, direct input
Web pages	HTML, HTM, .WEBLOC, .WEBARCHIVE (supports interactivity), PDF, SWF
Text	Text tickers (RSS feeds, etc.), static text components

 

Player for Linux supports the following formats:

 

Image files	PNG, JPEG, TIFF (alpha channel supported)
Video file containers	AVI, MOV, MPEG, MP4, M4V, MKV
Video codecs	MPEG2, H264, H265, ProRes (alpha channel supported)
Live video input	AJA U-TAP or USB Webcam
Audio	MP3, WAV
Web pages	HTML
Text	Text tickers (currently without RSS feeds, etc.), static text components

 

The minimum hardware requirements for both Player and Creator are:

• 4 CPU cores

• 8 GB RAM

• 2.3 GHz clock rate

As to hard disc capacity, the installation of Creator and Player requires less than 1 GB drive space each. However, the Projects created may take way more space depending on the file size of the Assets used.

Creator

For Mac only

 

Apple Mac mini – 2014 or later

Apple Mac Pro – 2013 or later

Apple MacBook Pro – 2013 or later

Apple iMac – 2014 or later

 

Player

For Mac and Intel NUC PC

 

Apple Mac mini – 2014 or later

Apple Mac Pro – 2013 or later

 

Intel NUC 7

Intel NUC 8

Intel NUC 10

Intel NUC 11

Media Engine 8K

with at least 16 GB of RAM and sufficient SSD space

 

Report Generator

For Mac only

 

Apple Mac mini – 2014 or later

Apple Mac Pro – 2013 or later

Apple MacBook Pro – 2013 or later

Apple iMac – 2014 or later

 

This page describes a number of issues that may be encountered with the work of Creator and Player, and the solutions suggested to remedy the corresponding issue.

 

Instead of playback being started, Player Preferences are displayed after restart

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
Autostart method for Player incorrectly configured	Remove Player from System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login items and use the Start at login option in Player Preferences instead.
Your (additional) scripts are not started yet	Add for the activated „Start player on login“ an additional Delay for several seconds.
Default behavior for Restart / Shutdown	Click on Apple symbol (top left). Make sure for Restart… and Shut Down… at Player system „reopen windows when logging back in“ is unchecked.

 

Playback is blinking or the display is partially black

 

Possible Cause

Suggested Solution

Network problems leading to time sync issues

Check whether the used LAN switches are fast enough. Gigabit capacity is required. Check the used Ethernet patch cables. Defective or, in rare cases, too long patch cables may result in a reduced transmission rate. Ask yourself whether synced playback is needed at all. If you have multiple Players that are playing back independent content, you might want to assign each Player to a distinct sync group. In rare cases, we have observed that a patch cable connected in a loop on both ends to the same LAN switch resulted in playback issues on Players. Last, but not least, try reducing network traffic. This crucial point may turn out laborious. One known problem is the broadcast / multicast configuration. If a single LAN switch in your network is incapable of handling multicast correctly, it may fall back to broadcast mode leading to a data flooding of the network.

 

Playback freezes

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
Insufficient disk space	Check the available disk space on the Player Mac and provide sufficient disk space, if required.
GPU crashes	Check /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports for – rare – crashes of the graphics processing unit (GPU). This may be either a GPU driver or a hardware issue that might make the provision of a new Mac necessary.

 

Playback is flickering or even stuttering permanently

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
CPU or GPU performance insufficient	Check if your Mac has enough power to handle the corresponding video material. Please refer to the „Mac mini playback capabilities guide“ document to be found on this page.
Video and display frame rate don’t match	Your displays should be set to the same or a multiple of the video frame rate. For instance, if the video is encoded with 25 Hz, the display should run on 25 Hz or 50 Hz. A display frame rate of e.g. 60 Hz may lead to flickering if the video frame rate is 25 Hz. To fix this problem, you can either set the display frame rate in System Preferences → Display, or you can recode the video to the frame rate required. Note that the first solution is not viable if you wish to play back multiple videos with differing frame rates. In this case you should care to have all videos encoded with the same frame rate.
Video stream is transmitted via WLAN	We recommend using Gigabit Ethernet for the playback of video material. According to our experience, wireless transmission of video data is just not perfectly reliable.

 

Mouse cursor appears during playback

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
Player settings incorrect	Go to Player Preferences → General tab and activate the Always hide mouse cursor option.
Bluetooth is activated	Go to System Preferences → Bluetooth and turn Bluetooth off.
Application windows are being reopened after login	Click on the Apple symbol in the top left corner and choose Shut Down... A message is displayed. Make sure the Reopen windows when logging back in option is deactivated and cancel the shut down procedure.
Mac notifications interfere	Go to System Preferences → Notifications. Select the Do Not Disturb item and configure the Turn on Do Not Disturb settings to your convenience. These settings should cover the time Player is running.
Automatic Mac updates interfere	Go to System Preferences → App Store and turn off the Automatically check for updates option.

 

Display configuration issues, wrong display resolution

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
After restart of the Mac, playback starts before the Mac could detect all displays	Increase Start delay in Player Preferences to a value that should give the Mac enough time to detect all attached displays correctly before Player starts its playback.
Issues with the physical connection of the displays	Check the cables and adapters used to connect the displays to the Mac. The connection path may include defective cables or the cables are too long altogether.

 

Creator has no connection to Player

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
No network connection	Try to „ping“ the Player. Open Terminal and type in „ping IP“ where you replace „IP“ with the configured IP address of the Player or its host name. If a time out error is shown, either the current Mac or the Player Mac are not connected to your LAN.
Remote Login not configured	If both Macs are connected, open Terminal on the Creator Mac and type in „ssh username@IP“, whereby you replace „username“ with the user name of the logged in user on the Player Mac, and „IP“ with the configured IP address of the Player or its host name. If permission is denied, open System Preferences → Sharing on the Player Mac and make sure Remote Login is active.

 

Playback is not synchronized or network commands are not executed

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
Network configuration incorrect	Check the Creator has no connection to Player above.
Sync group settings incorrect	Make sure all Players to be synced are member of the same sync group.

 

My ~sedna application is not running with my license dongle

 

Possible Cause	Suggested Solution
The license dongle has not been detected on the Mac	Check the red LED indicator light on the dongle. If the light is off, remove all USB devices and re-insert the dongle. Check if other USB devices are detected. If other USB devices aren’t detected too, a so-called SMC reset may be required. Consult this page on how to do this. If all other USB devices are working fine, try the license dongle on another Mac to see whether it is generally not detected. If the the license dongle is detected on other Macs, try it on the original Mac but logged in as another user to see whether the issue is user related.
The license dongle may have no valid license on it	If you are sure you have purchased a valid license and it should be on the dongle, please contact ~sedna support.
An installed Touch Player may interfere with the Player app	Touch Player must not be installed on the same Mac your Player app is running on. Open Finder and go to ~/Library/LaunchAgents. Delete all de.sedna.touch entries you may find there. Restart your Mac and see if the dongle is working now.

 

As there is a large variety of possible setups and individual systems, you may encounter issues that are not described on this page while using Creator or Player. In such a case you can always contact us or your local reseller directly for support.

Cloud is the online management tool for the ~sedna software suite.

Please note that if you want to connect and manage your ~sedna applications you will need an internet connection to sedna.cloud on each computer running a ~sedna application.

If you cannot provide a permanent internet connection please contact the ~sedna sales team or your reseller for further information how to obtain copy protection dongles that are not being managed with sedna.cloud.

When you register for a new Cloud account you will get an email from noreply@sedna.cloud to verify your email address and add you to your Organization (which is your company- or division-specific account). Click on the link provided to confirm your log in credentials and to activate the account.

Every time you log into sedna.cloud you will enter the Dashboard view that provides you with an overview of Players in your network that need attention as well as new requests from ~sedna application instances to be activated by assigning a license to them.
When you have entered the locations of your Players they will show up with their status indicated on the world map.

Cloud is separated in sections that you can access using the menu to the left:

Dashboard

The Dashboard provides a summarized overview of pending and registered ~sedna applications as well as latest information on ~sedna products and services.

Products

This section provides an overview of the software products that are connected to your Organization. You can group your products in folders for a better overview. Enter a detailed view by clicking on a products name to (un-)assign a license and enter location based information.

Licenses

Click on „Licenses“ to get an overview of your cloud-based licenses including purchase- and software maintenance information as well as assignment status.

Assets & Playlists

Upload your content and build your Playlists for simple assignment to the Players connected to your Organization. Playlists can also be integrated into more complex playout scenarios using the Creator.

Users

Overview of all Users that have access to your Organization. A Manager can add new users here and assign different roles to them. A total of five users can be added free of charge.

Resources

Download the latest ~sedna software as well as versions for older operating systems or licenses without software maintenance here.
You will also find help on how to set up your Player network or building Projects as well as templates for download.

To set-up your ~sedna software instances go to the Resources section and download the versions of the Creator & Player corresponding to your licenses and your operating system.

 

• Copy Creator software to the local drive of the Mac you want to build and publish your projects with and follow installation process.

• Copy the according Player software to the local drive of the Mac that will function as your playback computer. If you are using Player for Linux, Player for TV or Player for Mobile Devices you can download the ~sedna player app directly from the app store.

Hint: Make sure you have a connection to the internet on each computer you are configuring.

During installation you will have to enter your Organization’s ~sedna ID and ~sedna key and click on „Connect…“.
The software will then make a request to sedna.cloud and wait for you to assign a license to it.

You can either respond to the request via the dashboard directly or enter the overview of your Players (or Creators) and assign a license by using the context menu to the right of each player.

Finally, click „Refresh Now“ in the installation dialog or wait until the timer is finished. The software is now licensed and will start automatically.

When you have installed and licensed your Player applications (and Creator, if you’re aiming for advanced scenarios) it’s time to built your first project.

There are basically two ways to setup your content for Playlists for your Players:

1. Using the Cloud Playlist feature with sedna.cloud for basic Playlists.

2. Advanced content handling with the Creator for more complex scenarios.

Using the Cloud Playlist feature with sedna.cloud

Navigate to „Cloud Playlist“ in your Cloud account.

To use this feature the Players you are addressing need to be version 5.0 or higher and have to be configured to accept Cloud Playlists only.

Upload content

You can upload new content by clicking on the button „+ NEW“ and then choose from the media format you want to add.

Browse through your files, select and confirm. The view will then change to the upload screen to show currently active and finished upload processes.

Another way to upload new content is to drag-and-drop it directly in the „Uploads“ view.
Enter this view by hovering the mouse cursor over the Cloud Playlist icon and select „Uploads“.

When you have uploaded your media assets go back to the Cloud Playlist view where all content that has been uploaded to your Cloud account is listed under the „Assets“ tab.
If you click on an asset you will get various information on the element itself in the Detail view. Next to a preview and metadata you can make some modifications to the media asset.

Important note for Apple TV devices:
Due to operating system limitations, HTML Assets will not play back on Apple TV devices. Please contact us for possible solutions.

Handle playlists

Now you can create a new playlist by clicking on „+ New“ and then click on „Playlist“. Enter the desired name for your Playlist and confirm.
Note that the main view changes if you click on a folder or a playlist in the tab view (sidebar).

• Select one or more files in main view and drag-and-drop them to the desired playlist to the left or click „Add assets“ next to the playlist name

• Select a playlist to show it’s items in the main view

• You can freely modify the sequence by dragging elements

• Assigning content also works the other way around. You can drag your asset from the sidebar into the Playlist opened in the main view and drop it where it is needed. This way you can also add complete folders to a playlist at once by drag-and-drop.

• If you want to add a website to your playlist click the BUTTON „+ New“ and then select HTML. Enter a name to be shown as identifier and the URL you want to display on your Players.

• It is also possible to duplicate a playlist to support several workflows. This can be done in the sidebar by using the playlist context menu.

• If you want to remove or rename an item click on the three dots (…) next to it in the main view.

Assign to Players

You can assign a Cloud Playlist to every Player in your Cloud Organization.
To do this navigate to the „Products“ tab, choose a Player and select „Assign playlist“ from the menu next to it.
In the Products section you can also select multiple Players and assign a Playlist to them.
Alternatively you can group Players in a folder and drag-and-drop a playlist onto that folder.

Important Note: The according Players need to be configured to accept Cloud Playlists only.
You can do this in the start-up dialog on the player computer itself.

On an Apple TV device using Player for TV go to „Settings“ > „Apps „> „Player for TV“ and enable this option.

On Linux based devices you will find this option in the Player options.

 

According to the chosen update interval the Player will download the Cloud Playlist and start playback.

You can create folders for your Assets, your Playlists and for your Players. This comes in handy in more complex projects.

This service is only available for Players with an active ~sedna Software Maintenance plan.

Email notifications for Player status can be set up in your user profile settings.

You can find these in users section or if you click directly on your user name in the dashboard.

This feature is not restricted to a special user role – all users can use this feature and enable it for the email address connected with their account.

It will give you information on Players that lost connection to sedna.cloud similar to the „Player Action Required“ tile on your Organizations dashboard.

To enable email notifications open your User Details by clicking on your user name.

 

On the Inspector pane under ‚Player Notifications‘ you can choose between status information on all Players in this Organization (with Software Maintenance) or only the ones you are responsible for.

Choose whether you want to be updated once per day / every hour and save your settings.

You will get an email notification at the time of the chosen interval (even if no Player is offline) containing:

 

• The amount of Players offline in this Organization
• A list with all Players offline listed and their last known connection time

 

Please Note:
The amount of Players shown offline in sedna.cloud may vary from the email report as this service only applies for Players with Software Maintenance.

 

~sedna Software Maintenance is a no-hassle way to keep your Player network up to date and eliminate unexpected upgrade expenses.

Licenses with Software Maintenance are instantly compatible upon release of important product updates, version and compatibility upgrades, or new feature releases.
As an added value Software Maintenance licenses profit from exclusive features in sedna.cloud as well as prioritized technical email support.

Status and renewal date are indicated for each license in your Cloud account in the Licenses section.

~sedna Software Maintenance is an optional service that is sold with new licenses or license upgrades. Each plan has a term of 12 months and thereafter will renew automatically a further term of 12 months each, unless notice of termination is given at least 30 days before the pertinent term expires. Annual pricing for ~sedna Software Maintenance is 20% of the regular license fee for each license. You can request current price information from us at any time.

This section provides various links with downloadable content and additional support material.

 

Download the latest release and all other supported ~sedna software versions for your operation system here.
The Resources section also provides project templates, Widgets files and documents such as the Widget Development Guide. You will also find links to various documents such as our terms & conditions and the Cloud Online manual.

With the additional ~sedna.cloud features available with subscription licenses you are able to optimize and extend your workflow and enable completely new features. This manual section will cover those Cloud features.

Advanced Role Management

~sedna.cloud includes an expanded set of user roles for advanced role management and clearer division of tasks.
The following roles are available:

• Manager: Unrestricted user rights

• User Manager: May add users, as well as set the roles of the users

• License Manager: May assign/unassign licenses and buy new licenses via the optional Shop

• License Operator: May assign/unassign licenses

• Content Manager: May upload, delete, create, and edit Assets, as well as assign/unassign Playlists and Schedules

• Content Operator: May assign/unassign Playlists and Schedules

Clip Validity

The validity feature you might already know from the Creator as part of the Timer Playlist. In Cloud, instead of a different type of playlist, customized timing is possible for every used asset. It’s no longer necessary to create separate Playlists to have the choice between activating/deactivating validity options.

To customize the validity of a clip, you can use the options given in “Restrict by date” and “Restrict to time frame”. You can use both or only one of them.

• Restrict by date: You can restrict the time your asset will be played back within this playlist, giving it a start and an end date which you can comfortably select in a calendar. Optionally a starting time for the first day and an end time for the last valid day can be defined.

  Additionally, you can specify the weekdays the content shall be played back and also if you have a specific time frame during the whole period. This comes in very handy for example for periodical recurring events for special time frames, like a lecture announcement every Monday.

• Restrict to time frame: Here you can prepare a time frame for when this clip shall be valid only, but not restricted in any other way. For example you could show additional kids related content 7 am. – 11 am. without a restriction by date.

Of course you can combine all settings to get your automated playback ever more precise.

To get an overview about all the settings customized in the Clip Details take a look into the Main View which shows all additional information. Beside the chosen validity restrictions, we also included the Status column which will indicate the remaining validity in green (if acutally valid), blue (future validity) or red (already expired).

Additional information: Timer Playlist in Creator

Scheduling Section

The Scheduling Section provides you with all the tools you need to generate Day Templates or Calendars and assign Playlists to Players. To edit or create a Playlist navigate to the Assets & Playlists section.

If you are already familiar with the Creator you will see a lot of similarities. Please have a closer look at the tool bar and how those icons / tools support your workflow. Compared to Creator, keep in mind you are always working with a local copy so you need to save your changes to make the adjustments available in Cloud. Just like you would publish your project to the Players to send them an update.

Day Templates: Day Templates are 24h timelines which can be populated with Playlists.
As soon as you created a Day via the tab named “Day Templates”, select it to see its content in the Main View. To add your Playlists to your Day Template, navigate to the tab “Playlists” and add them by drag & drop on the timeline (editor pane) at the desired position. As long as there is enough space for it, your playlist will be added accordingly to your preselected tool settings.
Hint: You can fold / unfold the Calendar on the bottom of the site by clicking the arrow top right in it to adjust your working space.

Toolbar elements from top to bottom are:

Avoid Gaps: This tool is enabled by default. So you don’t need to worry about any gaps in the schedule. Whenever you drop a playlist on the timeline it will automatically be placed directly after your last playlist (or the start of the timeline if it is your first playlist added).
Allowing gaps will give you the flexibility to organize your content with the focus on timing.

Replace: This option is disabled by default. Whenever you need to replace an already scheduled playlist, enable this option, afterwards select and drag & drop the new playlist onto the one to be replaced. You will get a notification about which playlist was replace. Please keep in mind only the duration of the old playlist will used, all other settings will be used from the replacing playlist.

Auto Zoom: Is enabled by default. Whenever you drop a playlist onto the timeline, the zoom factor will be adjusted to this playlist and center this playlist in the timeline (if possible).

Snap to Grid: Snap to grid is enabled by default but will of course be overruled by avoid gaps. With avoid gaps disabled it is easy to see how snap to grid works. Either you can freely place your playlist or will be slightly moved to even starting points.

Selection Tool: When you enabled this tool, you can multiselect several playlists in timeline simply by spanning a rectangle in timeline during pressed mouse button.

Zoom Tool: Using this tool gives the option to span a rectangle in timeline to zoom into this selected timeframe.

Slider: Use the slider on the left side of the timeline to change the time increments for the layer column.

To adjust the duration of your scheduled Playlist, click the handler icon in the bottom right corner of your Playlist and change the duration by hand.

Additional edit options and a more precise timing are shown in the corresponding Details View (Inspector). Just click at your playlist to open those additional information. The preview image and the name are fixed, all other details can be edited.

Calendar: A Calendar is the most common way to schedule different playbacks for a Player in advance. Every day of a Calendar can be filled with a Day Template or Playlists. The workflow is the same as filling a Day Template, you only need to select the Calendar to be filled. The day will be shown in Main View and you can fill and edit the schedule.

Several Calendars can be created in Cloud and used for multiple Players. While every Player can get a different Default Cloud Playlist and/or Day Template and/or Calendar assigned, please keep in mind you can only assign one of each type to every Player.

A line on the bottom of every Calendar day indicates content scheduled on this calendar day in general. Additionally, every day has a context menu with multiple options to clear older entries or generating a Day Template.

Selecting a special month in the Calendar is very easy by clicking on the month / year in its headline.

Assign to Player

Cloud Playlist, Day Template and Calendar can be assigned to every Player. The scheduling priority is the following (in descending order of importance): Calendar, Day Template, Cloud Playlist. In case of gaps in the schedule, the content of the next category is used.

The Product Detail View shows assigned Calendars and Day Templates as well for a selected Player. The respective sections get expanded to give you the option to overview and manage your assigned Calendars and Day Templates.

Remotely Startable Playlists

This feature allows you to have additional Cloud Playlists assigned to and downloaded by a Player. They can be triggered by network commands. Just like you would assign one Cloud (Default) Playlist, you can assign multiple Playlists in the new subsection “Remotely Startable”.

Please refer to our Helpdesk.

 

The interface of ~sedna applications is designed for intuitive use and for helping you effectively visualize playback as you create it. This page helps you get acquainted yourself with the various parts of the interface.

The first section, Overview, gives a general overview of the user interface. The closing section, Various Icons and Indicators, further below describes various individual icons and indicators found in different areas of the interface.

Overview

 

The Creator interface consist of various panes and toolbars. The following image shows the interface in a standard configuration.

 

 

The interface offers a few features to help you work faster and customize your workflow. By dragging the edges between the panes, you can resize the panes in the interfaces so creating a setup that best suits your personal workflow.

To undo any changes you have made to the signage project, please press ⌘ + Z. Note that this does not revert changes you made to your work environment, for instance the size of the panes.

The following list gives a description of the various elements of the user interface:

• Toolbar: Frequent functions such as settings, syncing, scheduler and previewing.

• Assets: List of all of the assets that are imported into the project.

• Commands: List of commands for controlling Players and projects.

• Effects: List of effects for assets and playlists.

• Arrangements & Playlists: Create or manage all arrangements and playlists for this project.

• Day Templates: List of day templates for the current project.

• Editor Pane: Edit or adjust assets and arrangements.

• Visualizer: Previewer for content in assets or for viewing the current arrangement.

• Inspector: All settings for assets, playlists, layers, arrangements and other components.

• Calendar: Built-in calendar for managing content over long periods of time.

To help you grasp the structure of your signage project, you can assign color labels to assets, commands, effect, playlists, arrangements and day templates. Just click on a particular list item or select multiple items and select a color from the General section of the Inspector.

Various Icons and Indicators

 

Many buttons such as the Settings or the Publish buttons are described in the corresponding sections of this manual. This section describes a number of buttons and indicators that may not be described extensively elsewhere in this manual.

 

This section is dedicated to provide detailed description of a number of Inspector properties.

Layer Properties

 

Arrangement layers have a number of Inspector property sections, of which Zone and Wiggle are stored in each Style of the layer individually. Settings made in the other sections are the same through all Styles of a particular layer.

Usually, layers are just frames that keep their content without ever being noticed. However, if you wish so, you can accentuate layers to a degree. This section treats Inspector settings that affect the visual look of layers, i.e. the Background, Border and Drop Shadow sections.

Background: The default Background setting for layers is None, meaning the area of the layer that is not occupied by content is transparent. The content is not affected by that. You can give the layer background a solid color, or a color gradient.

In Gradient, you can set a Start and an End color for the transition. Angle denotes the gradient direction in degrees. At a value of 0 the Start color is to the left, the End color to the right. Positive values rotate the gradient clockwise. Mix Ratio determines how much of the gradient is Start and how much is End color.

Border: By default, no border is drawn around a layer. To show the border, activate the Draw Border checkbox and select a border color. You can set the width of the line drawn and also have the line be drawn either solid or segmented.

Drop Shadow: In addition to a border, a layer can also be displayed casting a shadow. Click on the Draw Drop Shadow box and select the color the shadow will have. Then set the other values as you please.

 

 

This is what the individual entries mean:

Angle	This is the angle at which the shadow is cast. The small blue dot on the dial indicates the direction of the light source. Obviously, the shadow will be cast in the opposite direction.
Opacity	This sets how solid the shadow will appear to be. An opacity of 100% makes the shadow solid. Any value below that introduces transparency.
Distance	This sets the virtual distance between layer and the backdrop the shadow is cast on.
Scale	A Scale value of 1 makes the shadow as large as the layer. Anything below that makes the shadow smaller. Maximum value for Scale is 2, i.e. the shadow is twice as large as the layer.

Fade / Crossfade Properties

 

Fading is a technique to introduce new items or end existing ones in your arrangements or playlists. Imagine an audio that immediately starts loud or a video that ends with a sudden cut. If you want to soften these hard audible or visual contrasts, you can use Fade in / Fade out. If you need a smooth transition from one clip to another, use Crossfade.

Working With Fade in and Fade out

 

You can find the Fade in and Fade out sliders in the Fade / Crossfade section of the Inspector. Fade inand Fade out concern single assets with no regard to assets played before or after them.

To start an asset smoothly, adjust the Fade in slider to a value between 0 and 10 seconds. This sets how long it takes to make the corresponding asset visible or audible at its start. Fade out works in a similar way, except that it determines how long it takes to make the asset invisible or inaudible at its end.

Note that both properties can’t be changed if the Crossfade property is already set. Also note that you can’t set the Fade Out property if the consecutive item has already a crossfade setting.

Working with Crossfade

 

You can find the Crossfade slider in the Fade / Crossfade section of the Inspector. Often a situation occurs when you want an asset fade out and the following fade in at the same time. To some degree, you could achieve that effect with Fade in and Fade out, but these do not allow the intersection of assets.

Use Crossfade instead for it provides asset intersection. Select the asset that you want to be faded in. Adjust the Crossfade slider to a value between 0 and 10 seconds. With that you set the time that this asset is being faded in fully while the preceding asset is being faded out.

Consider that you can’t set Crossfade for an asset that is the first in a playlist or arrangement. Also, you can’t have Fade out set for one asset and Crossfade set to the asset following the first one. Finally, note that the Duration property of a Generator asset such as Text Ticker or Color is increased by the crossfade time set. This does not apply to imported media assets that have a fixed duration.

In and Out Points

 

In video assets you can find the In Point and Out Point properties within the In and Out Points section. These properties allow you to select a specific segment of a video for further usage without the need to cut the original video with an external tool.

To change these properties click on your video asset in the Asset pane. Alternatively you can double-click the corresponding asset in an arrangement or playlist. Note that a single click on the latter would not display the required properties.

The Duration property of assets is affected by the In Point and Out Point settings. Creator calculates the length of the segment resulting from the In Point and Out Point settings. When inserted in an arrangement or playlist, video assets will show the duration set to the calculated length.

Note a special case when you change In Point and Out Point of assets already used in arrangements or playlists. The duration of the inserted clip won’t be changed, but the Loop checkbox will be enabled with a sufficiently high number of loops to fill the original clip duration. If you deselect Loop now, the clip will stop playing at the calculated duration and its last frame will be shown for the rest of the playtime.

The Creator allows you to preview content as you work on it. This is an important part of visualizing your final playback.

Previewing is useful for ensuring that your content will look as desired. If your Players are in the same network as your Creator, you can also use a Live Test to preview your projects directly on the Players.

Previewing Content

 

There are two ways to start the preview. To begin with, you can select an asset or a component, e.g. an arrangement, and press the space bar. The other way is to click on the Preview button at the top left of the interface. This can also be triggered by selecting Window → Start Preview or pressing the ⌘ + Rkeys.

In both cases, a new preview window will open according to the Preview preferences as described in the following section. However, there is a difference. Clicking on the Preview button always starts the item currently selected in the Arrangements & Playlists pane, while pressing the space bar can also show the preview of individual assets.

 

When working with the Preview feature, please take into account the following hints.

• Although you can select multiple assets or multiple arrangements, only one of the selected items can be previewed at a time. The one that will be shown is the item that was last selected.

• Pressing the space bar while working in the Arrangements Editor does not trigger the preview.

• Commands and Effects items cannot be previewed. On the other hand, Day Templates can.

• Do not mistake the Preview button at the top left with the Preview tab above the visualizer pane at the top right. With the latter one you can set the view inside the visualizer.

To close the Preview window or the built-in Player, please press the ⌘ + Q buttons on your keyboard.

Setting up Preview Behavior

 

Click on the Settings button at the top left. Under the Preview tab, you can select the orientation, preview scale and various other settings.

Multiscreen Preview

 

Multiscreen setups are an essential instrument for effectively presenting digital signage. The Creator allows you to have a preview of such setups by emulating multiple screens in one preview window. To facilitate this, you need to make a few adjustments to the settings.

1. Open the Settings.

2. Then go to the Preview tab.

3. Activate the Multiscreen Preview checkbox. Select a screen setup from the dropdown menu that appears to the right of the checkbox.

4. If you’re not sure how to use screen setups, see the corresponding details in the Videowall section.

When you press the Preview button in the toolbar now, you’ll see your multiscreen setup arranged accordingly.

A Live Test allows you to preview your project directly on one or multiple Players. You can use live tests to check the playback of playlists.

 

Running a Live Test

 

Click on the Live Test button in the upper right of the interface. In some cases, the system may ask the user for a password. Please enter the password of the account currently logged in on the Player Mac.

Live tests are only possible when both the Creator and Player Macs are in the same network segment. After the live test ends, the targeted Players resume to regular content.

Note that the Players do not resume playing the content that was played before the live test was started. Instead, either the default content or the scheduled content of your current project will be taken. To resume the previously played content, you might have to re-publish the corresponding project.

If you have no target Players set up, the built-in Player is triggered or updated by the Publish and Live Test functions.

The Creator comes with a built-in Player. You can use this Player to create an integrated one screen setup or use it for project previewing.

 

Using the Built-in Player for Testing

How to configure the built-in player is described in this section.

The built-in Player can be triggered or updated by the Publish and Live test functions. While working in the Creator, you can open the built-in Player by selecting Window → Start Player or by pressing Cmd + Shift + R on your keyboard.

You can leave the Player running while you continue to work on your project. To update the Player to the current status of the project, press Cmd + S. To stop the built-in Player, press ⌘ + Q on your keyboard.

Testing signage project in this manner is an easy way to quickly see the results of your work. However, we recommend testing the signage project on the final Players before going live with your projects.

Content can be set as default to be played back when nothing else is scheduled. This is very useful to keep your displays busy without having to manually schedule scores of days.

Setting up Default Content

You cannot set individual Assets as default. The items that can be set as default content are components such as Playlists or Arrangements, and Day Templates. To do so, right-click on the corresponding Playlist, Arrangement, or Day Template that you want to set as default, and select Default from the pop-up menu.

A small flag icon on the right hand side shows that the component is set as default. When you open a Project in Creator, the default content is always displayed first.

Work Example

You’re running a setup at a store and want to show your store logo when nothing else is running. Import the picture with your store logo and add it to a Playlist or an Arrangement. Then right-click on the Playlist and select Default.

Proceed with scheduling special content for individual time slots. Having done so, you don’t need to care about filling any gaps for content set as default will automatically be played back when no other content is scheduled.

Playback Priority

Player keeps on playing back content until it ends or other content is triggered. Each day at midnight, a playback reset occurs and all Players actively check what to play next. Note that content triggered via external commands will cease playing at the time.

Player handles content priority the following way:

1. Exceptions: Content triggered by external commands or Creator Live Tests is top priority and always played back regardless.

2. Scheduled Content: top priority in regular content. Scheduled content is content you assign to a particular day, e.g. by dropping an Arrangement or a Playlist on a calendar day.

3. Scheduled Day Templates: Content from Day Templates assigned to the particular day.

4. Default Day Templates: Day Templates set as default.

5. Default Content: Content from an Arrangement or Playlist set as default.

6. If no exceptions are triggered and no scheduled or default content is available, screens stay black, except for freshly installed Players that will play back a background image with a ~sedna logo.

The moment content ends, Player falls back to content of lower priority. For instance, when a Live Test ends, Player resumes playing back regular content. When playback of scheduled content ends, Player will try to play content from the Day Template assigned. If this content has gaps too, Player will look for lower-priority content. When any of the gaps end, Player resumes the respective content.

How to Avoid Side Effects With External Commands

When working with external commands and a number of Players that run different projects, you could experience some surprising moments where Players seem to play back unexpected content. This most certainly has a cause related to the naming of components.

Imagine multiple Players in a sync group running different projects. If each project has a component with the same name, e.g. „Playlist“, and any of the Players is sent an external command to play this particular component, then, due to the character of sync groups, all Players will start playing their own „Playlist“.

You can use this as an intended effect, for instance to start these Playlists at the very same time, but this effect could also occur accidentally disturbing the performance of your overall digital signage setup. To avoid such effects, we recommend following some basic rules:

• Use multiple sync groups. Imagine you have two video walls you want to play back different content on. We recommend separating both video walls by assigning their Players to distinct sync groups.

• Consider the naming of components carefully. The larger the number of Projects and Players in operation, the more reasonable it is to give components unique and speaking names.

• You can configure individual Players to not react to external commands and also to not forward them. How to do so is described in the Player Settings section of this manual.

Creating a new project is the first action you are requested to make after launching the Creator for the first time.

Each time you launch the Creator application, you can create a new project immediately by clicking on the corresponding option in the Welcome screen.

To create a new project while already working on a project, choose File → New Project. Alternatively, you can use the ⌘ + N keyboard shortcut. This will open another Creator interface for you to work with. The projects you’ve worked on will not be affected and stay open to be edited further.

The Consolidate Project function cleans up your project files and removes unused file assets that were previously deleted.

Choose File → Consolidate Project …

All previously deleted files from your project will be removed.

Note: If you consolidate your project, all undo steps will be lost.

To help you maintain organization, you can use the Mark Unused Items feature to highlight assets that are not used in the current project.

We recommend consolidating your project before marking the unused items.

To show unused items, choose View → Mark Unused Items. All of the assets in your project that are not currently being used will be marked with a small flag on the right side as pictured below.

You might want to delete unused assets to reduce the size of your project or to get a better overview of your content.

Projects can be exported in order to use them in other Creators or for archiving purposes. Exporting projects is also a useful way to create project templates for future use.

1. Choose File → Export → Export Project… Select a location to store the project to.

2. Click on Structure Export if you want to export just the general composition of the project, such as arrangements, layers, and playlist sequences. Assets will not be exported.

3. Select Complete Export if you want to export the complete project including the assets used. Assets that were not used in the original project will not be exported.

Projects can be exported and physically transferred (sneaker network) to Players with removable media such as USB sticks or hard drives. This is usually done to update content on Players that use a dongle license and don’t have a traditional network connection or access to the Internet.

1. In the Project you would like to transfer choose File → Create Update Package… and save the Project to your desktop.

2. Copy the Project image to a removable media (e.g. a USB stick) with sufficient free storage capacity.

3. Carry the removable media to the target Player Mac.

4. Connect the removable media to your Player and it will update automatically.

Automatic Project updates as described will only work if the Projects to be updated are stored in the default file path. To see the default data path, go to Display → Advanced → Player Data Path in your Player.

Note: In the General Player settings, you can choose whether an update message should be shown or not while the update is being transferred.

A number of assets are generated within the Creator itself, for instance text, text tickers, colors etc. However, many essential assets are created elsewhere and need to be imported in the Creator in order to be used in signage projects

Imported assets include images, video and audio clips, and HTML pages, i.e. media stored as files on your hard drive or at other locations.

 

 

Importing by Drag and Drop

 

To import media files, simply drag them from Finder and drop them onto the Assets pane at the upper left area of the Creator interface. This way, you can import entire folders with a large number of files into the Creator. The structure of the folders you import will be replicated in the Assets pane.

When you import a large number of files individual, the same number of assets will be created in the Assets pane. To avoid confusion, you might want to prepare the drag & drop import by creating some asset groups beforehand.

Importing with the Open Dialog

 

Choose Add → Media → and the kind of file you want to import as an asset. Alternatively, you can click on the button at the bottom of the Assets panel. An Open dialog appears where you can choose the files that you wish to add.

Larger files, and a great number of files, may take longer to import. You can see the import progress in the status display at the top of the interface.

The Creator allows you to generate some assets directly in its interface. Generated assets include text, text tickers, colors, and compositions. Generated assets can’t be modified outside the Creator. They are edited exclusively in the Creator by way of adjusting its Inspector settings.

Generating an Asset

Right-click on Add → Generator and select the asset you want to generate. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select the asset you want to generate there.

Then go to the Inspector panel and adjust the asset settings at your discretion. The assets you’ve generated are displayed in the Assets pane and are ready to be placed into your project.

Whenever you create new Assets, some of their parameters are already set. A few of these defaults are determined by properties of the corresponding media files, for instance the length of a video clip.

Creator allows you to modify the default values for the Duration and the Fill mode of the corresponding assets.

Note: These asset defaults are applied to the corresponding assets within any project you work on. If you wish to learn how to transfer the settings of indivudual assets to other assets of the same type, please refer to this section.

Setting Asset Defaults

 

Go the Creator menu and click on Preferences → Defaults. Alternatively, you can press ⌘ + , and then select the Defaults tab.

 

 

You can set defaults for different kinds of assets and even playlists, as seen above. After modifying the values, the corresponding component will always be added with the new values.

Creator provides a way to transfer properties of individual assets to other assets of the same type, e.g. properties of an image asset to other image assets. This feature is called Custom Defaults. Please refer to this section to learn how to set and modify asset defaults for all projects.

How to Store and Apply Custom Defaults

The Custom Defaults feature can be found within the Inspector pane. Select an individual asset in the Assets pane, then go the the Inspector. Modify some of the properties and click on the button at the top right corner of the Inspector. The following menu will pop up.

 

 

The menu offers the following options:

• Reset Modified Data: This entry is only active when you select asset clips of which one of the storeable properties have been changed. With this, you can reset these properties to their defaults afterwards.

• Store as Custom Defaults: Store the storable properties of the currently selected asset for later use on assets of the same type.

• Set to Custom Defaults: Apply the properties stored through the Store as Custom Defaults entry. Only properties of the same asset type can be applied.

• Clear Custom Defaults: Select this entry to clear all Custom Defaults stored so far.

Working with Custom Defaults

 

Click on the Store as Custom Defaults entry. As a result, a set of storable properties is stored and can be applied to other assets. To apply the stored properties, go to the Assets pane and select another asset of the same type. Go back to the Inspector, click again on the button, and select Set to Custom Defaults. The stored property values will be applied to this asset.

Storing Custom Defaults is only available if you select an asset. It doesn’t work with asset clips, i.e. incarnations of an asset that you create when you place an asset in a Playlist or Arrangement. You can select an asset by clicking on it within the Assets pane or by double-clicking on a clip within a Playlist or Arrangement. Single clicks on a clip select just the clip incarnation of an asset, not the asset itself. These clips have additional properties that can’t be stored and re-applied.

Note also that not all properties of an asset can be stored this way. It’s mainly the properties within the General and Style tabs within Inspector that can be stored. However, even some of these properties are not stored, for instance content related entries such as URL, Ticker texts or comments. Advanced properties generally cannot be stored.

Text tickers provide scrolling text for your signage project and are capable of displaying text manually entered or dynamic text from RSS feeds.

Creating a Text Ticker

Choose Add → Generator → Text Ticker. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assetspane and select the text ticker there.

If you want to display just a fixed text, you can enter it in the content section in the Inspector. To enter dynamic text content, follow the steps described below.

Adding Dynamic Content to a Text Ticker

1. Select the text ticker you want to modify in the Assets pane.

2. Go to Inspector and select RSS Feed URL entry from the Type list.

3. Headline Delimiter separates the headline from the content.

4. Content Delimiters enclose the content itself.

5. Under Content you can choose whether to show just headlines, just articles or both.

6. If your RSS feed contains images, be sure to activate the Show Images checkbox.

Note: Obviously, dynamic content will only be displayed if the Player has an established network connection to the RSS feed.

Once you have created a text ticker and added content, you can change its parameters, such as content, font, speed and duration in the Inspector.

Work Example

In this example, we will use a text ticker to add a live RSS feed to our signage playback.

Start by adding an arrangement to your project. Go to the Arrangement Layout Editor. Add a new layer to carry the text ticker. You’ll need to adjust the size and position of the new layer. Assuming you’re using a full HD monitor in landscape more, a width of 1920 and a height of 1080 px should do nicely.

Click on the text ticker layer and go to the Inspector. In the Background section you can make the layer have a background differrent from the arrangement background. Text tickers have a blue background by default, so be sure that the two are matched up to produce a nice effect.

Finally, create a text ticker in the Assets pane and go to the Inspector. Since the ticker is to show breaking news, select „RSS Feed URL“ from the Type list and paste the URL of the RSS feed into the field below the list. You also might want to customize the appearance of the ticker, i.e. the font and the scrolling speed. Try experimenting with these options, and use the preview function to find the ideal look.

Text tickers can be set to scroll over multiple screens. To do this, you need to adjust some basic settings.

 

Using a Text Ticker in a Multiscreen Setup

1. Note the total width in pixels of all screens and the physical borders (mullions) between them.

2. Go to Player Preferences → Advanced. Make the following changes for all affected displays.

3. Enter into Text Ticker Extension → left the number of pixels that the text ticker is to run to the left beyond the currently selected display.

4. Enter into Text Ticker Extension → right the number of pixels that the text ticker is to run to the right beyond the currently selected display itself.

 

Work Example

You have a setup with three screens placed horizontally next to each other, and you want the ticker to run across all screens. Each screen is 1360 pixels wide, the mullions between them are 213 pixels wide each. The total width is 4506 pixels, i.e. 3 x 1360 pixels (screens) + 2 x 213 pixel (mullions) = 4506 pixels.

 

Let’s look at the individual screens and what you have to enter in the Player Preferences:

• Left screen: This screen has nothing to the left. To the right there are two screens and two mullions, i.e. 2 x 1360 (screens) + 2 x 213 (mullions) = 3146 pixels. Enter 0 into left and 3146 into right.

• Middle screen: This screen has one screen and one mullion on both sides. Therefore enter into both left and right a value of 1573 (1360 + 213).

• Right screen: This screen is similar to the left one but with inversed numbers. Enter 3146 into leftand 0 into right.

 

With these settings, the text ticker will scroll nicely across all three screens. You can test this with the preview function.

Text assets support all kinds of formatting that is supported by TextEdit on your Mac, including fonts, justification, rulers, tabs and more, allowing you to create great looking text for your signage project.

 

 

Creating a Text Asset

Choose Add → Generator → Text. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select the text asset there.

Adjusting Content and Appearance of Text Assets

To edit the text content, just double click on the text asset in the Assets pane and click into the text shown in the Editor pane. Alternatively, you can prepare your text in TextEdit and paste it into the Creator. All formatting will be copied along with the text.

To change the formatting of text within the Creator, select the text you want to adjust. Go to the Format menu, select Font or Text and make any changes you want. You can also use ⌘ + T or right-click on the selected text to access the built-in formatting dialog.

Eventually, make the remaining adjustments in the Inspector and use the preview function to see how your text asset will look at showtime.

Image assets provide still images for your signage project. Images have to be prepared outside the Creator. To use them as assets, images are imported into a signage project.

Importing Image Assets

Choose Add → Media → Image…. You can also click on the button below the Assets pane and select an image asset there.

Alternatively, you can drag the corresponding image files from Finder and drop them onto the Assets pane of the Creator. This way you can easily import a large number of prepared images. You can even drop folders to import all images contained including the subfolder structure.

Image Optimization

In the Inspector, you’ll find an option called Image Optimization. You can use it to apply a degree of rescaling and visual effects to image assets. Most of the time it will benefit the performance and image quality, but there are use cases where you may want to deactivate it.

Such a case may occur when working with very high-res displays. With such setups, we recommend checking image quality with and without image optimization enabled. Publish a simple project with an image asset to your Player(s) and decide for yourself which setting you prefer.

Video assets are a basic source for dynamic visual content. Videos are created and prepared outside the Creator, and then imported as files into signage projects.

In contrast to video streaming sources or video capturing that also offer dynamic, but potentially unpredictable content, video assets offer you material that you can schedule precisely.

Importing Video Assets

Choose Add → Media → Video…. You can also click on the button below the Assets pane and select a video asset there.

Alternatively, you can drag the corresponding video files from Finder and drop them onto the Assets pane of the Creator. This way you can easily import a large number of prepared videos. You can even drop a folder to import all therein contained videos including all subfolders that will be recreated as a group structure in the Assets pane.

~sedna software supports a number of different video containers, file formats and encoders. To see which formats are supported in particular, visit the Media Formats page.

Note: If you find that you need only a part of the original video, you can cut the video using an external program. Or you can also do this in Creator:
Go to Inspector → Advanced tab of the Video Asset and set the In and Out Points which instructs Creator/Player to use only a certain part of the video.

Video Playback Tweaks

Video assets are most demanding for computer hardware. A video that is twice as wide and twice as high takes four times the memory space. The larger the resolution of video material is, the more computing power you need to give your audience a smooth video experience.

~sedna is making every effort to get the most out of the hardware. In the Advanced tab in the Inspector of the Creator, you can find a number of options for videos that are designed to enhance the playback of video assets.

• Support alpha: The alpha channel defines transparent regions in videos. Check this option if the particular video assets has an alpha channel and you want to allow transparency.

• Shared playback: This setting was introduced to reduce the load on a single Mac Pro that operates a video wall. Before the introduction of this enhancement, a Mac Pro operating a video wall had to compute a video to be played back as many times a it hat displays to provide with data.

• For instance, a Mac Pro running a 2 by 2 video wall that played back a single video spread over all displays has to compute the very video for all displays, i.e. four times. With Shared playback active, the Mac Pro computes the video once and sends the corresponding frame to the appropriate display.

• Accelerated decoding: This setting accelerates the decoding of videos on Macs with certain graphics chips which can be found mostly in Mac Minis.

  Technically, this setting instructs Player to use the GPU and the memory of the corresponding graphics card to process video data. These hardware components provide significantly higher video computing performance than the standard memory and CPU of a Mac Mini.

Note: With this setting, it is possible to increase the chance of using Mac Minis to play back 4K video materials. However, this is by no means guaranteed. Therefore, we recommend testing this setting with the individual videos in order to determine the best settings.

 

• QuickTime decoding: This is a property setting especially for ProRes videos. Since it turned out that sometimes QuickTime decodes ProRes videos faster, this setting may accelerate the playback performance. Please note that ProRES is only supported with Player Gold 2 or higher.

Note: However, this is by no means guaranteed. Therefore, we recommend testing this setting with the individual videos in order to determine the best settings.

The Macs available offer different performance to cope with the load related to video data. A Mac Mini just barely can handle one 4K video, if at all, while a Mac Pro can handle multiple 4K videos at a time. This must be taken into account when designing a signage setup.

Also, when purchasing Player licenses, you must consider that a Mac Pro most certainly needs minimum a Player Gold 2 license.

Color assets provide colored areas for your signage project. You can use them as backgrounds, layout elements and for transitions, for example.

 

Creating a Color Asset

Choose Add → Generator → Color. Alternatively, you can click on the  button below the Assets pane and select the color asset there.

 

Adjusting a Color Asset

1. Click on the color asset in the assets panel.

2. Make the color adjustments using the sliders in the Inspector.

3. You can also click the Choose button in the color section of the Inspector and adjust the color by using a color wheel, sliders or other options.

Please notice: This function is no longer available in v2020. Old compositons can be used on your own risk.

Please notice: This function is outdated. Usage is on your own risk.

Quartz compositions are files created with Quartz Composer, a node-based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode development environment in OS X. For more information, please visit the Apple Developer Site.

Adding a Quartz Composition

Choose Add → Media → Quartz Composition. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select the Quartz composition there. Once you have added a Quartz composition, you can change its parameters in the Inspector.

Quartz compositions can be added like any other media asset to Creator but they are initially created in Quartz Composer. You will need this program if you wish to edit Quartz composition beyond the basic parameters offered in the Inspector pane in Creator.

 

Please notice: Player for Linux is not supporting Quartz Composition Assets.

HTML assets enable you to integrate web pages into your Digital Signage Project. HTML assets can display plain HTML files, HTML files from URLs, local folders with an index.html file, or files from web archives.

Creating an HTML Asset

Choose Add → Media → HTML. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select the HTML asset there.

Adjusting the HTML Asset

1. Click on the HTML asset in the Assets pane.

2. In the source section of the Inspector, select a value from the Type list and enter the source URL. You should immediately see the webpage in the Visualizer.

3. Set the values for the Interactive, Show pageloads, Transparent background and Lightweight repaint options, as described below.

4. Make the usual general adjustments to the asset in the Inspector.

Platinum licenses only:
You can set a Preload Duration of up to 30 seconds, which allows a sufficient buffer for slow-loading webpages. By default the page is loaded 6 seconds before the HTML asset is displayed.

Advanced Settings

HTML assets offer some advanced settings to allow you using these assets in different ways.

• Interactive: Select this to allow users to interact with the HTML asset via keyboard and mouse.

• Show pageloads: Select this option to show the content as it loads. Otherwise, the appearance of the asset will not change until the corresponding web page is fully loaded.

• Transparent background: Set this option to add a transparent background to the HTML asset. This won’t work with Flash files and may lead to unexpected results with some webpages.

• Lightweight repaint: This option is good for static pages with few updates or animations. Enabling it means the asset will only update if the Webkit reports changes, thus using less system resources.

If you’re trying to create a kiosk setup, you may want to use a Kiosk Playlist or a Full Screen Web Layer to add HTML interactivity.

Password Protected Webspace

If you’re using password protected webspace and have entered your credentials in your web browser, you can save it in the Keychain. However, this will only apply to the web browser and not to other applications.

To straighten this out, open Finder and go to Applications → Utilities → Keychain Access. Right-click on the corresponding keychain item and select Get Info → Advanced → Allow all applications to access this item. The keychain will now apply to all applications on your Mac.

Creator allows you to easily manage Digital Signage setups with multiple displays. If you need multiple displays to show different content streams at the same time, and want to handle this within a single Project, Multiscreen Assets are the way to go.

On the other hand, if you need to show content on a single video wall with multiple displays, you might want to refer to the Videowall section.

Note that either way you need to have the appropriate hardware and Player that can do the job. Feel free to contact us for more information.

Multiscreen Playback Logic

To configure Multiscreen assets appropriately, it is essential to take the following into account:

• If you want special content played on individual displays, you need to include these particular displays in your Multiscreen asset and add the corresponding content to it.

• Content added to the <Default> column of a Multiscreen asset serves as default content.

• Default content is played back on displays that are not included in the Multiscreen asset. If you include a display, and add no content to it, you’ve scheduled it to play back nothing.

Creating a Multiscreen Asset

Choose Add → Miscellaneous → Multiscreen. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select the Multiscreen asset there.

Before the asset is added to the assets list, you’ll be asked to select the displays or display groups that you want to include in the Multiscreen asset. The screens offered for selection are the displays available from the targets as configured in the Project Settings → Targets tab.

Note: Include only displays that you want to play back individual content on. If you want displays to play back just default content, do not include them in your Multiscreen asset.

Adjusting a Multiscreen Asset

1. Click on the Multiscreen asset in the Assets pane.

2. Add content to the <Default> column and arrange the time and order you want it to play.

3. Add content to the individual display columns in the Multiscreen asset and arrange the time and order you want it to play.

4. With the Switch By option you can set whether content playback is done by groups or by displays.

Note: When dragging multiple assets into a Multiscreen asset, press and hold the Alt button beforehand to distribute the assets selected across the columns starting at exactly the same time .

To have the Multiscreen asset played back, you need to add it to a Playlist or Arrangement. As the Multiscreen asset plays, each display will play its own content. All Players in the same sync group that are not included in the Multiscreen asset will play the content added to the <Default> column.

Multiscreen Preview

You can preview how your multi-screen playback will look by making just a few adjustments:

1. Click on to open the Project Settings .

2. Click on to go to the Preview tab.

3. Activate Multiscreen Preview and select a screen setup from the dropdown list next to it.

4. Start the Preview.

If you’re not sure how to use screen setups, see the corresponding section on the Videowall page. You can view a screencast on how to use Multiscreen assets here.

Note: When using a multi-screen setup, Player Settings and/or the macOS Dock switch to a different screen each time? Go to Mission Control in System Preferences and deselect Displays have separate Spaces. This should fix the problem.

The Alignment and Fill mode options in the Inspector allow you to position your content within an Arrangement layer.

 

Using Alignment

The Alignment setting shows you nine boxes. They represent the corresponding positions on the layer: from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. The position currently set is shown by a yellow indictor. The center box is always selected by default.

 

 

Selecting a different box will move the content in that direction within the frame. The outer most portion of the content will align with the corresponding border of the layer.

 

Alignment may behave slightly differently based on selected fill modes, the arrangement size, the display size, and other factors. You may have to experiment a bit to achieve the desired results.

 

Selecting a Fill Mode

The Fill mode determines how the layer frame will be filled by the content.

1. Original size: The content is displayed based on its original proportions. If the frame is smaller than the content, parts of the content may be cut off at the frame borders and become invisible.

2. Scale into frame: The content is resized in a way as to be completely visible and maintain its original proportions. Too large content is scaled down as little as possible, and to small content is scaled up as much as possible until both length and width fit completely into the frame.

3. Scale to fill frame: The content is resized so that the entire frame is filled. The content keeps its proportionality, but parts of it may be cut off at the frame borders and become invisible.

4. Scale to fit horizontally: Keeping proportionallity, the content is scaled so that its left and right borders touch the respective borders of the frame.

5. Scale to fit vertically: Keeping proportionallity, the content is scaled so that its top and bottom borders touch the respective borders of the frame.

6. Stretch to fill frame: The content is stretched to fill the entire layer. The content stays completely visible, but may lose it proportionality.

The Loop option in the Inspector allows you to repeatedly play back assets such as videos, and also playlists for a specified number of intervals.

 

Using Loop

To loop an asset or playlist, select the corresponding option in the Inspector. Selecting a number from the list next to it will specify how many times the asset or playlist will be played back. If you want more than the number of loops listed, select the other option and enter the number you want.

 

Alternatively, you can use the resize function of an asset to set the number of loops. Select the asset or playlist you want to loop in the Arrangement Timeline Editor. Hold the Shift key as you resize the asset with the mouse. This will increase the duration of the asset or playlist incrementally by the number of times it will loop. You can observe this in the loop number field next to the Loop option.

 

Loop Transition

In the Inspector, you can find an option for assets and playlists called Loop Transition. When asset or playlist content has a duration shorter than the time specified for it to play, the asset or playlist will end abruptly and, after a break, restart from the beginning.

 

By adjusting Loop Transition, you can ensure that the transition from the end of the playlist to the beginning of the next loop remains smooth. You can also set Loop Transition to be identical to the transition created between individual assets, thus making it impossible to detect the end of the playlist.

AppleScript is a powerful scripting language built into Mac OS X. It allows system-wide control of your Player Macs: virtually any system process or service can be started or stopped, any commands can be executed, and other applications can be started and controlled.

AppleScripts are often used for stage setups or on events such as trade fairs. To make sure everything is working fine, it is essential to test scripts before using them on the final setup. Also, make sure that the logged in user running the Player has sufficient system privileges to execute the scripts on your Players.

 

 

Creating an AppleScript

Choose Add → Command → AppleScript. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Commands pane and select the AppleScript there.

Adjusting an AppleScript

1. Add a command layer using the button below the Arrangement Layout Editor. This layer will appear in the Arrangement Timeline Editor on the right, having a green column header. There you can place the AppleScript at the appropriate time.

2. Double click on the AppleScript in the Commands pane.

3. Enter the AppleScript code into the space provided. Copy & paste may be a comfortable way to do that, however, please read the note below.

4. You may want to add a comment to the AppleScript, especially if you‘re working with multiple scripts. Use the Comment field provided in the Inspector.

You can find more details on AppleScript in the macOS Developer Library.

Note: We recommend writing scripts in the Creator editor or in a special programming editor. Copying scripts from word processors like TextEdit is not recommended as these automatically replace characters, e.g. simple hyphens with typographic hyphens, which results in runtime errors.

Please notice: Player for Linux is not supporting AppleScript

 

Shell scripts allow you to execute custom shell commands on Players. This is useful to mount or unmount external volumes and move or copy files for backups. Other typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution and printing text.

To make sure everything is working fine, it is essential to test scripts before using them on the final setup. Also, make sure that the logged in user running the Player has sufficient system privileges to execute the scripts on your Players.

 

 

Creating a Shell Script Asset

Choose Add → Command → Shell Script. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Commands pane and select the Shell Script there.

Adjusting a Shell Script

1. Add a command layer using the button below the Arrangement Layout Editor. This layer will appear in the Arrangement Timeline Editor on the right, having a green column header. There you can place the Shell Script at the appropriate time.

2. Double click on the Shell Script in the Commands pane.

3. Enter the code into the space provided.

4. You may want to add a comment to the Shell Script, especially if you‘re working with multiple scripts. Use the space provided in the Inspector.

Shell Scripts are a great way to gain a higher degree of control over your signage setup. You can find more details on Shell Scripts in the macOS Developer Library.

Note: We recommend writing scripts in the Creator editor or in a special programming editor. Copying scripts from word processors like TextEdit is not recommended as these automatically replace characters, e.g. simple hyphens with typographic hyphens, which results in runtime errors.

The usual way to control playback of the Players is obviously through scheduling and publishing in Creator. However, you can control many parts of your digital signage playback by sending external commands to Players. This can be done from virtually any application.

External commands are sent to running Players and Players for Mobile Devices/Player for TV (except overlays) via TCP/IP port 27182. Commands sent this way usually affect all Players in the same network segment. However, with filter options they can be sent to individual Players or Player groups.

Important note: To have external commands working on a Player, external control must be enabled for it. This option can be found in the Network section of the Displays tab in Player Settings.
Please ensure that also the Playlist you want to control must be „Remotely Startable“. Simply check the according option in the Inspector > Advanced section.

Semicolon Separated Commands

In order to execute multiple commands at virtually the same time, you can write the commands in the same line and separate them with a ‚;‘ semicolon.

Example:

start playlist -n "Playlist 1"; start playlist -o -n "Overlay 1"

Using Commands / Syntax

When using Player version 3.3.0 or later, you can use the following commands.

Here’s a list of some general commands.

• start playtype [play_type_and_arguments …] [-g group_name] [-p player_id]

  Starts a regular Playlist or other type of Playlist defined by the play type.

• stop playtype [play_type_and_arguments …] [-g group_name] [-p player_id]

  Stops a regular Playlist or other type of Playlist defined by the play type.

Note: To stop Playlists in overlay mode you need to use the -o option with the stop command.

Play Types

• playlist -n playlist_name

  Refers to regular Playlists.

  Example:

start playlist -n "Playlist 1"

Starts a Playlist or Arrangement with the given name. This will interrupt the currently Playlist content.

Options

Long options are synonymous with the corresponding short options. Both can be used Short options and long options can even be mixed.

• -n, -playlistname playlist_name

  The name of the Playlist. If the name has spaces, use quotation marks.

  Example:

start playlist -n "My new playlist"

• Example shell command:

echo 'start playlist -n "My new playlist"' | nc YourPlayerIP 27182

• -o, -overlay

  If this option is used, the Playlist or Arrangement will be played as overlay.

• -g, -group group_name

  Filter. Only if group name matches the Player’s group name, the command will be executed.

• dy, -display display_name

  Same as -p, -playerid

  Filter. Only if display_name matches the Player’s display name, the command will be executed.

• -fi, -fadein

  Sets the fade in time in seconds.

  Example (Fade in for 1 second):

start playlist -n "playlist" -fi 1

• -fo, -fadeout

  Sets the fade out time in seconds.

  Example (Fade out for 1 second):

stop playlist -n "playlist" -fo 1

• Example (Fade in and Fade out of 1 sec, at the end of the Playlist it will automatically fade out):

start playlist -n "playlist" -fi 1 -fo 1

• Example (The same as overlay):

start playlist -n "playlist" -o -fi 1 -fo 1

• -lp, -loop

  Sets a Playlist to an infinite loop.

 

HTTP command to control the Player with a Web Interface

The Player can also be controlled via a small Web Interface using HTTP Get commands. A sample can be downloaded here. The main functions can be found in the main.js. With the help of this interface you can easily start Playlists using commands such as the following one in your web browser:

http://yourPlayerIP:17236/services;execute?command=start%20playlist%20-n%20″YOUR-Playlistname

 

AMX command string to control the Player

SEND_STRING 0, "'start playlist -n "playlist name"'"

SEND_STRING – this is the command you program into the AMX and it has to be defined in AMX

0 – is the port you define in the AMX – you need to define all the network info in the AMX for the player – Player port is 27182

"'start playlist -n"playlist name"'"

is the ascii command that you send – with „playlist name“ being the name of the Playlist or Arrangement you wish to trigger.

Network commands allow you to send control commands as part of a Playlist to external devices. This enables you to extend your Digital Signage beyond the screen attached to your Player. You can for example control light and sound systems, activate and deactivate displays, or feed text to third-party systems via TCP/IP or UDP.
The commands you send depend on the receiving devices and must be interpretable by them. Please review the according documentation of the third party device.

 

 

Creating a Network Command

 

Choose Add → Command → Network Command. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Commands pane and select the Network Command there.

To enable Network Commands for your Player, go to Player Settings → Displays / Network / activate checkbox “Networking”.

Adjusting a Network Command

 

1. Add a command layer using the button below the Arrangement Layout Editor. This layer will appear in the Arrangement Timeline Editor on the right, having a green column header. There you can place the Network Command at the appropriate time.

2. Double click on the Network Command in the Commands pane.

3. Enter the IP address of the external target in the Server field of the Inspector.

4. Enter the port number through which the target can receive commands from external sources into the Port field of the Inspector.

5. Enter the network command into the Script area in the Editor pane.
   If you want to use hex bytes in your command check the Interpret Hex option and insert the command as in the following example:
   If you would want to write „hello“ (48 45 40 40 4F) insert „0x480x450x400x400x4F“.

6. Some targets require terminator characters at the end of a command line. Depending on the ASCII format, the terminator can be a line feed (LF), a carriage return (CR), or both (CRLF). You can select the corresponding value from the Terminator list.

7. You may want to make a comment for the network command, especially if you’re working with multiple network commands. Use the space provided in the Inspector

Note: To control devices with a serial communication interface (e. g. RS232), you can use standard serial device servers with an ethernet-to-serial interface. Such converters have a LAN interface and thus can forward network messages from Players to the connected serial devices.

The Creator allows you to directly apply a number of visual effects such as blurring, sharpening, Sepia etc, to the corresponding assets. This can save you time you would otherwise spend for making adjustments to media assets in external applications.

Effects can be applied to any asset that produces a visual output, such as image, text, streams, videos and Web pages. Effects work depending on the capability of the graphics card of the corresponding Mac. Therefore, not all effects will work on all Mac Players. On iOS and Linux based devices effects are generally not working.

 

 

Adding Effects

Drag the effect you want to use from the Effects pane to an asset. When you hover the effect over the corresponding asset, it will be highlighted in turquoise color indicating that the effect can be applied to it.

Effects can only be added to compatible assets used in an arrangements or playlists, but not to asset items in the Asset pane.

Managing Effects

To check which effects are applied to an asset, click on the corersponding asset and go to the Effectssection in the Inspector.

Multiple effects can be used simultaneously. However, it may lead to undesirable results if too many effects are applied to an effect.

Editing or Removing an Effect

1. Click on the corresponding asset in the playlist or arrangement. All applied effects are listed under the Effects section in the Inspector.

2. Select the effect you wish to edit or remove. Click on the Edit button to open a window allowing you to edit the effect parameters, such as color levels, intensity, radius and other values.

3. Clicking on the Remove button will remove the effect from the asset. Please note that all settings you have made to the effect will also be lost.

You may have to experiment with effects to create the look and feel you want. Effects may work differently depending on the assets you apply them to. You can double-check the effects with the preview function.

Audio In

Audio In assets allow you to add live audio feed to signage playback and have the audio content customized to individual Players. Customization is achieved by utilizing locally attached audio sources.

Audio In assets give you the flexibility to have audio content selected on the playout system at runtime. This way you are not bound to determining already during the creation of your signage project which audio content to play back.

Creating Audio In Assets

To add an Audio In asset to your signage project, choose Add → Assets → Capture and Streaming → Audio In. You can also click on the button below the Assets pane and select Audio In there.

Setting up Audio Input on a Player

To add live audio to your playout, you need a local audio source attached to any of your playout systems. This can be, for instance, any source attached to the audio in connector of your Mac, or to any external audio device that is attached to and detected by the Player Mac.

Audio In assets use the audio input device set up in the System Preferences of the corresponding Player Mac. Setting the audio input device is quite easy:

1. Connect the audio device you want to use to the Player Mac. If you want to use the built-in audio in connector, no action is required in this step.

2. Open the System Preferences dialog of the Player Mac. Select Sound and go to the Input tab.

3. Select the corresponding input device that you want to connect your audio source to.

4. Your Player Mac is prepared to play the Audio In asset. Before publishing your project, you need to attach the actual audio source to the audio device.

Note: The Audio Input entry in the Input Devices tab of the Player Preferences has no effect on the playback of Audio In assets. This setting controls the audio input device related to video capture assets. Therefore, do change this setting only in relation to video capture.

Live Video Input allows you to add high quality video to your signage playback and have the video content customized to individual Players. This is achieved by utilizing locally attached video sources.

If you need to have video content selected on the playout system at runtime, Live Video Input is what you need. With it, you are not bound to determining already during the creation of your signage project which video content to play back.

Creating Live Video Input Assets

 

To add a Live Input Video asset to your signage project, choose Add → Assets → Capture and Streaming→ Live Input Video. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select Live Input Video there.

Since version 4.5.3 you will have multiple settings for your native capture inputs:

 

Recommend mode for single displays on a Mac:

Mode A: Use shared Memory (default)
Mode B: Use IOSurfaces (need more performance)

Recommend mode for multiple displays on one Mac:

Mode C: Use IOSurfaces with OpenGL
Mode D: Use multiple IOSurfaces (need more performance)

 

Setting up Live Video Input

 

To add live video to your playout, you need a capture device attached to each of your playout systems. In Player settings you have the choice between AV Capture (e.g. iSight devices, USB Webcams, AJA U-Tap) and Native Capture Inputs (e.g. Blackmagic devices). We recommend Blackmagic and AJA U-TAP devices.

 

The corresponding Live Video Input device is selected in the Preferences dialog of the corresponding Player. Proceed as follows:

• Open the Preferences dialog of the corresponding Player and go to the Input Devices tab. Choose the corresponding architecture and then your device from the Video Input list.

• If you have chosen AV Capture Input (e. g. AJA U-TAP), setup a supported Format and Frame Rate (fps) of your capture devices. Then choose your Audio input if needed.

• With macOS Mojave a new security mechanism has been introduced that requires additional confirmation of the device:
  1. Setup AJA U-Tap in the Player settings
  2. Start Player with Live Video Asset in your Default Playlist and stop it after a few seconds.
  3. Confirm the system dialog by clicking „OK“ to allow access to the capture card.

  

• If you clicked „Don’t Allow“ by mistake, you can later on change this permission in the system preferences under > Security & Privacy > Privacy.

  

• If you have chosen Native Capture Inputs, note that the corresponding Blackmagic settings in Player are quite similar to the settings you would make in the native Blackmagic Media Express software. Then choose the same “Input source identifier” like in the Creator asset.

• From the Audio Input list, select the audio device for the video capture asset.

• Make further adjustments in the Creator by modifying the Inspector settings such as the duration, fill mode, or cropping margins.

 Video Stream (SDP) assets allow you to add real-time video streaming to your playout. This makes it possible to acquire streaming video, such as live TV, broadcast announcements, and others using SDP files to access predefined settings.

 

Setting up Video Stream (SDP)

Choose Add → Assets → Capture and Streaming → Video Stream (SDP)… Alternatively, you can click on the  button below the Assets pane and select Video Stream (SDP) there.

 

To add a Video Stream (SDP) asset, you need to have an SDP file prepared. When creating this asset, a Finder dialog will prompt you to select the corresponding file. The asset will automatically be named after the file selected, i.e. if the file name is „wiki.sdp“, the corresponding asset name will be „wiki“.

 

The advantage of using an SDP file for streaming is that the relevant settings for the stream have already been prepared. Once you’ve added the Video Stream (SDP) asset, these settings appear automatically in the Inspector, where you can make any adjustments needed.

 

SDP is the abbreviation for Session Description Protocol, a format for describing streaming media initialization parameters. Please refer to this Wikipedia article for further details on SDP.

 Video Stream (URL) allows you to add real-time video streaming to your signage playback. This makes it possible to present streaming video, such as live TV, broadcast announcements, and so on.

Video Stream (URL) is advantageous because it is updated automatically and saves you the time and cost of creating new content.

 

Setting up Video Stream (URL)

Choose Add → Assets → Capture and Streaming → Video Stream (URL). Alternatively, you can click on the  button below the Assets pane and select Video Stream (URL) there.

 

Adjusting a Video Stream (URL)

1. Add the corresponding URL (HTTP/RTP/RTSP/UDP) to the URL field in the Inspector. You’ll need to use a specific format for this, for example „udp://address:port“ or „rtsp://example.com/media.mp4“.

2. Select the De-interlaced option if you want your video to appear de-interlaced.

3. Make further adjustments in the Inspector, such as the duration, fill mode, or cropping margins.

The VNC Remote Screen asset allows you to show the content of non-Mac computer displays in your signage playback.

Setting up a VNC Remote Screen

Choose Add → Assets → Capture and Streaming → VNC Remote Screen. Alternatively, you can click on the button below the Assets pane and select VNC Remote Screen there.

Note: If you’re trying to access a Windows computer, be sure a VNC server (e.g. UltraVNC) is installed on the Windows host. VNC connections to MACs are quite inconvenient, for host MACs require you to enter login credentials at every start of a VNC connection.

Adjusting VNC Remote Screen

1. Enter the multicast server ID (or the IP address of the source device is within your local network) in the Inspector.

2. Enter the port in the Inspector.

3. Enter the password in the Inspector to grant remote access to the target system.

4. Make any final adjustments needed, such as the duration, fill mode, or cropping margins.

Note: Depending on transmission rates of the VNC connection, animations and movies may not be performed smoothly.

Arrangements are used whenever dynamic, fast changing signage with a complex visual structure and timeline is needed.

Like Playlists, Arrangements are containers that can be published to the Players. Both Arrangements and Playlists are the building blocks for daily schedules and complex signage campaigns.

However, whereas Playlists hold their content just in a sequential order, Arrangements are more complex for they consist of a number of so called layers. Each Arrangement layer has its own timeline and content. Similar to Playlists, the content of layers is arranged sequentially.

Additionally, layers can be set up to show its content in defined areas of the Arrangement. These areas can even be dynamically transformed along the timeline, making Arrangement layers a very powerful component to shape the visual structure and dynamics of your signage playback.

In summary, you can say that a Arrangement is a collection of playlist-like layers that can be displayed in certain areas of the signage display. Arrangements are a great way to add a unique look to your signage and realize your visual ideas.

Creating and Adjusting an Arrangement

Click on the button below the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Arrangement. Give the new Arrangement a telling name in the Inspector.

After you’ve created the Arrangement, toggle the Editor view to Arrangement Layout Editor by clicking on the button in the upper right corner of the editor pane.

New Arrangements have two layers by default, a Background and a Foreground layer. To place a layer, drag it into position. When moving layers, automatic snapping indicated by help lines will align the moved layer to other layers nearby. To bypass this, hold the CTRL key before dragging the layer.

Resize the layer by dragging its edge handles. Adjust a layer more precisely by entering numerical values into the corresponding Inspector fields. You can keep the aspect ratio of a layer when adjusting its size by holding the CTRL and Shift keys. Alternatively, you can set the Lock aspect ratio option in the Inspector.

To add more layers, click the button below the Editor pane. To remove a layer, select it and press the button. You can check examples of Arrangements in the Templates provided with Creator.

Changing Layer Order

Layers are ordered on top of one another. This means the content of the top layer covers all content below it. You can change the order of layers in order to show the content as you like it.

1. Select the Arrangement of which you want to change the layer order.

2. If you’re not already in the Arrangement Layout Editor, click on the button in the upper right corner of the Editor pane.

3. Click on the layer that you wish to move up or down.

4. Click on the button to move the layer up and on the button to move it down.

5. Repeat the steps 3. and 4. for each layers you wish to rearrange.

Layers will only move up or down one step at a time. However, you can select multiple layers by holding the SHIFT key when clicking on a layer, and then move the selected layers collectively up or down.

Adding Wiggle to a Layer

Layers can be set to move around („wiggle“) slightly within their Arrangement. This makes the layers appear less static. You may want to use this to animate a logo or draw attention to specific elements of your signage project.

Wiggle moves the layer back and forth both vertically and horizontally while scaling it. This gives the impression that the layer is moving in three dimensions. To which degree wiggling is done can be set in the Wiggle section of the Inspector.

Carry out the following steps to add wiggle to a layer and set it up according to your needs.

1. Select an Arrangement to add wiggle to some of its layers. Since they are not visible, Command layers cannot wiggle.

2. Select a layer and activate Enable Wiggle Mode in its Inspector settings.

3. Adjust the Speed value of X Direction, Y Direction and Scale. A higher value makes the layer move or scale more quickly.

4. Adjust the Ampl. value of X Direction, Y Direction and Scale. A higher value makes the layer move farther in the indicated direction or scale larger.

5. Adjust the Offset value of X Direction, Y Direction and Scale. A higher value makes the layer move farther outside of the radius set.

If you’re not sure which values to enter, try using the preview function to see the changes in action and find the settings most suitable to you.

The Arrangement Timeline Editor is the central workshop in the creation of digital signage projects with the Creator. Based on the layout created in the Arrangement Layout Editor, it is the Arrangement Timeline Editor where you place your assets to put them in a sequential order.

It is here where to implement the script you have in mind: place a picture in the background layer, and have it change once in a while. Let a text ticker with the latest news run at the bottom part of the screen. Start a video and let it move within the arrangement.

 

 

Accessing the Arrangement Timeline Editor

1. Create a new arrangement with the layers needed, or select one that you have already created.

2. If the Timeline Editor isn’t active, click on the button on the top right of the editor panel.

Once you’ve set up a layout, you can now place your assets, playlists and even other arrangements into the various layers in the Arrangement Timeline Editor.

Filling a Layer in the Arrangement Timeline Editor

1. Drag your asset, playlist or arrangement onto the appropriate column in the Arrangement Timeline Editor. These columns have the same names as their corresponding layers in the Arrangement Layout Editor. When dragging multiple assets, you can hold the ‚alt‘ button to position them horizontally across the columns.

2. Once the asset, playlist, or arrangement has been placed, you can adjust the duration by dragging the bottom corner or by entering the duration into the Inspector.

3. You can now make any remaining adjustments in the Inspector, such as fade, loop, or make general comments.

4. You can make more precise adjustments to a selected layer by entering values into the corresponding sections in the Inspector.

The Arrangement Timeline Editor can be adjusted by using the available sliders in the bottom left corner to help you work with it more efficiently and display your timeline accordingly.

Adjusting the Arrangement Timeline Editor

The following settings are located directly in the editor pane and will help you to use the Arrangement Timeline Editor more efficiently.

1. Use the slider on the bottom left of the editor pane to make the layer columns wider or narrower.

2. Use the slider on the side bottom left of the editor pane to change the time increments for the layer columns.

3. Click on the button at the bottom of the editor pane to allow or avoid gaps. Avoiding gaps means that an added asset, playlist, or arrangement will automatically snap to the content in the layer column.

4. Click on the button at the bottom of the editor pane to allow or disable replacing. With replacing disabled, added assets, playlists, or arrangements cannot be placed on previously added ones, and will automatically be added after.

5. Click on the button at the bottom of the editor pane to allow or disable auto zoom. Auto zoom occurs when you drag and hold an asset, playlist, or arrangement over the timeline editor.

6. Click on the button at the bottom of the editor pane to allow or disable magnetic clips, which make assets, playlists, and arrangements will follow each other as you move them in the layer column.

7. Click on the button at the top of a layer column. This makes the layer the master layer, and by clicking on the button at the top of other columns, they’ll adapt their length to match the master layer.

A great deal of work takes place in the Arrangement Timeline Editor as this is where content is ultimately added and adjusted. We highly suggest becoming familiar with its various functions described above.

The Arrangement Layout Editor is used to set up the visual structure of an Arrangement. This is done by creating and organizing layers. Here you can create and delete layers, arrange their size and position, and determine which layers are placed in the front and which one in the back.

 

 

Accessing the Arrangement Layout Editor

 

To open the Arrangement Layout Editor, create a new Arrangement or select one you have already created. Then click on the  button on the top right of the Editor pane. It will turn  blue indicating the Layout Editor is now active.

 

The Store Layout button allows you to save the current layout of the arrangement and apply it later when adding new arrangements. Move the slider knob below the Screens pane to zoom the screens in or out. When the  button is inactive, you can drag single screens. When it is active, you can drag the whole view. Click on the  button to make the layers fit into the Screens pane.

 

Proceed with creating layers and adjusting their size, position and rotation. Click on the  button to add a new layer. Click on the  button to delete the selected layer. You can also determine, which layer to show in the foreground, and which in the background. Click on the  button to move a layer upwards, click  to move it downwards. Foreground layers visually cover layers that are positioned further back.

 

Layers can be animated, i.e. they can be set to change position, size and rotation over time. This is achieved with so called Styles. A Style is a stored set of position, size and rotation parameters. The Arrangement Timeline Editor allows you to change the Style of layers along their timeline.

 

You can find more detailed information on how to animimate layers in the Layer Animation section. For detailed information on how to create Arrangements in the Arrangement Layout Editor, see the Arrangements page.

Creator allows you to easily manage Digital Signage setups with multiple displays. If you need to show content on a single video wall with multiple displays, Videowall is your choice. This allows you to have content shown on a very large display.

If you need to manage playback of multiple content streams on scattered displays from within one Project, please refer to the Multiscreen Assets section.

Before you begin creating and working with a Videowall component, we recommend you first create a screen setup as shown in the following section. When the screen setup is completed, you are ready to add and use Videowalls.

 

Creating a Screen Setup

In order to create a screen setup, you first need to add the individual screens that you plan to use. The parameters that are required are the horizontal and vertical size of the display area in pixels, and the spaces („bezels“) between the displays, also in pixels.

To ensure your content is played back accurately across multiple displays, you need to precisely measure these values and enter them into the corresponding dialog. Click on to open the Project Setting, then open the Screens tab and carry out the following steps.

1. Add a new screen to the setup by clicking the button below the display list.

   1. The window below will appear where you can enter the data for the new screen.

      

 

1. Enter a Display name, and if required a Group name. These names should be identical with the ones used on the corresponding Player.

2. Enter the dimension of the screen in pixels.

3. Enter the bezel size in the corresponding fields, also in pixels.

Repeat all steps for every display you want to use. Then arrange the windows in the screen setup dialog the way they are physically arranged. Simply drag them into the position that you want them. You can disable the snap function by holding CTRL as you drag items.

 

Move the slider knob below the Screens pane to zoom the screens in or out. When the button is inactive, you can drag single screens. When it is active, you can drag the whole view. Click on the button to make the buttons fit into the Screens pane.

To import and export your screen setup, click on the button and choose the corresponding option. See below in this section how to work with the Screen Types Library. For details on how to calculate bezel values, see below as well. Refer to „Working with Different Screen Sizes“ when working with differently sized screens.

When you’re finished, close the Screens window by clicking the Done button.

 

Creating and Configuring a Videowall

Now that your screen setup is complete, you can create a Videowall component. Click on the button below the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Videowall. Without a screen setup, you will be asked to create one and be directed to the setup window described above.

Once you’ve added a Videowall and chosen a screen setup, you can adjust the component.

1. Select the corresponding Videowall in the Arrangements & Playlists pane.

2. If you’re not already in the Arrangement Layout Editor, click on the button on the upper right of the Editor pane.

3. You can now add layers to the Videowall just as you would in Arrangements. Be aware that Layer content is not visible when being directly over bezels.

 

Working with the Screen Types Library

You can see a list of the screens you have used previously in the screen types library. Essentially, all screens you’ve configured in previous projects are stored here, so that you can easily refer to their dimensions for use in future projects.

The Screen Types Library can be accessed by choosing Window → Screen Types Library. You can also import and export screen type lists to other Creator Pros by using the button in the bottom right corner.

 

 

Calculating the Size of Bezels

To calculate bezel size in pixels, you need to know the pixel density of the adjoining screens and the bezel width. For instance, take two horizontally adjoined displays of the same size (e.g. 1060 mm) and the same number of horizontal pixels (e.g. 1920 px). Each display has a 30 mm frame around the display.

Which values to enter in the Bezel Left and Bezel Right fields of both screens? Divide the pixel count of the screen by its width, i.e. 1920 px / 1060 mm. The result is ca. 1.81 pixels per mm. Multiply that by the bezel width, and you get the number to enter in Bezel Left and Bezel Right, i.e. 1.81 x 30 = 54.3. You’re good when entering 55 in both fields.

 

Working with Different Screen Sizes

We recommend using identical displays for it is easier to work with. However, you can use a mixture of different displays. In that case you will have to calculate the bezel size values individually for each display type. In addition, the difference in pixel density must be compensated for, which is a bit more tricky.

For instance, take two 46″ and 32″ HD displays. The pixel count and aspect ratio of the two above displays are identical (HD), but they have different physical extensions and therefore content moving across the displays will move different distances at the same time.

To compensate for that, you can adjust the pixel count of the smaller display using the ratio between the pixel density of both displays. In this special case, the ratio of the pixel density is inverse to the ratio of their size. Compute 32″/46″ and multiply it with 1920 px, and with 1080 px.

As a result, you get ca. 1336 px and ca. 752 px respectively. Enter the values for the 32″ display. Player will compensate for the different resolutions and scale the content in the corresponding display. As a result, physical distances on both displays will basically be the same.

iOS Arrangements can be used to play back signage projects on iOS/iPadOS devices.

Due to the performance available on iOS/iPadOS devices, iOS Arrangements are limited compared to regular Arrangements in Creator. They offer one Content Layer covering the whole display, and one text ticker overlay. While the Content Layer is fixed, the text ticker can be resized and placed freely.

To have your content displayed on iOS devices, Player Silver must be running on your iOS/iPadOS devices.

You will need to download the app from the App Store and license it by assigning a Player Silver license in sedna.cloud.

Creating an iOS Arrangement

Click on the below the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select iOS Arrangement. A window will be displayed where you can give the iOS Arrangement a name and enter the resolution of the target iOS/iPadOS device. You can choose your device from a list of presets.

Note: If you want to feed content to multiple iOS/iPadOS devices with different screen resolutions, you need to create as many iOS Arrangements as screen resolutions in use. Otherwise, the content may not be displayed properly on some devices.

Once the iOS Arrangement is created, you can fill it with content the same way you would do with any other Arrangement component. Be aware that only media your iOS/iPadOS device can play back will be displayed properly.

Layer Animation is an important tool to create dynamic content. Instead of limiting content to static positions, you can have layers move across the display, rotate, and change in size. The content will go with the layers and make a dynamic impression on the audience.

Animation is achieved by creating transition points, so called Styles, and making the corresponding layer go through these points in the order you intend. Creating styles allows you to determine how the content is animated. The more styles you use, the more you can narrow down how animations are carried out.

Within the Arrangement Timeline View you can set the exact time when a layer is to change to a particular style. The application computes the difference in parameters and transits the affected layer from the original style to the next one. You can animate any number of layers if the system performance is sufficient.

 

Adding Layer Animation

1. Select an Arrangement. Open the Layout Editor View and select the layer you want to animate.

2. Go to Inspector > Style tab. In the Styles section, click on the button to create a new style.

3. Give the style a name. Move the layer and change its size at your discretion.

4. Repeat steps 2. and 3. for any number of styles. The more styles you use, the more precisely you can determine the way animations are carried out.

Try switching between the styles you’ve created. You will see the corresponding layer move to the position determined by the corresponding style.

Note: Any changes in the Zone and Wiggle sections of Inspector are applied to the currently selected style. If you’re satisfied with the settings of a specific style, we recommend you create a new style to preserve the settings of the current style.

Now that you have created some Styles, open the Arrangement Timeline Editor to add some assets to the layers. In the following example, we use two Color assets for demonstration purposes. We’ll add a blue Color asset to the „Background“ layer and a red one to the „Foreground“ layer.

 

 

This example already contains some styles: notice the light grey column on the right edge of the „Foreground“ layer. Here you can set the sequence of layer styles and define with it the animation of the layer. If you hover the mouse icon over this space, a white diamond-like icon will appear within it.

Left click to define the exact position of the new style. From the menu appearing now you can select one of the styles you’ve created. Two yellow diamond icons connected by a solid green line represent the original style, the transition time and the target style.

Drag the upper diamond to determine the time the animation begins at, and the lower diamond to set the end time of the animation. A longer line indicates the transition between the styles takes more time and thus is carried out at a slower speed.

Click and drag a green line to move an entire animation to a new position. To change a style, right click on the lower diamond icon of an animation and select the desired style. Dotted lines between styles indicate time periods where no animation takes place.

Animating the Order of Layers

Your original Arrangement has layers that are in the background and others that are in the foreground. This order can also be changed by means of layer styles. You can bring layers to the front that were originally in the background and vice versa.

To achieve this, use the Arrange function in the Zone section on the Inspector. With these settings, you change the position of the affected style in relation to the other styles. Combined with animations, you can create some very interesting animations.

To control when the layer order is switched, click the solid green line and go to the Layeranimation section of Inspector. Use the Arrange slider to modify the timing, or enter the number manually. A value of 0.5 means the switch takes place right in the middle of the animation, 0 at the beginning and 1 at the end.

In addition to resizing and moving them, layers can also be rotated in order to give content an even more dynamic appearence. Layer rotation is good for adding a different look to your signage projects and is particularly useful for content such as logos.

 

 

Rotating a Layer

1. Open the Arrangement Layout Editor and select the layer you wish to rotate.

2. Click and drag the handle on the dotted circle inside the layer. As you drag it, the layer is rotated accordingly. Enlarge the circle in order to allow for a finer adjustment to the rotation.

3. Alternatively, you can click on the layer and enter an angular degree value in the Rotation field in Inspector’s Zone section. Positive values rotate layers clockwise, while negative values rotate them counter-clockwise.

 

Visually, a value of 0 is equivalent to -360, and 1 is in its result equivalent to -359. However, regarding layer animation there is quite a difference. The animation of a layer from 0 to -359 degrees rotates the layer almost full circle counter-clockwise, while from 0 to 1 degree the layer barely rotates at all.

 

Also, when returning to the Default style, which be set for convenience to a rotation of 0 degree, a layer will be rotated in the former case -359 degrees full circle, while in the latter case a tiny rotation of just 1 degree is required to return to default.

 

Note: Foreground layers that are rotated might cover content of layers further back in the layer order. To avoid that, you can bring to front layers that need to be shown all the time, or take care they are outside the area covered by the rotated layers. You can learn more about layer order in the Arrangement section.

A Masking Layer can be added to an existing Layer in an Arrangement to display only certain pixels of an Asset in that Layer.

It comes in quite handy whether you want to cut out sections of footage or stitch two content pieces together.

Next to your Creator and a Player Platinum for macOS, all you need is an image (png) or video file (mov) containing premultiplied alpha.

To set up a Masking Layer

• Create a new Arrangement with the “+” button in the “Arrangements & Playlist“ section.

• Switch to the Arrangement Layout Editor in the top right corner of the timeline window and add a New Layer.

• Select this Layer and add a “Masking Layer” for it.

  Note that the Masking Layer must be positioned between the Background and the New Layer.

• Switch back to the Timeline editor and drop your assets in Background and New Layer, add your image or video with alpha to the “New Layer Mask“
. The masking image must be a PNG, animated masks have to be quicktime MOV with a premultiplied alpha channel.

• The Masking Layer is by default a “Transparent Layer Background”.

  This can be modified by selecting the Masking Layer, and choosing a Color Type in the Inspector pane.

  For a projection cutout leave the Background Layer empty or choose “Single Color” and select black (RGB 0/0/0).

• Select the Arrangement and preview the effect or publish your Project to a Player Platinum right away.

Note that the Masking Layer will show content from the Background in the transparent sections, and display content from the top Layer on opaque areas.

You can store an arrangement layout for the use in future projects. When doing so, you store just the layout as you see it in the Arrangement Layout Editor, but not the content placed in the layers.

 

Storing layouts is a great way to preserve your work as you’re going on with experimenting. To exchange layouts between projects, you can drag a layout from the library and drop it into another project.

 

Storing a Layout

1. Click the Store Layout button below the Arrangement Layout Editor. If you’re currently in a different editor, click on the  in the upper right corner of the Editor pane.

2. A window will open showing you the saved layout and the layouts that you have recently saved.

 

The Arrangement timeline, all playlists and the content used are not stored.

In general, you can use HTML Assets with Arrangement layers, and that’s also the recommended way. In some cases you might find that the performance, interactivity, stability or appearance of some Web pages are not to your satisfaction in this setting.

If that’s the case, try a Full Screen Web Layer that might address the issues named above. It may secure the Web page you want to display is shown appropriately. However, there is a drawback. Full Screen Web Layers are full screen, and they are always on top. Also, you can’t animate them.

Essentially, a Full Screen Web Layer is like a Safari browser that is not processed by the Player application. So you lose a great deal of flexibility and creativity compared to the use of simple Layers. Therefore, they should be used only if highest accuracy in displaying a challenging Web page is imperative.

Note: In any case, we recommend using HTML pages that are specifically tailored for signage projects. This gives you maximal control of the appearance and the content you present to your audience. For instance, you can avoid ugly scroll bars and content annoyingly disappearing off screen.

Adding a Full Screen Web Layer

Click on the button below the Arrangement Layout Editor and select Full Screen Web Layer → Web 1. The new Full Screen Web Layer will be shown at the bottom of the Arrangement layout.

Generally speaking, one full screen web layer requires one arrangement, but you can create up to four Full Screen Web Layers per Arrangement. To make their content visible at the same time, you need to adjust the settings of the HTML assets placed in them.

Editing a Full Screen Web Layer

In the Arrangement Timeline Editor, you will see a single column for each Full Screen Web Layer. You can only add HTML assets to this kind of layer.

When that Arrangement is played on the Player, the HTML asset will appear according to the Inspector settings made for it. The HTML asset will be navigable as usual, assuming you have made the right settings for the HTML assets and the HTML interactivity in the Player settings.

To make the assets of multiple Full Screen Web Layers visible, you have to adjust in particular the HTML asset settings in the Size, Layout Behavior, Texture Adjustment and Transform sections in Inspector.

You can also put an asset, such as a video or a color, in the background layer and create a border for the full screen web layer. To do so, select Transparent Background for the HTML asset in the full screen web layer and adjust it to a smaller size.

Note: Whether you use Arrangements or Full Screen Web Layers to show HTML assets, it is strongly recommended to thoroughly test the Web pages you want to present before going live with your project.

The function of a Playlist is quite simple: It plays the listed items in a sequential order one at a time. Any assets in a playlist will play through in the order in which you arrange them.

 

However, you can put more than just assets such as images or videos in a Playlists. You can also place arrangements or other playlists in a Playlist. Especially arrangements allow you to create a fascinating multimedia experience for your audience.

 

 

Of course, Playlist can also be placed into arrangements, which is an important feature to create exciting content. They save you time of adding assets individually to arrangements and allow you to put similar content together.

 

Creating a New Playlist

 

Click on the  button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Playlist. Then proceed to the Inspector and adjust the settings of the new playlist. Give it a speaking name, a color label and type in a comment, if needed.

 

The following Inspector settings located in the Advanced section need special mention for they control the behavior of the playlist:

• Remotely startable: Activate this, if you need to remotely control the playlist. This setting is also needed to activate the Playlist Control feature on iOS devices.

• Support ‚Player for iOS‘: This needs to be activated, if you want to have this playlist played back by Player Silver on iOS/padOS.

• Random playback: Activate this, if you want to avoid playlist assets being always played back in the same order.

 

Using a Playlist with Player Silver on iOS/padOS

To use regular playlists with Player Silver on iOS/padOS, the Support ‘Player for iOS’ option must be enabled. Without it enabled, you can neither play back the list as default or scheduled content, nor trigger the playback of the playlist via command.

 

To enable presentation mode control, enable the Remotely Startable option. Enable Random Playback to have the used assets played in random order.

 

Random Playback

Usually, the content of playlists is always played in the same sequential order. You can have the assets be played in random order by enabling the Random Playback option. Random playback is carried out with the following constraints:

• The assets will be played in loops. A loop is completed, and a new one starts, when all assets in the playlist are played once.

• No asset will be played back-to-back ever, except the playlist consist of just one asset.

• The random playback sequence is generated by Player instances. Random playback can not be synchronized between Players.

 

Filling a Playlist

1. Double-click on the playlist in the playlists panel.

2. Drag assets, other playlists or arrangements into the editor pane to add them to the playlist.

3. Once there, you can rearrange the order in which they will play, add effects, or make general adjustments in the Inspector.

 

The Creator checks for circular embedding of playlists and prevents it. This means you can’t put a playlist into itself. It is also not possible to put any component into a playlist that contains the target playlist itself or has sub-components that contain it.

Exported Playlists can be imported in other Creator instances allowing you to work on them on other Macs.

 

Simply drag and drop the Playlist file into another project or Creator interface. Alternatively, you can right-click on the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Import… from the context menu.

 

Take care that the playlists you want to import are exported with a Creator of the same version as the Creator you are starting the import with.

 

 

Playlist from CSV

 

You can also generate a playlist by importing a CSV file. This comes in handy when preparing playlists – especially large ones – outside of the Creator. You can use this feature to define the order of your clips and their durations.

 

A valid CSV file has to consist of two columns, where one is the assetname (as specified in your project) and one is the duration (in seconds), both separated by a comma. The referenced assets have to be already stored inside the project.

 

Importing a CSV

Click on the  button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane, select Playlist from csv… and choose a .csv file from your harddisk.

You can use the first row as name for your playlist by checking Use Playlistname from first row. Make sure the first row necessarily ends with a comma.
Next you have to define which column contains the clip name and which one contains the duration by checking the respective checkboxes. By clicking OK your playlist will be generated and added to your project.

 

Note that CSV files for import have a different structure than exported CSV files (which follow the pattern „Start“,“End“,“Content“,“Duration“ – for example „00:00:00.000″,“00:00:01.000″,“assetname“,“00:00:01.000″). So if you wish to export a playlist from your project for editing in external software (e.g. Excel) make sure to modify the structure before you reimport the edited file.

You can export Playlists for use in other Projects and in other Creators. Exporting a Playlist will save its structure and Assets.

To export a Playlist, simply right-click on the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Export… from the context menu. You will then be prompted to save the Playlist on your hard drive and give it a name.

Note that all Assets used will be exported, even Assets that were deleted from the Asset pane. To remove these Assets, use the Consolidate Project … option from the File menu.

Timer Playlists are special playlists that allow you to determine for each individual asset used at which time it can be played back. An examples for the use of Timer Playlists is the announcement of a weekly rotating lunch menu or sales actions that take place corresponding to the day of the week.

 

When the playback time of a Timer Playlist starts, it checks the first asset whether the current time is a valid playback time for the asset. If the time is valid, the playback of the asset is started, if not, the next asset is checked for validity.

 

Creating a Timer Playlist

Click on the  button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Timer Playlist.

 

Filling a Timer Playlist

 

To fill a Timer Playlist with assets, double click the Timer Playlist in the Arrangements & Playlists pane. Then simply drag and drop the assets you want to use into the Editor pane. Drag individual items to the required place to change the playback order. Add effects and make general adjustments in the Inspector.

 

 

Setting up Timer Playlist assets

To change the settings of an asset, double-click on the Timer Playlist in the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select the item you want to modify. Go to the Validity section in the General tab in the Inspector. Uncheck the days and set the time period in which you want the item to be valid.

 

Select the Enabled feature in the Validity section to make the asset active or inactive. In the Editor pane, expired assets are displayed in gray color and show the number of days since expiration in the status column. In the Editor section in the main menu, you can select Remove Expired Clips to remove assets that have expired. Only assets that have the Enabled option selected will be removed this way.

 

You can limit an asset to certain hours of a day within the valid Timer Playlist playback time. By selecting Restrict to time frame, you can set the asset to only play during the restricted hours.

 

Work Example

In this example, a Timer Playlist is used to run a series of video sales advertisements on certain days. Let’s say you have a store having distinct sales actions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. For these days, you want to play a video announcing the sales action. This is a great time to use a Timer Playlist.

 

Start by adding any video assets you want to show. Use two regular videos that will be shown everyday and one video for each sales day. Name the clips accordingly. Now add them to the Timer Playlist.

 

 

When you click on a video asset in this playlist, the data within the Inspector changes. Note the Validitysection in the General tab of the Inspector. Click on the video designated for Mondays. Since you only want it to play on Mondays, deselect all other days as pictured below.

 

 

Now do the same for the other sales advertisements on their corresponding days. By doing so, you set the sales content to only play on the corresponding days, while all other videos with no changes are set to play throughout the week.

 

Useful Tips

No Content = Black Display: If you create a Timer Playlist with periods at which no content is valid, nothing is displayed. On the other hand, if valid content isn’t sufficiently long to fill the validity time, the Timer Playlist will resume the playlist from start and loop the content until the validity time has expired.

 

Playback Time: If you carry out publishing within the validity period of a Timer Playlist, the playback won’t start necessarily at the beginning. For instance, if you have multiple one-hour long assets and publish the project 1.5 hours into the validity time, Player will start playback at 30 minutes of the second asset in line.

 

Time Settings: Players always use their local time to interpret the time set. This is important to bear in mind when creating Timer Playlists for Players in different time zones.

A Presentation is a special component that allows you to cycle through content manually.

 

The specialty in the Presentation component lies in the fact that the playback control is done from within the Creator in the first place. In addition, Presentations can be controlled via network commands.

 

Creating a Presentation

Click on the button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Presentation.

Using a Presentation

When working with Presentation components, the Editor pane shows three sections. The playback control bar is located on top, the slide playlist in the middle, and an area at the bottom of the Editor where you can set a background and a frame image for the used content.

The first step when working with Presentations is to add assets to the component. Just drag and drop the corresponding assets to the Slides section. To change the playback order of the slides, just drag the corresponding item to its place. You can add any Asset from the library. However, we recommend keeping Presentations as simple as possible.

Next, you may consider adding a background and a frame to the slides. The background will be shown where the frame and the slides are transparent. The frame image will be shown on top of any content as an ornamental element. You may work completely without background and frame images.

Once you have put the slides in the correct order, you can start your Presentation by clicking on the triangular Play button. This only works if the built-in Player is running or a Player is setup in the project. Learn here how to connect the Creator and Player.

If a Player is connected, the Play button will start the presentation and you can use the navigation buttons in the Creator to step through your presentation. Use the Jump option to go directly to a particular slide. The drop down box on the right side of the play controls defines how the presentation is started:

1. Start (normal): Scheduled content is interrupted and the Presentation is started.

2. Start as Overlay: Scheduled content will continue playing, but the presentation will play on top of it. Note that this can result in audio confusion because the scheduled audio may keep on playing.

3. Start in Preview: Starts the presentation in the preview Player.

Useful Tips

Playback Control: You can control the playback of Presentations from within the Creator or via network commands. No playback control is available on the Player.

Default Content: A Presentation can’t be set as default content since it needs user interaction to proceed with further content. This interaction can’t be provided on the Player. For the same reason it makes little sense to place a Presentation within other components such as Playlists or Arrangements.

Videowall: When starting a Presentation within a project that has a Videowall display arrangement, there is no way to spread the Presentation across the whole video wall. Rather, the Presentation will be shown on each display individually.

Presentation and Commands

You can use commands as a convenient way to control Presentations remotely. Commands must be sent to IP port 27182. The following examples show how to use commands. The targeted presentation is named „pres“.

 

	Action	Command
	Start presentation	start presentation -n „pres“
	Start as overlay	start presentation -n „pres“ -o
	Stop presentation	stop presentation -n „pres“
	Stop as overlay	stop presentation -n „pres“ -o
	Go to next slide	next
	Go to previous slide	prev
	Jump to slide no. 2	jump -s 2

You can learn more about commands in this section.

Triggered content denotes playlists or arrangements that you can set to start when someone interacts with a Player, for instance by pressing a key on the keyboard or moving the mouse. These settings are particularly significant for Kiosk setups.

 

Make sure that Interactivity is enabled in your Players. Otherwise triggering won’t take
place. In the same area of the Settings, you can set when the idle content should return
to normal playback. To learn more about interactivity and kiosks, see also the HTML Assets
section.

 

 

Creating Triggered Content

1. Go to Creator Pro Settings () and click on the  tab.

2. Select the content that you want to play back when a triggering interaction occurs on the Player.

3. If you select As overlay, triggered content will be overlaid over the content currently played back. Otherwise, whatever is being played will stop and triggered content will be played back exclusively.

4. Select the display(s) and/or group(s) that you want to have the triggered content. Leaving these blank will apply the triggered content to all settings.

 

Make sure that Interactivity is enabled in your Players. Otherwise triggering won’t take place. In the same area of the Settings, you can set when the idle content should return to normal playback. To learn more about interactivity and kiosks, see also the HTML Assets section.

NOT SUPPORTED for devices running macOS 10.15 Catalina

iTunes Playlists offer an easy way to add background music to the playback of your Players. iTunes Playlists can be integrated directly into your signage playback. iTunes Playlist are no assets like images or video files, but rather commands to an external application. Therefore, they are listed in the Commands tab of the Asset pane.

You can add iTunes Playlist commands to the following components:

• Playlists

• Kiosk Playlists

• Day Schedules (in Command Layer)

• Arrangements (in Command Layer)

• Videowalls (in Command Layer)

Since the latter two components are not automatically created with a Command Layer in place, you have to add a Command Layer to them manually.

Creating an iTunes Playlist Command

Proceed as follows to create an iTunes Playlist command:

1. Open Creator Settings and select the Targets tab. Then add the target Player you want to use. Close the Settings dialog.

2. Change to the Commands tab in the Asset pane. Click on the button at the bottom of the pane and select iTunes Playlist.

3. Click on the new entry in the Commands pane, go to the Inspector and select or type in the iTunes playlist that you want to have played. Note: The iTunes playlist entered here must exist on the target Player Mac, otherwise nothing is played.

4. Drag & drop the iTunes Playlist command into the corresponding component.

When creating an iTunes Playlist command for the first time, you will be asked if you want to allow that available iTunes Playlist are requested from the target Players.

If you allow requesting, Inspector will show the iTunes playlists available on the connected Player Macs. Otherwise, make sure you enter correct playlist names in the corresponding input field. Request settings can be changed in Creator Preferences at any time.

Start and Stop iTunes

Individual iTunes Playlist commands can either start the playback of one specific iTunes playlist or stop iTunes playback altogether. To start different playlists, you have to create an iTunes Playlist command for each iTunes playlist targeted.

Note, again, that the named iTunes playlists must exist on the target Player Mac to have them started. Sending a start command with an unknown playlist has no effect on iTunes. In contrast to that, the iTunes stop command causes the targeted iTunes to stop playback whatsoever.

Kiosk Playlists are special Playlists that allow adding interactive HTML elements to your project quickly and easily.

 

 

Note that Kiosk Playlists cannot be added to Arrangements or other Playlists. The reverse is true, you can add most other components to a Kiosk Playlist.

Creating a Kiosk Playlist

Click on the button at the bottom of the Arrangements & Playlists pane and select Kiosk Playlist there. After the playlist has been created, click on the HTML element below the Intro Clips list. To refresh the view of the HTML element, click on the refresh button in the middle of the element.

With the HTML item selected, go to the Source section in Inspector > General tab. As a web source Type, you can select one of the following settings:

• URL: Enter a valid Internet address. By default, it’s set to the ~sedna homepage.

• Folder with index.html: Select from a dialog a folder with a valid index.html file.

• Web Archive: Select from a dialog an existing *.WEBARCHIVE file.

• HTML file: Select from a dialog an existing *.HTML file.

The selected files will be copied as resources to the Player. Therefore, it is not required that on the corresponding Player device the files exist at a location with the same path. For the use of a URL, the Player device needs access to the Internet or at least to the local network if you operate a local web server.

Using a Kiosk Playlist

If you want other content to be played back prior to showing the HTML content, add the assets to the Intro Clips section and make the corresponding adjustments in the Inspector.

Set the Kiosk Playlist as Default Content if you want it to be played back by default when nothing else is scheduled. How to do this is described here. Set the Kiosk Playlist as Triggered Content if you want the HTML content to start when a user interacts with the project. Details on Triggered Content is found here.

To finish preparations, go to Player Settings on your Player device to enable interactivity and adjust the idle time, if needed. You can now publish the project to a Player with a Kiosk setup. User interaction on the Player device will activate the Kiosk Playlist. You can also activate the Kiosk Playlist by way of network commands. Details on network commands can be found here.

You can use the Calendar to compile Playlists into daily schedules for your Digital Signage playback. This feature helps you plan over longer periods of time ahead. Use Day Templates to make working with the Calendar easier and even more consistent.

 

Accessing the Calendar

The Calendar is by default located at the bottom center of the interface, except when using the Campaign Editor. If deactivated, select View → Show Calendar to display the Calendar again.

To see individual calendar days, simply double-click on a day and its scheduled contents will appear in the Editor pane. White bars at the lower edge of day entries indicate which parts of the day have already been scheduled.

Adding Playlists to a Day

1. Drag & drop one or more Playlists onto the day you want to schedule them.

2. A window will appear where you can select the replay mode, time intervals, days of the week, and the period in which the Playlist will play.

When scheduling content in the Calendar, you need to choose a Replay option. This governs how the playlists function throughout the scheduled day.

Replay Options

• Fill: The selected playlist will play the entire day. If the playlist’s duration is shorter than 24 hours, it is repeated as often as needed.

• Append: Places the playlist behind the last item that has already been scheduled. If the day has no entries yet, the playlist is placed at the top.

• Repeat: Plays the playlist in a continuous loop for the amount of time you specify.

You must select either Fill or Append. Repeat can only be chosen in conjunction with Fill. Leaving Repeat blank will apply the playlists only to the day that you have selected.

Clearing the Calendar

To make changes to the schedule, double click the corresponding day and apply the changes required, for instance by deleting single entries or by inserting new content. At times, you may need to clear the schedule, for instance when being prompted in the Campaign Editor that scheduling conflicts exist.

You can clear the schedule in two ways. To begin with, you can right-click on a day and select one of the Clear options from the pop-up menu: You can clear the current month, the schedule before the selected day, and the entire schedule.

In addition, you can select a single day and just hit the Del button on your keyboard. The selected day will be cleared of any content. To clear a multi-selection of days, click on a single day and, while holding the Shift key, make a rectangular multi-selection. To add single days to an existing selection, hold the ⌘ key and click on the day to be added to the selection. Then hit the Del button.

Day Templates store the scheduling structure and content of an entire day. You can apply Day Templates to other days in the calendar, which makes scheduling content easy and consistent.

 

 

Creating a Day Template

Create a blank day template by clicking on the below the Day Templates pane. You can do the same by right-clicking inside the Day Templates pane and selecting Add → Day Template.

To create a template from a day with scheduled content, right click on the corresponding day and select Create Day Template. In addition, you can also drag & drop a scheduled day from the Calendar into the Day Templates pane. White bars at the bottom edge of individual day entries indicate the parts of the corresponding day that are already scheduled.

Setting a Default Day Template

1. Right-click on the corresponding template in the Day Templates pane.

2. Select the Default option from the context menu.

3. A small flag displayed to the right of the template indicates that it is now the default template.

Default day templates are applied to any day with no content scheduled otherwise. Any deviation from default playback has to be scheduled explicitly. You can learn more about Default Content here.

An Example

Let’s assume you wish to play the same content from Monday to Friday for the time being. In addition, until the end of 2020 there’s no audience on Saturdays and Sundays, so no content is to be be played back on these day.

To begin with, create the template needed for Mondays to Fridays and set it as default. That will take care of the first part of the plan.

Next, create an empty template and drag it on the following Saturday. A dialog with Replay options will be prompted as described in the Calendar section. Select the Repeat checkbox, set the end date in the Date field below and modify the Days checkboxes so that only Sun and Sat remain selected.

Click on OK to complete the schedule. The scheduling is done for the time until the end of 2020. By modifying the used Arrangements or Playlists, you can change the particular content along the road without touching the scheduling.

The Campaign Editor is a powerful tool for creating digital signage campaigns by means of automatic scheduling. To illustrate the potential of the Campaign Editor, let’s contrast it to the scheduling work as usually carried out in Calendar.

 

To fill a day with content in Calendar, you have to meticulously plan every little period of time. Assume you’ve completed scheduling a particular day. How do you proceed with the next day? You may schedule that day manually, or you can create a Day Template and assign it to any days you please.

 

However, manual scheduling each day is cumbersome. On the other hand, days filled with Day Templatecontent have always the same playback sequence. So, how do you quickly and elegantly script a large number of days with randomly sequenced content?

 

Exactly that is the realm of the Campaign Editor.

 

 

Campaign Editor Workflow

This section describes the basic Campaign Editor workflow. You can find a detailed instructions on how to proceed in the Campaign Editor user interface in the Using the Campaign Editor section.

1. The first, conceptual step can’t be done in the Creator. Analyze the target period and decide which time structure you need. Ask yourself, what is the character of your audience? When is visitor attendance the highest?

   Let’s assume your opening hours are between 7 am and 10 pm. Maybe you know from experience that a peak of young visitors occurs at 11 am, then there’s another peak at 6 pm with a mixed audience. Keep that in mind for the work in Campaign Editor.

2. Create the content you want to show. Some of the supportive content can be generated in the Creator, but audio, videos and images are usually created elsewhere.

3. From this step on, the work is done in the Creator. With the above concept in mind, and the content prepared, it is required that you import the content and create further assets needed in the Creator.

   How to do that is described elsewhere in this Online Manual and will not be detailed here any further. Proceed with the work in Campaign Editor.

4. Firstly, you have to define the time structure. The main time slot is between 7 am and 10 pm. At night, no signage playback is needed.

   To address the named groups individually, we suggest showing special content for young people in a time slot between 10:30 am and 11:30 am, and content for the mixed group in a time slot between 5:30 am and 6:30 pm.

   After having defined the time slots, add content and assign it to the slots. Then check for scheduling conflicts and resolve them. Finally, let Campaign Editor do the auto scheduling and enjoy the playback.

The Campaign Editor allows you to automatically schedule content for large periods of time. Assumed that the content to be performed is ready, start the Campaign Editor and carry out the following steps to create an automatically scheduled playback campaign.

1. Define the time structure of the campaign period.

2. Add content to Campaign Editor.

3. Assign the content to the time slots created.

4. Check for scheduling conflicts and resolve them.

5. Start the auto scheduling of Campaign Editor.

 

The following sections describe the steps in detail.

 

Open Campaign Editor

Before opening the Campaign Editor, please make sure that the content you’d like to schedule is ready. To open Campaign Editor click on the  button or go to Edit → Campaign.

 

If this is the first time you launched Campaign Editor, a Setup Assistant will be started with which you can set the basic parameters of the campaign.

 

Setup Assistant

The Setup Assistant allows you to set the basic parameter of your campaign in just 2 steps.

 

 

In the first step, you can choose from the following basic settings.

• All-Day Program: The campaign is based on a single slot that covers the entire day or a part of it. A night program is optional.

• Time Frame Program: The campaign is based on days that are evenly devided in a number of time slots. A night program is optional.

• Custom Program: Create your own time slot definitions as you please.

 

Select a program and click on Next.

The framework you created with the Setup Assistant is not carved in stone. You can add custom time slots no matter which program you’ve chosen. Also, the Setup Assistant can be started at any time from within the Campaign Editor. Just go to the Editor → Setup Assistant.

 

Note: Starting the Setup Assistant with an existing structure resets the campaign settings. You may lose some work by doing that.

 

In the second step of the Setup Assistant you can make some adjustments to the selected program. For instance, you can specify whether to have a night program or not.

 

 

Click on Finish if you’re satisfied with the settings, click on Previous if you’ve changed your mind about the program or click on Cancel to abort the operation.

 

Time Slot View

After finishing the initial setup, the Time Slots view will be displayed. If you are in another view, click on the Time Slots button to change to this view.

 

 

Click on the Content, Schedule or Time Slots buttons in the top right area to change to the respective view. The buttons in the bottom left corner allow you to add, delete or edit the selected time slots.

 

The list in the top left area allows you to select time slot definitions you’ve saved before. Click on the  button to add or remove definitions from the list.

 

Content View

Click on the Content button to change to the Content view.

 

 

Drag assets or playlists from the Asset or Arrangements & Playlists on the left side into the Content view to add them to the Campaign Editor.

 

Click on the checkbox of the corresponding entry to exclude it from the campaign. However, the content won’t be removed, so you can re-activate it at any time. To remove content, press either the Del key on your keyboard, or right-click the entry and select Delete from the context menu.

 

In the lower area of the Content view you can modify the following parameters of selected items.

• Playback Type: Exact plays the content back as defined in the Count parameter. Hybrid plays content back like Exact, but if there’s time left in the slot, the selected content will be repeated to fill the slot. Fill Content serves as a gap filler between playlist items. To use the same asset also as Fill Content, you need to add it a second time to the Content Editor.

• Category: If possible, Campaign Editor tries to avoid placing two items of the same category right after each other. Apply the same category to items you want not to be played right after each other.

• Valid from together with until sets the period that the selected content is played in.

• No Expiration Date sets the selected content to never expire. This deactivates the until field, but you can still set a start time in the Valid from field.

• Time Slot: This list contains the time slots the content is to be played in. The buttons  and  below the list allow you to add and remove slots. The Check… button below the list allows you to check for scheduling conflicts for the particular time slots.

• Weekdays: Select an item and choose the weekdays you want it to be played on.

• Count determines how many times the item will be repeated in the time slot. Count is set when adding time slots. To change it later, double-click the Count number of the corresponding time slot entry.

 

Schedule View

Click on the Schedule button to change to the Schedule view.

 

 

This view allows you to check for scheduling conflicts and carry out the automatic scheduling that fills the Calendar. Enter the start time of your campaign in the From field, and the end time in the until field. To check for conflicts, click on the Check… button. You can activate the Include Disabled Content for Checkcheckbox to check whether disabled content would cause scheduling conflicts.

 

Any conflicts will be indicated by red color in the Available column. In that case, the Auto Schedule button and the Relaxed Rules for Content Repetition checkbox will be disabled. To resolve the conflicts, either clear the corresponding Calendar days or modify your campaign settings.

 

If you wish to ease the rules for content repetition, activate the Relaxed Rules for Content Repetitioncheckbox. This may lead to individual being repeated rightaway or items of the same category being played back right after each other.

 

To finish your work, click on the now active Auto Schedule button. The Calendar will be filled with the campaign schedule and the Players will do the rest of the job.

Introduction

Slot Playlists are an easy way to set up a sequence of repeating playback, without having to manually put together every playback in the whole sequence. There is a defined number of slots with a defined length, and these slots can contain Assets. Moreover, you can restrict the time/date these Assets will be played back.

For example, a simple Slot Playlist could look like this:

Presuming that none of the above Assets are restricted in their playout, the following sequence will result in: A1, B1, C1, D1, A2, B2, C2, D2, A3, B3, C3, D3. After playing D3, it will loop the sequence over and over until the end of the schedule.

Another simple example:

The playout sequence will be: A1, B1, C1, D1, A1, B2, C2, D1, A1, B3, C3, D1. After playing D1, it will loop the sequence until the end of the schedule.

The sequence a Slot Playlist follows will always be:

Iterate over slot 1 – slot X and play the first Asset. After the slot iteration is done, begin again with slot 1 but iterate to the next Asset in this slot. To be able to modify the sequence over time, there is an option to restrict the playback of each Asset to a specific date/ time.

Creating and setting up a Slot Playlist

You can create an empty Slot Playlist simply by clicking the ‘add’ symbol in the Arrangements & Playlists view.

Then you can configure the name of the Slot Playlist, the number of slots, and the slot duration in the inspector.

 

 

Auto Publisher allows you to schedule project publishing and have the publishing done unattended. This is particularly useful for publishing projects of considerable size. Just schedule the auto publishing at times with low network load.

 

In addition, working with the Creator is not affected while auto publishing is running, whereas the Creator’s interface is blocked whenever users start the publishing procedure manually.

 

If your project is activated for auto publishing, the  Publish button will be shown in light grey color. However, the button is not deactivated so you can still manually start the publishing.

Using Auto Publisher

1. Choose Window → Auto Publisher.

2. Click on the  button in the bottom left corner of the dialog displayed.

3. Select a project that you would like to auto publish.

4. Set the time that you want the project to be published and close the window.

5. The projects will now regularly auto publish according to the settings you have made.

 

Note: Make sure the Creator Mac isn’t shut down and does not go into sleep mode at the times auto publishing is running.

Beacons are handy and quite inexpensive devices that broadcast Bluetooth signals in regular intervals. Similar to RFID tags, Beacons are convenient to have audiences interact with signage setups.

What makes Beacon setups a bit more flexible than RFID setups is that both the detected objects and the detecting devices can be mobile. Also beacons are detected from some distance, whereas RFID tag require close proximity to dedicated readers to be detected.

Beacons can be detected using any device that supports Bluetooth 4.0, including 3rd generation iPad and later, and iPhone 4S and later. However, close proximity has also its upside as it allows you to increase the number of tags not interfering with each other in the same space.

As a rule, if you need both detectors and detected objects being mobile, think beacons. If you require a finer grid of content triggering spots, think RFID. For more details see the „Background Information on Beacons“ section further below.

Note: At the time being, beacon interactivity is only supported by Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS. Notice that players for macOS can’t handle beacons.

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Work Examples

The RFID Content Triggering section describes two work examples for the use of RFID tags. Let’s take a look at both scenarios and modify them for the use of beacons.

Work Example: Contest

„Have a winning contest in your store. Give every customer entering your store a card with an RFID tag embedded. As they swipe their cards over reading spots, each losing RFID tag will trigger a message or an advertisement. Winning cards will play special content indicating the winner.“

Beacon Modification: Customers don’t need to swipe cards over any spots. They can keep the cards in their pockets and just have to approach a spot closely enough for the beacon to trigger the content.

Work Example: Product Information

Attach RFID tags to special product exhibits, for example shoes in a shoe shop, and have the exhibits placed on hidden RFID readers. Each time a product is taken from its place, content is displayed that gives information on the product.

Beacon Modification: Any customer who wishes so is given an iPad while they are in the shop. When a customer approaches an exhibit with an beacon attached, the iPad shows information about the object. Also, customers may bring exhibits to an iPad anywhere in the shop to see information about it.

Setting up a Beacon Interactive Project

To set up beacon interactivity, a few requirements must be met. Firstly, you need iPad 3 devices or later to run a Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS on. At present, Player running on macOS doesn’t support beacons.

Next you need to create content to be triggered. Also, you need to make up your mind about which beacon is to trigger which content. You are free to create content later. In that case you will have to assign the content to the beacons later on.

After you’ve made sure all requirements mentioned are met, complete the following steps to set up RFID interactivity:

• Set up Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS

• Set up a Creator Project

Setting up Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS

To use beacons with Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS, you need to activate both the Location Services and Bluetooth in the iOS Settings. Modifying Player Preferences is not required. If Location Services and Bluetooth are activated, Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS will detect the beacons as configured in the Creator.

Setting up a Creator Project

Here, a few more steps are required. Basically, you need to detect all beacons you want to use and register them in Creator. Then you need to assign the corresponding content actions to the respective beacons.

1. Since the detection of beacons is not built-in in Creator, you need to run Presenter Beacon Finder that is part of the Creator installation package. After opening the installation file, you can find Beacon Finder in the Tools and Manuals folder located on the bottom edge of the installation window.

2. Make sure Bluetooth 4.0 is available on the Mac that Creator is running on. If required, purchase a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle for USB. Bring the beacons close to that Mac. Start Beacon Finder and click on the Start/Stop button. When all beacons are found, click on the Export button and save the CSV file.

   

3. Open the Creator and the corresponding project. Go to the Beacon tab of the Project Settings. Click on the button and select Import…. Open the file that you saved with Beacon Finder. All beacons are displayed in the list.

4. Assign values to Action and Content of the Beacon entries. To do so, click on the corresponding column of the entry and select a value. In the same way, Group and Display values can be assigned optionally. You might want to experiment a bit with the Distance (m) value.

5. Publish the corresponding project to the Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS.

Note: When competing signals occur that would trigger different content, the first signal wins. The content triggered is played out, and only when the content ends or when the triggering signal leaves the area, new content can be triggered.

Your project is up and running. Enjoy the interaction of the audience with your project.

Beacon Settings Dialog

To open your Creator project settings, click on and go to the Beacon tab by clicking on . The following dialog will be displayed:

 

 

This dialog has two sections: the upper section with Beacon and content related details, and the Player Settings section with Player related details.

If you buy a batch of beacons, they usually have a common unique ID that can’t be modified. In the Beacon tab, the detected beacons are grouped by this UUID. Select the corresponding item from the Proximity UUID list to see all beacons of this group. With the button you can manage the Beacon entries by adding and removing them.

The Beacon list has the following columns: Enabled, Major, Minor, Distance (m), Autoplay, Content, Description, Group and Display. To change specific values, click on the corresponding field in the list.

Enabled: You can determine for each list entry whether it be active or not. A checked box indicates the corresponding entry is active. Click on it to deactivate the entry. As a result, the corresponding triggering action won’t be carried out at playback time. Click it another time to activate it again.

Note: If no content is assigned to a beacon entry, this checkbox will have no effect on the playback.

Major: This is part of the ID of the corresponding beacon.

Minor: This is part of the ID of the corresponding beacon.

Note: We recommend not to modify the Major and Minor values, except you have manually changed the corresponding values on the beacon. Please read more on UUID, Major, and Minor values in the „Background Information on Beacons“ section further below.

Distance (m): This value indicates the maximum distance beacons are detected at. Though it is given in meters, it should not be understood as an absolute value by any measure. It is not viable to just enter a number here and expect that beacons are appropriately detected. You should rather expect that the values entered here deviate from the distance found in real life.

To have some degree of calibration, we recommend you enable the Configuration mode checkbox as described below in the „Player Settings“ section. Player for iOS will then show in the indicator list the distance at which it detects a specific beacon. Enter the values gained this way in the corresponding Distance (m) settings.

Autoplay: Activating this checkbox will cause content assigned to a beacon be played back automatically when the very beacon enters the specified range. The corresponding entry must also be enabled. Note that if no content is assigned, this checkbox will have no effect on the playback.

Content: Select the arrangement or playlist to be triggered by a beacon. With no content assigned, both the Enabled and the Autoplay checkboxes will be ignored. The content triggered by the beacon will be played back fully. If the beacon is still in range when the content ends, the content will start again. Otherwise, Player will resume regular content or play back content triggered by other means.

Description: If you don’t want your audience to be shown the Creator playlist or arrangement names, you can enter a speaking description of the corresponding component. This certainly is more attractive than some cryptic internal component names.

Group (optional): Select a display group as a playback target.

Display (optional): Select a specific display as a playback target.

Player Settings

Below the list with with Beacon entries, there are Player related settings you can make. They concern the Beacon indicator that is shown on Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS.

Beacon Indicator: Select one of four corner positions the indicator can be shown at the Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS.

Configuration mode: If this option is checked, the Beacon indicator on Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS will display all content that has both the Enabled checkbox activated and content assigned to it in the Beacon list above. In addition, the Beacon indicator will show the distance to beacons that are currently in range. You can use this value to calibrate the distance settings of your Beacon entries.

Beacon Content Availability: With Configuration mode deactivated, the Beacon indicator at Player Silver on iOS/ipadOS shows content assigned to beacons that are currently within the specified range. When the corresponding beacons leave range, the assigned content remains within the list for the time specified. You can determine how long this time will be, i.e. either a number of seconds or forever.

Background Information on Beacons

Interference: The operation of beacons is sensible to their environment. A number of other devices can interfere with beacons. Bluetooth 4.0 operates in the same frequency range (2.4 GHz) as technologies such as WLAN or analog phone systems.

Placement of Beacons: Many materials can weaken or even block the beacon signal. For instance, human bodies absorb much of the Bluetooth signal. Therefore, we recommend placing beacons above the audience, if feasible.

From experience made, we also recommend to have beacons placed with at least 1.5 metres distance from each other. Anything closer will make it quite difficult if not impossible to separate content-triggering signals from each other.

If you need a fine grid with small distances between detectors, we recommend thinking about utilizing RFID tags. RFID readers can be placed very close to each other, and since RFID tags are passive and don’t send an active signal, they usually do not interfere with each other.

Fine-tuning Beacons: The operation of beacons can be adjusted at two places. Firstly, most beacon vendors provide apps that allow the modification of beacon settings, such as the Major and Minor values, the signal strength, and the signal interval.

• Major and Minor values: Beacons store three different IDs, two of which can be modified. The ID that can’t be modified is the proximity UUID (universally unique identifier). The UUID identifies the specific batch of beacons you’ve purchased. The Major and Minor values can be customized and thus allow you to distinguish individual beacons from each other.

• Signal Strength: Increasing signal strength (RSSI) increases the distance at which beacons are detected. At the same time, the built-in beacon battery is drained faster.

• Signal Interval: The signal interval should not be too long to avoid audience passing by a detector without triggering content. Decreasing the interval saves battery life.

The other place to adjust beacon operation is at the detector. For instance, the Creator allows you to set a Distance value. Basically, this value makes the detecting device ignore beacon signals below a certain threshold. Only if that threshold is reached, the beacon is detected.

iOS Settings: To operate beacons with iPads and iPhones, you need to activate Bluetooth and the Location Services on the corresponding iOS/ipadOS devices.

RFID tags are particularly good for show and store setups but certainly have uses beyond this as well. Like Beacons, RFID tags offer great opportunities to have your audience or customers interact with your signage setups.

For a brief comparison of RFID tags and Beacons see the Beacon Content Triggering section. Let’s look at two use cases for the deployment of RFID tags.

Work Example: Contest

Have a winning contest in your store. Give every customer entering your store a card with an RFID tag embedded. As they swipe their cards over reading spots, each losing RFID tag will trigger a message or an advertisement. Winning cards will play special content indicating the winner.

Work Example: Product Information

Attach RFID tags to special product exhibits, for example shoes in a shoe shop, and have the exhibits placed on hidden RFID readers. Each time a product is taken from its place, content is displayed that gives information on the product. As an alternative, content could also be triggered when a product is placed on certain spots.

Setting up an RFID interactive project

To set up RFID interactive projects, you need to meet some requirements. Firstly, you need a reader connected to the Creator Mac and at least one reader connected to the corresponding Player sync group.

Next you need to create content to be controlled by RFID. In addition, you need to make up your mind about which tag will trigger which content. You are free to create content after adding all RFID tags needed to your project. However, in that case you won’t have the proper content to be assigned to some of the RFID events created.

After you’ve made sure that all requirements mentioned above are met, you need to complete the following steps to set up RFID interactivity:

• Set up the Player

• Set up the Creator project

Setting up the Player

You need to enable RFID support for each Player you’re going to use. Open the Player Preferences and go to the General tab. Activate the Enable RFID support checkbox in the ~sedna RFIDsection. Attach the RFID readers to the Player Mac. Now the corresponding Player is ready. Proceed with all Players you want to engage.

Setting up the Creator Project

Here you need to complete a few more steps:

1. Open the Creator project settings and go to the RFID tab.

2. Hold the RFID tags to the reader one at a time.

3. Assign values to Action and Content. Group and Display values can be assigned optionally.

4. Publish the corresponding project to the Players.

Your project is up and running. Enjoy the interaction of the audience with your project.

RFID Setting Details

To open your Creator project settings, click on and go to the RFID tab by clicking on . The following RFID dialog will be displayed:

 

 

If the button above the tag list is labeled Read RFID, click on it. This button showing Stop readingindicates the reader is ready to detect your RFID tags. Now you can add the RFID tags you need.

The RFID list has seven columns: Enabled, Event, RFID, Action, Content, Group and Display. To change a specific column value of an entry, click on the specific value of the entry.

Enabled: You can determine for each list entry whether it be active or not. The blue dot indicates that the corresponding entry is active. Click on this button to deactivate the corresponding entry. Click it another time to activate it again.

Event: This value can be either Read or Removed. Whenever Creator/Player detects a new RFID tag, it creates a new Read event entry. When you remove the tag from the RFID reader, Creator/Player accordingly creates a “Removed” entry. This feature is only available with RFID reader v.2.0 and above.

When you close a Player with activated RFID, the corresponding Player stores the status of the RFID readers connected. Therefore, when you leave an RFID tag on a reader, Player will assume the next time started that the very same tag is still on the reader. The same is true when disconnecting RFID readers from a Player Mac and reconnecting it.

RFID: Each individual tag has a unique ID number. For each individual ID the list can contain entries for Read and for Remove events. Since Creator can add only one Read and one Remove event for each ID automatically, you need to add further Read or Remove events for a particular ID by duplicating existing entries.

Note that this column can also have -Wildcard- as a value. -Wildcard- generally refers to all RFIDs that are not explicitly included in the list. As with individual IDs, you can also create multiple Read and Remove events for wildcards. For more details, see the corresponding section further below.

Actions: Each entry can trigger specific actions. The available actions are:

• Start: This stops the playback of current Player content and replaces it with the content specified in the Content column.

• Start as Overlay: his action starts content specified in the Content column on top of the current content. Therefore, scheduled or default content may be visible if the overlay content doesn’t cover the whole area of the displays.

• Stop: This action stops the content specified in the Content column. When you select Stop, the value of the Content column is by default set to All, which would stop all replacement content.

• Stop Overlay: This stops the overlay content specified in the Content column. When you select Stop Overlay, the value of the Content column is by default set to All, which would stop all overlay content.

• Stop Both: This action stops both the replacement content and the overlay content specified in the Content column. When you select Stop Both, the value of the Content column is by default set to All, which would stop all replacement content and all overlay content.

Stop, Stop Overlay and Stop Both affect only content that was previously started by RFID action. Current content, i.e. scheduled content, default content or content started in any other way, for instance by network commands, is in no way affected by RFID triggering. Current content that was temporarily replaced via RFID triggering, will resume at the appropriate point of time.

Note that overlay content will be fade in when started, while replacement content will instantly occupy the displays concerned. The same is true for stop actions: overlay content will fade out, while replacement content will just be removed. The latter case may leave Player displays blank for some time before playback of scheduled or default contents sets in again.

Content: Select the Arrangement, Playlist or other content that you have prepared for playback triggered by the particular ID.

Group (optional): Select a Display group as a playback target.

Display (optional): Select a specific display as a playback target.

Adding Wildcard Entries: Select the button and choose Add wildcard. Select the Action, Content, Group and Display values that all unknown cards are to trigger. Now all RFID that are not explicitly included in the RFID list will trigger the -Wildcard- events set up.

Note that each RFID number is a wildcard as long as no enabled RFID action is assigned to it. So even if you have actions assigned to a particular RFID, but the corresponding action is disabled in the RFID settings, the respective RFID will be treated as a wildcard number.

Manage RFID List: With the button you can also manage the RFID entries by adding, duplicating, and removing list entries.

Sync Groups

Sync groups need special mention concerning RFID interactivity. When a user swipes his RFID chip over an RFID reader, the corresponding Players send the assigned RFID actions by default to the whole sync group they belong to.

If the particular action has neither Group nor Display values assigned, all Players will carry out the corresponding action.

Group and Display values act as filters, i.e. if valid Group or Display values are assigned to an RFID action, then only matching Players will carry out the action.

The Find and Replace feature helps you to quickly replace content in a variety of Asset containers like Playlists, Arrangements, Day Template, Multiscreens, etc.

 

 

Using Find and Replace

1. Click on the Find and Replace button on the upper right of the interface.

2. Select or enter the content that you want to replace in the Find field.

3. Select or enter the content that you want to replace the old content with in the Replace field.

4. A list of all containers where the old content is located will automatically load.

5. Select the content that you want to replace and click the Replace button. You can also click Replace All to replace the content everywhere.

We recommend reviewing the provided list before clicking the Replace All button in order to avoid accidentally changing content that you actually want to preserve.

In compliance with the feature offered since Mac OS X Lion, the Creator can be used in full screen mode. Using full screen mode in Creator is a good way to work with multiple projects.

 

Entering Full Screen Mode

To enter Full Screen Mode, click in the upper right corner of the interface.

 

Navigating in Full Screen Mode

You can navigate between projects and other windows and applications by holding CTRL and the left or right arrow keys, or with a three finger swipe on a trackpad.

The Creator Preferences allow you to make some global settings for your Creator . The corresponding dialog has three tabs: General, Player and Defaults.

 

 

General

In this tab, you can modify the following settings:

• Check for updated versions: Sets the Creator to check for updates each time it is started.

• Automatic Save: Enable this to make the Creator automatically save any changes you make to your projects after the set amount of minutes.

• Automatic Cleanup: Enable this to make the Creator automatically delete scheduled events older than the set amount of days.

• Import – Large image warnings: Sets the Creator to alert you when trying to import a large image.

• Import – Make full copy of imported files: When checked, imported file will be copied into the project package. Otherwise, only hard links will be copied into the project package to save hard disk space on the Creator Mac. Note: When using hard links, we recommend not renaming the original files to prevent issues that might occur when publishing your project to your players.

• Publish – Save Publish logs: This allows you to save a log file whenever you publish a project. For each target a log file is created, the publishing date and the target are encoded in the file name. The log files contain extensive data on what exactly was transferred.

• Publish – Publish to a maximum of NNN targets simultaneously: Restricts transfer to the set amount of targets at a time. This is useful when you wish to transfer a large project to a great number of targets.

• Request available iTunes playlists: This allows you to retrieve iTunes playlists from Player targets. Note: This is a legacy feature to support projects made in earlier version of the Creator.

Player

The Creator comes with a built-in Player that allows you to realize a setup with just one Mac. The Player tab allows you to configure the built-in Player.

 

 

You can make the following settings:

• Display: Select a display attached to your Creator Mac for playback and set its orientation.

• Start on login: Activate this if you wish to use this Mac as a Player. To work with the Creator you need to quit the built-in Player.

• Keep Player alive: If Player mistakenly quits, it will be automatically restarted.

• External control: Allows the internal Player to be remotely controlled, for instance via network commands.

• Play audio: The built-in Player will play any available audio tracks.

• Auto adjust frame rate: Player will try to automatically adjust the frame rate of assets to the frame rate of the displays. It is recommended to check this option.

• Display Name: Give the selected display a name. This is useful if you need to use this Player as a target for other Creator instances.

• Group Name: Assign the built-in Player to a group. This is useful if you need to use this Player as a target for other Creator instances.

• Ticker Extension: Set ticker off-sets here if you use this Player as part of a setup with multiple displays and need to play back a ticker across all displays.

• Input Devices: To configure video and audio input devices, click on Settings…. In the new dialog, select 32 bit, 64 bit or Blackmagic. Apple standard is currently 64 bit. Under Video Input, select a video capture asset and define its resolution, if needed. Under Audio Input, select an audio input device. Set an audio delay time if video and audio aren’t in sync.

• Background Image: Double-click into the pane to select a background image from the file system. The selected image will be displayed when the built-in Player is running but no project was published to it.

The Player settings described here are very similar to the settings of stand-alone Players. Read more on those Player settings in this section.

Defaults

In this tab you can set the default durations for assets and their default fill mode. You can find details about asset defaults in this section.

Toolbox is an administrative application for remotely controlling, installing and setting up the Players running in your network. The feature set of the Toolbox allows you to easily manage a large number of Players simultaneously and so carry out many time-consuming task in one place.

Toolbox helps you cope with large setups. All Player settings can be adjusted remotely and comfortably in the Toolbox interface without having to access the individual Player Macs.

Accessing Toolbox

Toolbox is part of Creator. To open the Toolbox, go to the system menu and select Window → Toolbox. A new window will open.

 

To initially set up your Toolbox, go the the system menu and select Toolbox → Preferences. A new dialog will open where you can set the default behaviour of the Toolbox. In the General tab of this dialog you set the Toolbox to do a number of things automatically, for instance fetching host settings whenever you change the settings of a host.

In the Default Accounts tab, you can set an Administration and a Standard User Account that are used to control the target Mac. Make sure the credentials you enter are correct. You can check the settings by clicking on the Test button next to the corresponding Password field. An icon with a white checkmark on green background will confirm the correctness of the credentials you have entered.

Toolbox Interface

The Toolbox user interface has the following elements.

• Toolbar: containing a number of commands, located on top of the interface.

• GROUPS pane, located on the left hand side just below the Toolbar.

• HOSTS pane, located on the right hand side below the Toolbar.

• SETTINGS pane, located at the bottom right corner.

• PRESETS pane, located at the left hand side below the GROUPS pane.

• TASK HISTORY pane, located at the bottom left corner right below the PRESETS pane.

You can change the relative size of the panes. Move the mouse pointer to the border area between to panes until it changes its shape to . Then click and drag the border to your liking.

Toolbar

The default Toolbar shows frequently used commands, for instance a command to start the Player on the selected host. You can customize the Toolbar by adding or removing commands. To do so, go to the system menu and select View → Customize Toolbar…

A new window will open, from which you can drag additional command icons into the Toolbar. When this window is open, you can also click on any actual Toolbar icon and remove it from the Toolbar. If you want to reset the Toolbar, just drag the default toolbar set to the Toolbar. Click on Done when you have completed the task.

GROUPS pane

In this pane you can group the hosts you manage. By default, the GROUPS pane has two entries Bonjourand All managed hosts. If you select the former, the HOSTS pane to the right will show all Macs that are recognized in your network by the Bonjour service.

 

 

If you select All managed hosts, the HOSTS pane to the right will show all Macs that are managed by the Toolbox, i.e. all Macs for which you have configured Administration accounts at some time, even if the configuration is invalid.

You can add further groups to this pane. Just click on the button at the bottom edge of the pane and enter a new group name in the following dialog. As an alternative, you can also right click into the pane and select the corresponding command. To remove a group, click on the button or right click into the pane and select the corresponding command.

Now that you have added your custom group, you can copy hosts into the group. Just click on one or multiple hosts from another group and drag them onto your custom group.

HOSTS Pane

The HOSTS pane lists all hosts that are member of the currently selected group. You can select single hosts or make a multi-selection of hosts by holding the ⌘ button while selecting further items.

 

 

A green dot at the top left corner of an icon indicates that the host is active in the network. A red dot indicates the host was not found. This of course is indicated only with previously available hosts in the group of all managed host or in a custom group.

Located at the top right corner of an icon, an exclamation mark within an orange dot indicates an ongoing task or some minor error. An exclamation mark in a red dot indicates some essential error, for instance a wrong user name or password. Both icons correspond to a task log within the TASK HISTORY. A double click on a host with such an indicator will open the corresponding task.

With host items selected, you can carry out various actions. You can either click a command icon from the Toolbar, or you can right click on the selected items and choose a command from the context menu. The following commands are available in the context menu:

• Edit Account Settings: Edit the Administration and the Standard User account. After changing account settings, the Toolbox will try to connect to the host and in turn will indicate with icon whether the connection works. This action will also be carried out when you double click on an unmanaged host.

• Open Last Player Task: This opens the most recent task from the TASK HISTORY of the selected device. This action is the default action when you double click on a managed host with some kind of error during the last task.

• Fetch Settings: Updates the host settings.

• Change Settings: Opens a dialog that allows you to change the host settings. This action is the default action when you double click on a managed host with no current task errors.

• Fetch Player Settings: Updates the settings of Player installed on the host.

• Change Player Settings: Opens a dialog that allows you to change the Player settings on the selected host.

• Get Proof-Of-Playback: Downloads the playback logs of the Player on the selected host.

• Take Screenshot: Takes a current screenshot on the selected host and downloads it to the Toolbox.

• Reboot/Shutdown Host…: Forces the host to reboot or shut down.

• Start/Stop Player: Starts or stops the Player running on the selected host.

• Install Player: Initiates the installation of Player on the selected host. In the dialog popping up, you can navigate to the location of the installation package, or you can also drop the corresponding file on the dialog.

• Cancel Running Task: Current tasks related to the selected host will be aborted.

Note: For many of the actions, you can select multiple hosts and carry out the action.

If the Bonjour service doesn’t show a particular host, you can add it manually either to your custom group or to the group of all managed hosts. Just click on the in the bottom left corner and enter the corresponding host data.

The HOSTS pane has a secondary function when an item within the TASK HISTORY pane is selected. In this case the HOSTS pane shows the selected task, and the SETTINGS pane shows the details of the selected task.

SETTINGS Pane

Below the HOSTS pane you can find the SETTINGS pane. With one or multiple host selected in the HOSTS pane, the SETTINGS pane shows a number of item-related settings depending on the SETTINGS tab activated.

 

 

The SETTINGS pane is divided in four tabs:

• System Settings: This shows the complete set of the system settings of the selected host as you downloaded it the last time. If you wish to change some settings, click on the Change button at the top right corner of the tab. To fetch the latest settings, click on the button next to it.

• Proof-of-Playback: Each Player instance keeps logs about its own playback operation. This command allows you to download these logs for the sake of proof. To fetch the latest logs, click on the button at the top right corner of the pane. At the left side you can activate a filter that restricts the list to a period of time. The list contains links to a number of .CSV (comma separated value) files that contain the log data. Double-clicking on an entry opens the file in the default OS X application.

• Screenshots: This tab shows the screenshots you have generated on the host with the Toolbox. To make and download a current screenshot, click on the button at the top right corner of the pane. A double click on a particular screenshot will open it with the default macOS application. Note that only the most current screenshots are kept here.

• Player Settings: This tab shows the settings of Player as you downloaded it the last time. To change some settings, click on the Change button in the top right corner of the tab. To fetch the latest settings, click on the button next to it.

The SETTINGS pane has also a secondary function when an item within the TASK HISTORY pane is selected. In this case the SETTINGS pane shows the details of the selected task.

PRESETS Pane

Below the GROUPS pane you can find the PRESETS pane. Presets allow you to quickly apply a number of settings to selected hosts. In addition to the Default Preset that is always present, you can define your own presets.

 

 

To define your own preset, click on button at the bottom edge of the pane and enter a new preset name in the following dialog. As an alternative, you can right click into the pane and select the corresponding command. To remove a preset, click on the button.

After you have entered the preset name, a dialog will allow you to populate your preset with some settings. The following settings are available:

• Auto Restart: Allows you to set whether the Player Mac will start automatically after power failure.

• Bluetooth: Allows you to turn Bluetooth on or off.

• Wake Up and Shut Down: Allows scheduled shut downs and wake up events.

• Energy Saver: Allows you to switch off energy savers on the Player Mac.

• System Audio Volume: Allows you to set the volume of the Player Mac’s system audio.

• Screensaver: Allows you to deactivate screensavers.

• WLAN: Allows you to turn WLAN on or off.

To select a particular setting for your new profile, click on it. To add further settings to the selection, hold the ⌘ button and select another setting.

For instance, if you wish to preset just the Bluetooth and the WLAN settings, while all other settings are of no concern to you, then click on the Bluetooth section, hold the ⌘ key and click also on the WLANsection. Both section are now highlighted. Complete the action by clicking on the Add button.

Now the dialog changes to how it will look like next time you open it for editing. Modify the settings by activating the checkboxes on the left hand side and setting both Bluetooth and WLAN to inactive.

To apply a Preset to a particular host or even to a group of hosts, click the preset and drag it to the host or the host group to be modified.

TASK HISTORY Pane

Below the PRESETS pane you can find the TASK HISTORY pane. This pane contains a list of task logs. All actions, for instance fetching settings, or installing the Player are logged here. Icons indicate the success or failure of tasks.

 

 

A check mark within a green dot indicates success, while exclamation marks within an orange or red dot indicate some kind of error, whereby the red dot indicate major errors, while the orange dot indicates non-essential errors, for instance the failure to retrieve the host’s current audio volume.

If you click on an TASK HISTORY item, the HOST pane will change to show PLAYER TASKS, and the SETTINGS pane will show individual TASK STEPS which may be multiple in number depending on the kind of task.

The sednaInfo Tool provides information about licenses and products used on your systems.

It is integrated since v2020.6 and can be executed using the commands listed below.

Enter the command according to your system directly using a remote connection via ssh.
For bulk operations, tools like Apple Remote Desktop on computers running macOS or e.g. Ansible on Linux Players can be used.

Execute one of the following commands to get an output like in the example below:

• for macOS with installed Player v2020.6 or higher:
  /Applications/Player.app/Contents/MacOS/sednaInfo
• for macOS with installed Creator v2020.6 or higher:
  /Applications/Creator.app/Contents/MacOS/sednaInfo
• for Linux with installed Player v2020.6 or higher:
  /opt/sedna/presenter.player.app/sednaInfo

Sample Output (macOS):
{
„licenses“: [
{
„product“: „Player Platinum 2“,
„product_version“: „2020“,
„dongle_id“: 0,
„cloud_name“: „~sedna“,
„sedna_id“: 000001
}
{
„product“: „Creator“,
„product_version“: „2020“,
„dongle_id“: 123456,
„cloud_name“: „“,
„sedna_id“: -1
}
],
„products“: [
{
„name“: „player“,
„version“: „2020.6“,
„build“: „17497“
}
{
„name“: „Creator“,
„version“: „2020.6“,
„build“: „17497“
}
],
„host_name“: „sedna-mini-01“,
„platform_serial“: „C01ABC00001“
}

The Tool will list all installed software products and according license information.

Using Watched Folders is an easy way of keeping content up-to-date without changing the project in Creator. Just copy the latest media files into the Watched Folder. The corresponding Player is notified about the content update and instantly goes on to reschedule the playback.

Media formats that are supported in Watched Folders include video files, images, and audio files. In addition, you can also provide Playlists and Arrangements that you have exported from your Creator project.

Player Gold 1 can watch up to 4 folders, Player Gold 2 and higher can watch an unlimited number of folders.

Watched Folders only work with macOS operated systems.

Using Watched Folders

To use Watched Folders, you have to create a Watched Folder asset in Creator. Give the asset a unique Folder ID, place it in a scheduled component and publish it to your Player. On the Player, assign a local folder to be watched, and give the entry the same unique Folder ID.

Note: The user account used to run Player must have access to the selected folder.

The link between the Watched Folder asset and the file system folder is the unique Folder ID. This means that you don’t assign the asset a real path to a folder, but give it a symbolic ID. The decision which folder exactly is played back is made in Player.

The following list contains the individual steps to have content playback from a Watched Folder:

1. In the Creator, right-click on the Asset pane and choose Add → Asset → Miscellaneous → Watched Folder.

2. Give the Watched Folder asset a Folder ID in the Inspector. You can also select an existing ID from the dropdown menu that shows Folder IDs currently available on active Players. If you enter a new ID, make sure to later use this exact ID on the corresponding Player.

3. Select the fill mode, order, and for how long you want images to be played. Audio and video files will be played in full. If you plan to use commands, activate that option as well.

4. On the Player Mac, create a new folder and copy the required content into it.

5. Go to Player settings and select the Watched Folders tab.

6. Use the + and – buttons under the Watched Folders list to add or remove Watched Folder entries. Be sure that the IDs match the ones you used in the Creator.

   Note: When working with multiple watched folders, you cannot place watched folders inside of other watched folders.

7. When creating a new entry, activate Enable custom playout settings if you want to apply custom settings for the current folder.

   Note that this will override the settings made in the Creator.

Once you’ve set up the watched folder, you can copy the required content into it. Enjoy the playback.

Known Issues

When being started, Player initially looks into each folder to be watched. Later on, an macOS mechanism notifies the Player when the content of local folders changes. This macOS mechanism can’t be relied on when working with network paths, especially if you try to access Windows shares.

For this reason, working with network paths is not reliable. Therefore, ~sedna can’t be made responsible for the failure to play back updated content from watched folders on network locations. For the automatic notifications to work, the folders to be watched must be created on the corresponding Player Mac.

With further measures that are outside the scope of ~sedna software, you may achieve your goals. One such measure could be the use of scripts or apps that copy content from the network to the corresponding local directories on the Player Macs. Each time the network directory is updated, you can start the script to update the local folder and thus make macOS notify Player on new content.

Widgets are addons that provide some interesting features for your Projects. They allow you to display the date, the time, and the current weather at any location on Earth, but they also provide Flickr images and Twitter messages. You will find some example Widgets in the Resources section of your Cloud account.

To use Widgets in your Projects, download the provided ZIP file and open it. On a Mac, the contained files will be unzipped automatically. Remember the location of the unzipped files.

To add Widgets to your project, choose Add → Media → Widget… in the Assets pane. You can also drag and drop the unzipped Widget files directly into the Assets pane. Adjust these Widgets in the Inspector just like any other Asset. Note that some Widgets require an active Internet connection on your Player Mac in order to display content.

You can find a description of the following widgets in the sections further below:

• Weather Widgets

• Clock and Date Widgets

• The Custom Clock Widget

• The QR Code Widget

• The Flickr Widget

• The Twitter Widget

Content Disclaimer

~sedna Widgets may show content delivered by providers such as Open Weather Map, Flickr or Twitter. ~sedna can’t be made liable for such content. For instance, weather information depends on data collected by weather stations around the world. These weather stations may deliver incorrect data, or the providers may process the data incorrectly and thus deliver false data to our widgets.

Social networks such as Flickr and Twitter may deliver images and messages that are inappropriate or contain statements that neither represent ~sedna’s point of view nor your point of view. Widget users are free to modify the Java Script source of widgets in order to create their own content filters. However, if the changes made affect the functionality of widgets, ~sedna won’t provide support in case of malfunctions.

~sedna can’t be made liable for changes that the corresponding providers make to the operation or the terms of use of the services provided by them. Such changes may affect the functionality of the widgets. The adaption of the widgets to the changes made is at the discretion of ~sedna.

Setting up Weather Widgets

This section describes how to set up the weather widgets. The description below shows exemplary how to carry out the configuration of the Open Weather widget. The setup for the World Weather Online widget is very similar to that.

For weather widgets, you’ll need to enter a valid API key. To get the correct key, complete the free registration with Open Weather Map or World Weather Online.

Note: The Open Weather and Open Weather apiV2 widgets need the Open Weather Map API key. The Weather Glass, Weather Glass apiV2, Weather Plain, Weather Plain apiV2 and WWO Weather widgets need the World Weather Online API key.

Once you have registered, you’ll get an individual API key either directly on the web site of the provider or via email. Enter the key in the corresponding API Key field in Inspector.

 

 

The Open Weather widget connects to Open Weather Map, an Internet website that provides weather information for free at the time being. To customize the Open Weather widget, you have to adjust the following settings.

• API Key: Enter the OpenWeatherMap API key here. To acquire an API key, please visit this page.

• Label: Choose whether the weekday or the location is displayed on the day entries.

• First Element: If you choose Normal, the first day on the calendar will look like the others. With Extended, the first day looks somewhat accentuated.

• First Element Label: If you choose Extended, you can give the first element a separate label.

• Color: Set a color for the calendar elements.

• Background Color: Set a background color.

• Number of Days: Choose how many days are displayed for the particular location.

• Units: Select between Metric (Celsius) and Imperial (Fahrenheit) as temperature units.

• Language: Pick the language you want the weekdays to be shown in.

• City: Set the city of which you want to show the weather. Enter the name of the city, and the country code to get precise results. For instance, enter „Berlin, DE“ to get the weather of Berlin in Germany, or enter „Berlin, US“ to get the weather of Berlin in the USA.

Note: City names may have multiple occurrences, e.g. „Springfield“ returns eight items in the USA. To get the unique city code of your city, open the corresponding search result on Open Weather Map and take the seven-digit code at the end of the URL, for instance http://openweathermap.org/city/4409896.

Setting up Clock and Date Widgets

There’s not much to set up for Clock and Date widgets, except for the format used for date and time. Digital clock widgets display time in ‚long‘ format. You can modify the format used in the macOS System Preferences. Select Language & Region and click on Advanced… Make your changes in the Long field of the Dates section and click on OK to complete the procedure.

Setting up the Custom Clock and Date Widget

The Custom Clock and Date Widget is quite flexible. According to your settings, the Custom Clock and Date Widget can act as a date widget, a clock widget or both. Also you can customize the look and feel of the widget, i.e. you can set the language, colors, and the formats of date and time.

 

 

• Clock: Select whether to show the clock section.

• Clock Style: Choose the look of the clock. You have the choice between a digital clock, and two analog clocks.

• Time Zone: Enter the time zone of your location. The string to enter has the format Country/City. Type in the continent and a large city of your country, for instance America/New_York. Note that minor cities aren’t listed. If you type in America/Berlin, the widget would show the time in Europe/Berlin. If you aren’t sure about the Time Zone string, please refer to the Moments Timezone website.

• Time Format: Select whether to show the time in 12 h or 24 h format. This affects the digital display of time, but not the analog one.

• Date: Select whether to show the date section.

• Date Format: You can customize this string. Please refer to Moments.js Documentation website on how to do this.

• Language: Pick the language you want the date to be shown in.

• Background Color: Pick your background color.

• Color: Pick the color of the clock.

Setting up the QR Code Widget

QR codes are compact two-dimensional barcodes that encode a number of characters. They are very trendy, and for all smartphone platforms apps are available that can quickly read QR codes. This is used to make short messages such as Internet URLs quickly available.

The QR Code Widget allows you to give people quick access to your company’s home page or other short messages. For instance, the QR code below encodes the ~sedna homepage www.sedna.de.

 

 

The Widget is easy to use. In the Inspector you just have to adjust Background Color, Border and Color for the optical appearance of the resulting QR code, and to type in the Text value that is to be encoded, for instance your company’s Internet home page.

Note: It is essential that you set a foreground color that is darker than the background color. Also, choose colors for Background Color and Color that have high optical contrast. This will make sure the reading devices will have a good recognition rate.

Setting up the Flickr Widget

You need a Flickr account to use the Flickr widget. Enter the account name in the Username field in Inspector. In the Tags field you can enter some keywords that determine the selection of pictures that will be shown in the widget.

Setting up the Twitter Widget

The Twitter widget allows you to show recent tweets within your digital signage. If you already have an account you will need to sign in at developer.twitter.com, to make the Twitter Widget work. If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, register at developer.twitter.com.

 

 

To get started, create a new Layer to keep the Twitter widget. Import the Twitter widget and place it into the new Layer. To have the Twitter widget working, you need to enter four special Twitter keys and set values for a few other fields as described in the following list.

Note: Please use the twitter2.presenterwidget file that is the current version of the Twitter widget. The following instructions don’t apply to the original twitter.presenterwidget file that is included in the package for legacy purposes.

 

• Consumer Key: Enter the Twitter Consumer Key (API key) here. See below on how to obtain it.

• Consumer Secret: Enter the Twitter Consumer Secret (API secret). See below on how to obtain it.

• Access Token: Enter the Twitter Access Token. See further below on how to obtain it.

• Access Secret: Enter the Twitter Access Token Secret. See further below on how to obtain it.

• User or Hashtag: To get the subscribed tweets of a user, enter the user name in Twitter format, e.g. @TwitterUser. If you wish to show messages that contain a certain keyword, prefix a hashtag before the keyword, e.g. #TwitterKeyword. Note: You can use exactly one search term. To display multiple tweet streams you need to set up as many Twitter widgets.

• Refresh Rate: Set in seconds at which intervals the widget will check for new tweets.

• Number of Tweets: Set how many Tweets will be displayed.

• Color: Pick the foreground color for your widget.

• Background Color: Pick the background color for your widget.

Note: Tweets may express inappropriate statements that represent neither your nor ~sedna’s point of view. As it is, the Twitter widget doesn’t include filtering. You are free to modify the Java Script source code of the Twitter widget in order to create your own filter. However, if the changes you make to the source code affect the functionality of the widget, ~sedna won’t provide support in case of malfunctions.

How to Acquire Twitter API Keys

The Twitter keys needed are the Access Secret (API Key), Access Token Secret (API Secret), Consumer Key and Consumer Secret. To obtain these, you need to create a new Twitter app.

If you already have an account you will need to sign in at developer.twitter.com, to make the Twitter Widget work. If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, register at developer.twitter.com.

 

To create a new Twitter app, go to Twitter Apps. Click on the Create New App button and follow the instructions. Having created the new Twitter app, go to the Key and Access Tokens tab and generate a new access token. Now all four keys should be available. Copy and paste them into the corresponding Inspector fields.

The Advanced Control API is only available for Player Platinum 2 or higher.

The Advanced Control API is not covered by the free standard e-mail support or the prioritized technical e-mail support.

For questions, support and consulting on the Advanced Control API we offer professional support and trainings.
Please contact us for further information.