Adding Content to Your Playlist

Introduction

Display5 offers an incredibly diverse range of media support and a wide range of widgets that can be added to your shows.

 

Media formats supported include:

 

 

Display5 also includes a large number of widgets or components such as weather widgets, clock widgets, chart / KPI (Key Performance Indicators) widgets, Social Media widgets, PDFs, Map widgets, RSS widgets, ticker widgets and more.All of which are browser compatible components that you can insert as a slide in a panel of one of your Shows.

Adding a New Slide

From the Playlist page you will notice that on the left hand side of the screen there is a list of panels, each of these is a hyperlink that brings a separate Playlist of items for each panel to the right hand side of the page.As you select the panel number (i.e. Panel 1, Panel 2, etc.) you will also notice that there are 2 indicators as to what panel you are currently working on:

1.      The active Panel has a white background which flows to the right into the Playlist area, and:

2.      The screen representation image below changes to shade the active panel a dusty red colour.

 

To add a new piece of content to the active Panel Playlist, click on the Add New Slide button beneath the Playlist on the right of the screen. This will open a new screen that will look like this:

 

 

The title of this page is "Adding Slide to Panel1". On the right you will now see a list of all the various widgets and media types categories that you can add to your show. When you click on any one of these items the list will expand.Here is what it looks like when you click on the "Text and Tables" category:

 

 

When you click on one of the items within a category, it will generate a new slide in the panel that will play the content that you specify.You will also have the capability to specify scheduling or playback rules of the new content slide.

 

Begin by opening the text and tables menu, as per the example above, and selecting the "Text" widget, click on the "Add" button to the right of the description to add this slide. This will open up a pop up window that looks like this:

 

As you can see from this pop up window there are various fields that you need to enter information into, as well as configuration options such as background colour, and other background options such as images, transitions, duration and calendar scheduling etc. that appear in this window. The first thing to do is give your slide a title so that when you are viewing your playlist you know at a glance what the content is. In this example we are going to enter "Text Introduction" into the slide title field.

 

Now scrolling down to the "Text Content" window further down in the pop-up window, you are going to add some text that will appear in the slide when it loads. Type in some text into this window, and then highlight the text with the mouse and change the characteristics of the text by changing the options in the menu bar at the top of the Text Content window.

 

This when you are finished with your choices, the text is now formatted and ready to be played in your slide sequence. Scroll down to the bottom of the window and click the "Save" button.

 

The system should then return to the panels window and you should now see a new slide that you created appear beneath the first text slide.

 

You may notice from the image above that the publish check box is not selected. This means that this content item is not yet actively playing in the Playlist.It will not be played on the media player unless it is published. You can publish the item anytime by simply clicking on the checkmark box and a checkmark will appear.

 

You might also notice that the duration of the slide is 5 seconds, which is the default.This value can be changed at the time the slide is created or the value can be edited at any time.

 

Editing a Slide after Saving

You can make changes to a slide after it has been saved.There are a couple of ways that you can make changes to the slide content or slide settings.

1.      The easier way is to use the slide editor window. This window will allow you to see your changes automatically appear as well as giving all the options in one place for you to make changes to the slide. To do this you will need to open the "More" menu on the right hand side of the slide details and select "Edit Slide Details" from the pop up list.

 

 

By selecting the "Edit Slide Details" option in the menu you are now opening a new pop up window that contains the slide preview along with the field boxes and option lists needed to make changes to the slide. The edit window will look like this:

 

 

To the right of this window you will see the input areas for the slide background colour, background image, the Slide title and so on, to the bottom text content window that will allow you to format the text that you want to show in the slide.

 

On the left hand side, you will see a window (size adjusts according to the size of the panel you are currently editing) that contains the actual text that will be showing when this slide is loaded in the Playlist.You can now go ahead and make changes to the slide.Try editing the text. Remember that you must select the text you want to edit, just the same as if you were editing text in a Word document.

 

Now, select or change the background colour for the Text panel. You can also change the duration of the slide from the default 5 seconds however long you want, e.g. to 10 or 15 seconds. Once you have made your changes, click the "Save" button at the top of the right hand panel to make those alterations.

 

Once you click Save you will notice the updates that you have made to the slide will appear in the preview window on the left hand side of the edit window.

 

Once you have made all the changes you want click on the Close button and you will return to the Playlist.

 

 

Scheduling a Slide

To schedule the content of the slide you have created you need have the edit slide details window open (see Editing a Slide after Saving) and scroll down to Schedule Slide on the right side of the pop-up.

 

 

 

Click on this link and a new window will open that looks like this:

 

 

You will notice that the "from" and "to" times are set to midnight.This slide is set to play constantly, 24 hours a day, on all days that are checked in the "Day of the Week:" list via a blue check mark. You can now modify when the slide is played in the following ways:

 

1.      Time of day: You can specify the time range that this slide will play.For example, setting the start time to 06:00 and the end time to 12:00 will mean that this slide will only play in the mornings from 6 AM until 12 PM.

2.      Day of week: You can uncheck any of the days in the list and this will cause the slide to not play on those days.

3.      Start/Stop date: When left blank this means that the slide will play all year round. If however you specify a start date and an end date, by clicking on the calendar button at the right of the fields, then the slide will only play between those dates and at no other time.

 

You can combine any of these time and date settings for each slide and set up a specific schedule for the slide. When you have made the desired changes, click on Save to close the Schedule slide window. Then to apply the changes to the new schedule you must ALSO hit the Save button on the Edit Slide window.Finally, select the Close button to close the edit slide window and you will be returned to the Playlist screen. You may need to refresh the browser window to see updates to the slide.

 

In the Playlist screen you will now see the slide that you added has a small clock to the right - plus green text indicating the scheduled properties of the slide (Green indicates that the content has not expired yet) - of the publish radio button.This indicates that this slide now has a schedule attached to it. This is a reminder, so that you can always be aware at a glance that the slide may not play in the Show you are playing.It will only play if you are playing the Show when that Slide is scheduled.If you want to remind yourself of what the schedule for the slide is, then you can click on the mini clock to open a new window that will contain the details of the schedule you have set for the slide. If you want to change the settings, then click on the edit slide button at the bottom of the schedule window.

 

 

Slide Playback Sequence

For each panel in your Show you will have a slide Playlist that plays in a top to bottom sequence. Once the show has played through all the content it will start playing again from the beginning. You will notice that beside the slide duration is an up or down arrow.

 

These arrows allow you to move a slide up or down in the order of playlist. This means that the first (or top) slide plays first. You can ALSO change the order of playback by grabbing (clicking on and holding you mouse click) and moving the entire slide line up or down in the playlist.Each line is a draggable item.

 

In the image below you can see that the second text item in the list is being moved to the top most position.

 

 

This technique for moving the slides is especially effective when you have a large number of slides in a playlist.

 

Each slide will play for the exact number of seconds specified in the duration column, and the Playlist will cycle through, over and over, until the show is stopped.