DMS v5.x
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User Manual - English
Contents |
Introduction
The DMS 5 (Digital Media Server) is the next generation of WEB based content management play-out software for Digital Signage applications.
DMS5 Interface
DMS5 Login
To acess the Digital Media Server (DMS) CMS user interface, you just have to enter the IP_address:Port_number or Domain-name in your Browser. For example: http://85.214.231.206. Once the connection is established, you can enter your given username and password to enter the CMS (Content Management System).
The default page, after login, is set to the Playlist Management overview. You can change the default page in the Change user information dialog.
Main menu:
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Content Manager |
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Playlist Management |
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Calendar in weekly / monthly view |
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Meta Events Management |
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Player Management |
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Group Management |
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Logs |
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Reports |
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Account Management |
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FTP |
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Change user information |
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Resolution Management |
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Shell Commands managementanagment |
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Meta Words managment |
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About |
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Current user |
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Used / Maximum Disk Space |
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Free / Total Space |
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Actions menu |
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Logout from DMX |
Content Manager
Before you start creating your own Playlists you need to upload the necessary content. The Content Manager can be opened by clicking the first icon in the main menu.
Once you have opened the Content Manager you can browse trough the already uploaded content, manage it, or upload new content such as pictures, videos, audio, and flash animations.
You can create, rename and delete folders with the appropriate buttons. Also you can filter the files by using the Filter by Combobox. By moving the mouse over a media-file you will recieve further information about resolution, filesize or duration.
For uploading new content select the folder which should be filled, and click on the Upload content button.
Click Browse in the appearing popup-window to open the local file browser. Here you can browse for your content, note that you can upload multiple files simultaneously.
Once you have selected your files click on Upload to start the upload into the folder you have selected earlier.
Playlist Management
A Playlist is a collection of various content elements and events assembled for a looped playback in the Digital Media Player Software (DMP).
Multiple Playlists can be aggregated in a queued that can be scheduled or played instantly.
Playlists can be exported in Playlist containers (zip format) containing all layouts, Playlist XML and content elements that belong to this Playlist. Exported Playlists can be imported in other DMS or DMX systems. There are three different types of Playlists:
- Fullscreen Playlists (red)
- Composer Playlists (blue)
- Zone Playlists (red)
Besides these three, there can be two more types of icons on the interface:
- Queued Playlists (green)
- Playlist folders (yellow)
Dependent on the type of signage application required, Fullscreen, Composer or Zone Playlists are better suited. The characteristics of each type of Playlists are described in the following:
Fullscreen Playlist
With a Fullscreen Playlist you can create very simple and basic Playlist. You only have to drag and drop your media files, like pictures, videos, flash, and tuner events into the time-slide in the Fullscreen Editor, and set their durations appropriately. Some packages may include Special events such as Web-Stream, Meta Events, and HTML Pages. On playback the content will be looped in fullscreen resolution, one after another.
You can find a detailed description on how to create a fullscreen Playlist here.
Composer Playlist
The WEB Composer Editor is an easy to use signage content creation tool. A Composer Playlist consists of several content elements which you can set up using our WYSIWYG WEB Composer in full screen mode. In a Composer Playlist several formats can be used, such as: Text incl. RSS Ticker, Images, Videos, Audio, and Flash. The Composer supports multiple pages and content containers (on the first page only). The WEB Composer features are described in more detail in the WEB Composer chapter. Formats like HTML pages, Shell Events and PPT's. are not supported within a composer Playlist.
Zone Playlist
A zone Playlist is more complex than a Composer Playlist, supporting all available content formats. The zone builder is an easy tool to define your screen layout with a number of zones (frames). Every zone can have one or many sequential content elements and other events. The content elements and events can be managed with our Event Manager. All elements inside a zone are for independent looped playback. The following formats are supported: Pictures, Video, Video Stream (multicast), TV tuner, RSS Ticker, Composer (including all Composer object elements support), HTML page (remote or local), Flash, Shell Event, Audio, PowerPoint ppt. Further information about Zone Playlists can be found here.
Calendar
With the Calendar tool you can acess an overview of all scheduled Playlists (including a "mouse over" preview). It enables you so see which Playlist is being looped when (day and time), and which group of Players it's deployed to. Also you can change the schedules of each Playlist.
Additional information about scheduling in chapter 7.
Player Management
Each hardware device you connect with our DMP to your Server will auto-register, and can then be found inside the Player Management tab. It with it's MAC address as the unique identifier. Additional to this a name, location and some notes can be assigned to each Player. For information it shows the group name it has been assigned to, last update time, up time, last status, what is currently playing, the sync status, the sync time, the update time window, and the online status. If a new Player is pointed to a DMS account without any or non existing group name, it will be assigned to the default group called unassigned. For Player error notification there is a control field on the main menu showing how many Players are online, offline and with an error state. If a Player is known as temporarily offline (e. g. on service) it is marked as offline.
With the Show Player Logs button you can get additional information for selected box.
You can send special commands (reboot etc.) to each box by clicking on Shell Commands.
Group Management
A group can consist of one or many Players. The initial group is called unassigned. All new connected Players that are not assigned to a group during installation will be added to this group. To assign Players to specific groups (mainly used for categorizing a large number of Players into different playout groups),just drag the Player name and drop it into the appropriate group. All Players within the group will synchronize with all content and Playlists that have been assigned via scheduling or instant play.
Pressing the Add Group button will add a new group. The following group properties can be set:
- Name of the group
- Synchronization time Window from/to
- Idle Playlist that will be played when nothing is scheduled or no instant Playlist is activated
- Instant Playlist will be played instantly with higher priority than schedule
- Check Players online status will check if Players are online or offline
- Online status check period determines the period after the Player is set to offline
With Button Switch to List View you get a listed overview of all groups and the option to edit a few group parameters.
Logs
All Server and Player logs are stored here for maintainance and Support purposes.
Reports
In the reports section you can get every report for every time parameter and Player you wish. Just click on the Add Button, select the whished report and time period. The DMS will create the report in a few minutes. When the report is ready you can export it as pipe-separated (|) .csv file by clicking on the Export Report Button.
Account Management
In the Accountmanagement (for administrators only) you can see and change the rights of al sub-users which you have created.
FTP
The FTP-feature is used for different things.
First you can use FTP as alternative to upload media files. If you don't want to upload files via Content Manager because of filesize limitation of 1GB or other causes, you can use FTP. In the FTP users management window click on Add and create a new FTP user there. As Server folder you have to select Manual Upload.
After the FTP-User is marked as active you can connect with any FTP-Client and upload your media-files. When all of your files are uploaded, you have to press the Add Uploaded Files Button to import them into the DMS-System. In the Content Manager, the new files are stored in the Upload Folder.
Second option is to use FTP for AutoPicture and AutoVideo Events. For these you have to add a new FTP-User unlike for the manual upload you have to name them either with Auto Picture Upload or Auto Video Upload as Server folder.
The AutoPicture and AutoVideo Events are described in detail in chapter 9.
You can also set up Management FTP-Users for AutoPicture and AutoVideo Events. Just create new users with AP/AV-Management as Server folder.
Change user information
When clickling on Change user information following dialog window will open
Here you can change all information about the current user like password, name, address, language and many default settings for the interface and behaviour.
Resolution Management
The Resolution Management allows you to create any resolution for any display size, landscape and portrait mode operation. Each resolution has a name, horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) pixel size assigned to it. The resolution will be used when creating Playlists to determin the workspace pixel size and aspect ratio. In case the play-out will be done on a different screen resolution with same aspect ratio, the content will be scaled accordingly.
Note that if you change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3,in some cases your content may look stretched.
About
The About-Section gives you Information about the Version of the Product and let you see the Release Notes. Also there is a link to the Stinova Online Help
Add Playlists
Add Fullscreen Playlist
To add a new Fullscreen Playlist you have to click on the Add Playlist Button in the Playlist Management and select Fullscreen Playlist.
In the dialog type in the Playlist name and an optional Note and click on the Add Button. With Color you can select the Color of this Playlist inside the Calendar.
After pressing the Add button you will see the Fullscreen Editor.
Here you can drag and drop your uploaded media content into the eventqueue. Also you can set the duration (in seconds) of each Event by clicking on the Edit Button, at the bottom left of the Thumbnail, or by clicking directly into the duration number. When finished press Save.
As soon you have saved your Playlist you will see a thumbnail of the first screen in Playlist. When moving the mouse over the thumbnail you will see a live preview of the full Playlist.
For instant playing of this Playlist you have to Publish it by clicking on the Publish Button. If you want to add other groups to this instant queued, just click on the red - or Play button, select the proper groups, and then confirm with save.
Add Zone Playlist
In zone Playlists you can create a screen layout with multiple zones (frames) that can be filled with various content such as
- Ticker
- Images
- Video
- HTML Page
- Audio
- Composer Event
- Multicast Stream
- TV Tuner
- Shell Event (e.g. RS232 commads)
- JavaScript Event
- Volume Event
- Auto Picture / Auto Video Event
To add a zone Playlist click on the Add Playlist button in the Playlist Management and choose Zone Playlist.
As identifiers you can add:
- Playlist name
- the color how it is shown in the calendar
- a comment
- select if this is a just a template or fully working Playlist
After pressing the Add button you will see the Zone Playlist Editor.
The properties button on the top right side will allow you to:
- select the resolution of the Playlist
- change the name of the Playlist
- set the background colour of the main Playlist frame
To add a new zone (frame) press the add button. To select the size and position of the zone click on the zone so it will be red and press the edit button. You can now resize with the handles on the zone border and drag it to where you want it. For pixel precise positioning and zone size you can just add the X, Y position and the W (width) and H (height) in pixels from this point.
To add content into the zone just double click on the zone name, or directly on the zone. This will open the Event Manager.
Now you can drop content or other events into the zone by dragging the content into the timeline of the event manager. You can drag the content in the timeline, arrange it at any time, change the duration of each element, and change some properties of each element, or simply delete it.
The special feature of a zone Playlist is that it allows you also to integrate additional content formats such as HTML pages, video streams, local TV tuner, etc...
If you have multiple zone layeres on top of each other, you can choose the layer position of each frame by dragging the layer name in the list up or down.
Once you are done editing your Playlist just press the save button on the bottom right. If you do not want to save your changes press the Exit button.
As soon you have saved your Playlist you will see a thumbnail of your first screen of your frame Playlist. A live preview of the full Playlist is only available in the composer or fullscreen Playlist.
Add Composer Playlist
A Composer based Playlist is created using our WYSIWYG WEB Composer to easily combine and animate different contents to a Playlist. The composer is page based, allowing you to place different objects in each page such as:
- Text (Ticker)
- Image
- Video
- Flash
- Audio
- Container
The Container object is a special object that can be inserted only on the first page, because the contents of this Container (videos, images, multicast, tuner) are looped independently of the remaining pages at a fixed position
To add a new Paylist just select the Add Playlist button in the Playlist Management and choose the Composer Playlist item.
As a minimum you need to assign a name and choose a resolution to create your composer Playlist. The following options can be entered here:
- Name -> Name of the Playlist
- Color -> how it appears in the calendar
- Resolution -> the Playlist resolution of the Composer workspace
- Note -> add any note here
- Is draft -> select weather it is a draft Playlist or a full Playlist
- Duration for queued -> this determines the play time if the composer Playlist is added to a Playlist queue
After you press the Add button the composer will be started in your browser with an empty workspace.
To save the composer event press the Save button on the bottom right. To exit the composer without saving press the exit button on the bottom right and you see a window where you can choose to exit without saving, to save or to cancel and go back to the open composer event. Please note: there must be at least one object added to the composer event otherwise no composer Playlist will be created.
After a new composer based Playlist is saved it will create the following object in the Playlist manager.
Please note: dependent on your internet connection it the preview might not show all content immediately in its first loop until all elements are cached in local browser.
Workspace Options
There are several helpful features for the composer workspace that will be listed in the following.
- Page dismensions displays the target width and height in pixels of the composer workspace
- Workspace zoom in with the workspace scale slider on the top right - displays the percentage of zoom out factor
- Language selector let the user select the language of the composer interface
- Show mouse checkbox selects if the mouse pointer is shown in the composer Player when mouse over
- Show grid checkbox selects if a grid on the workspace is shown
- Show guideline checkbox selects if the guidelines are shown. If this checkbox is selected there are guideline bars on the left and top of the workspace from where you can drag new guidelines with the mouse or remove the guidelines by dragging back to the bars.
- Guideline offset sets and shows the offset in pixel of the guideline relative to the left (for vertical guidelines) or top (for horizontal guidelines). To set the offset for a guideline click on the desired guideline, so it appears red, type the offset value in pixels, and press the checkbox.
- The checkbox Lock guide can lock or unlock the guideline so it can not be moved if checked
Page Options
The composer tool is based on one or multiple pages where objects can be placed. There is a minimum of 1 page required. The following page operations are available:
- Add page -> inserts a new empty page after the current page position
- Copy page -> copies the current page and inserts it after the curren page position
- Delete page -> opens a page selector window that lets you delete one or several pages with the from - to selection
- Page transition selector selects the transition between all pages. The following transition options are available: CrossFading, KenBurns, Fade in/out, Random, and none
- The Page duration sets and shows the current page duration in seconds
- The total duration shows the length of all pages and determins the length of the loop
- Page selector can step forward or backwards through the existing pages, it also keeps count of the total number of existing pages and the actual page position
- The Page color selector sets the background color of the page
- The Delete b/g button deletes a background image that is set for the page
- The Transparent b/g checkbox alows to set the composer with transparet background if no background color or background image is set. This option is only available if composer Player is embedded in a web browser and is not supported for DMP-W.
- The Preview button shows you a preview of the composer event. Please note the quality of the video is reduced in a browser preview.
Composer Objects
Now you can add objects in one or multiple pages. There are 6 different types of objects that can be added.
- Text object
- Image object
- Video object
- Flash object
- Audio object
- Events (tuner evens such as live stream, sattelite tv, local webcam stream...)
- Container object (only on first page)
If you select the add object button for one of the above mentioned content types, the content browser will only show you the files that fit into the chosen objects criteria. For example: If you choose to add a Video to your Playlist, the content browser will only show you files in video formats, such as : wav, mp4, mpg, avi, and many others that our DMP's supports.
If you check the Always visible button for the selected content object, then this object will be visible through all pages at this position, independent of the page transition. This option is useful for adding a logo that should be visible at the same position, while the pages are sliding. If an object is set to always visible, it will always be the top layer.
It is possible to overlay objects and set layer position by the layer up/down selector. Please note that videos might not support layering on the DMP, and may only work in the web play and preview.
Text Object
Click the Add Object button to add a new text object to the workspace. You can now place it by dragging the frame border, and resize it by dragging the handle on the bottom right corner. For pixel exact positioning just add the X and Y coordinates, and the width and height of the text object.
To start writing just click inside the objects text frame.
There are various text formatting options available such as:
- Font type
- Font size
- Font style (italic, bold, underline)
- Font colour
- Left aligned, centered, right aligned, block text
- Font spacing
- Line spacing
- Bullet points
- Tabs
There are various text object formatting options available such as:
- Alpha value
- Alpha colour
- Text border insets
- Rounded corners
- Reflection
A text object can be animated with some animation types, triggered on page load.
A text object can be copied on the page with the text object copy button.
If you click the ticker button you can choose whether you want to have the text scrolled vertically or horizontally, or you can add an RSS link to read the text from an external RSS feeder.
RSS Link
If you want to add an RSS feed copy the RSS link in the RSS link menu of your object. There are 3 types of RSS text options available:
- Horizontal
- Vertical
- Block
You also can choose whether you want to have the title or descritption displayed in the text object field.
To format the text of an RSS feed type the word style only in the text object and format the word style (font type, size, bold, color etc...) so the RSS text will be displayed with this format.
Image Object
Click the Image object button to open the media manager, then select an image that can be dragged into the workspace. You can now place it by dragging the image and resize it by dragging the handle on the bottom right corner.
For pixel exact positioning just enter the X and Y coordinates, and the width and height of the image.
If you want to ignore the aspect ratio of the image you can uncheck the keep aspect ratio button on the top left.
If you want to add the image as a background check the Add b/g checkbox at the bottom.
If you want to replace an existing image with the same properties then
- click the replacement image
- check the replace checkbox at the bootom
- drag the image onto the workspace
There are various image object formatting options available such as:
- Crop image
- Image alpha
- Object background alpha and colour
- Rounded corners
- Reflection
- Shadow effect
To crop an image click select your image and click the Crop Image button. With the four handles at the corners, you can select the area you want to crop.
An image object can be animated with some animation types, which are triggered on page load.
Video Object
Click the Video object button to open the media manager where you can select the video you want to drop into the workspace. You can now place by dragging the video, and resize it by dragging the handle on the bottom right corner.
For pixel exact positioning just enter the X and Y coordinates, and width and height of the video object.
If you want to ignore the aspect ratio of the video, you can select none. Otherwise you can select 16:9 or 4:3.
The video plays until end of page, so make sure the page lengths is the minimum length of video. If you want the video to play its full duration time across multiple pages, then check the checkbox play till end at the top left.
Flash Object
Click the Add Flash Object button to open the media manager, to select a flash that can be dragged onto the workspace.
Please note - there are some limitations of .swf (flash), not all can be embedded inside a composer Playlist. In case you want to embed another flash with a transparent background, make sure the .swf has a background size determined, otherwise it may not be displayed correctly. Place the flash object by dragging and dropping (note: transparent flash can only be dragged by clicking on the non-transparent areas). Resize it by dragging the handle on the bottom right corner. For pixel exact positioning just enter the exact X and Y coordinates, and width and height of your object in pixels.
If you want to ignore the aspect ratio of the flash object you can uncheck the keep aspect ratio button on the top left.
If you want to add a background color with an alpha level to your flash object (only useful for transparen flash objects), just move the Object b/g alpha slider to the right to increase the alpha level, and select the object background color with the color picker.
If you want to decrease the alpha level of the flash object itself, move the Alpha slider to the left.
There are various flash object formatting options available such as:
- Flash object alpha
- Flash object background alpha and color
- Rounded corners
- Reflection
- Shadow effect
A flash object can be animated with some animation types which are triggered on page load.
Audio Object
Click the Add Audio Object button to open the media manager. Select the audio file you want to add to your page. The audio icon is just a placeholder to add and remove audio elements to the page, it does not appear on the Player page.
The audio will play until the end of the page.
Container Object
Container objects are areas for content elements such as videos, images and for other events, such as multicast and tuner events, looping independently of the composer pages inside the container position. Therefore the container object can only be placed on the first page. To add a container object go to the first page and click Add Container Object button. To see where a container object is positioned, it is visible as a frame throughout all pages.
You can now place the container object by dragging and dropping.You can resize it by dragging the handle on the bottom right corner. For pixel exact positioning, just enter the proper X and Y coordinates, and the width and height of the container object.
If you want to mainly add videos, you can select the aspect ratio for the container to 16:9 or 4:3. To ignore the aspect ratio of the container object you can select none in the Video ratio selector.
If you want the video to be played in flash format, and not in the original format, check the Embed checkbox.
To add content into the container click the Manage Video/Image button, which opens the content manager.
A container object supports videos, images, flash, and special events such as multicasts and tuner events. Drag the content element in the timeline to arrange them in a loop. To change the length of each element, click on the time value (in seconds), and type in a new value in soconds as well. The total duration of the container loop will be shown on the top left of the media manager. To change the sequence of the elements drag the element and move it to the left or right in the timeline.
To add options in the video playback or tuner events add the Options in the Video parameters input field. To remove an element in the container timeline, press the Remove element button.
Kiosk Mode
The composer offers a simple way of creating a simple interactive menu. For running in the kiosk mode, the Kiosk checkbox must be checked. This will open the composer on the first page (menu page), and let it stay there until a link area is pressed to open another page. The following objects can be defined as link areas: text, image, video, and flash.
The following commands are available and can be used in the Object Link input field:
- page (x) e.g. page 2 -> opens page 2 of the composer when clicked
- continue -> resets the timer and continues the loop of the composer pages
- http://www.stinova.com -> opens a new browser window with the given html link (only available for desktop signage or web signage).
If the composer pages should start to loop after time of no activity, a timer can be set by addnig a time in seconds at the Timer input field. If set to 0, then the timer is deactivated. If set to 10, then the slides will start to loop, when no click activity after is recognised in the past 10 seconds. and the set timer countdown time has been reached. The loop will be stopped and the time reset to the given time when an object link was clicked.
Playlist Scheduler
Instant Playback
For instant playback just press the Play sign in your Playlist. The instant playback function allows the immediate start of Playlists in the assigned groups. Instant playback has the highest play-out priority and will pause any playing schedule of the selected group. If it is stopped the scheduled Playlist continues to play.
Schedules
In contrast to an instant playback (play now), a schedule is one or a queue of Playlists that are played at a pre-defined time window. A schedule is always assigned to a group that can contain one or multiple Players. All Players that belong to this group will automatically synchronize the content and Playlist. Once they have downloaded their content from the DMS, the whole group will start playing at the predefined time. A schedule can be created by clicking on the schedule icon in the Playlist object window. There is no limit to the amounts of schedules you can create. If there is a time window overlap for the same group a conflict warning appears, since only one Playlist can be played for a group of Players. The calendar view shows the pre-scheduled Playlists in a weekly or monthly overview.
Idle Playlist
An Idle Playlist is played in case there is nothing scheduled, or no instant playback is activated for this group. Idle Playlist avoids an empty screen in case no schedule is assigned to the group, or no instant Playlist is activated. An idle Playlist can be assigned in the group properties.
