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User Manual - mirabyte Software: Downloads

1. Content Touch Link jN r ouch Linl NS r gt content with of p conte button png b r Page 3 hidden Fig Concept of a touch link Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Interaction with keyboard and other devices In the page properties dialog of a playlist page you can assign a Shortcut for this page F1 F24 and a Page Shortcut a numeric value When a playlist is running and the corresponding shortcut key is pressed on the keyboard the page is displayed immediately The same happens if the page shortcut number is entered on the numeric keyboard block followed by the ENTER key The Hidden property of a page allows you prevent a page from being shown when the playlist is running in automatic mode Only by using either the shortcut or the shortcut key it is possible to display a page that has been marked as hidden This functionality can not only be used with common keyboards but also with other specialized devices that are able to emulate keyboard key press events This includes RFID readers bar code scanners and ruggedized programmable key pad devices Furthermore you can also use the cursor keys left right and up down to control a playlist In case you have attached more that one screen to your player PC you can define which screen is supposed to react on user interaction by setting the advanced config
2. Slide Show Shows a sequence of images photos supports the above formats with an optional transition effect and Motion Zoom effect PDF and XPS PDF is a common e paper format what can be generated using various tools e g Adobe Acrobat XPS is the Microsoft e paper format which can be freely generated by applications such as Word PowerPoint or Excel Plugins FrontFace can easily be extended with custom functionality by using plugins see Using Plugins for details Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Supported Media Formats 13 Media Format Description Hot Folder A Hot Folder is a shared network folder which is scanned for displayable files at the point of time when the hot folder content is being shown Any files in this folder videos pictures XPS and HTML files are then shown as dynamic playlist see Dynamic Playlists Hot Folder Flash Silverlight Flash and Silverlight objects can be embedded directly see Using Flash andl Silverlight Web Playlist It is also possible to add a dynamic sequence of Web pages to a playlist by providing the URL to an RSS feed see Using Web Playlists for details Streaming Video All Streaming sources that are supported by Windows Media Player 10 or higher can be integrated AV Source Live AV signal e g Web Cams or Video grabbers for DVD or TV see Integration of TV Programs and AV Sources Other supported formats
3. On the other hand you have to assign a page layout to every page of a playlist A page layout basically defines how the screen is partitioned which allows you to display more than one content on a single page The basic page layout contains just one container for single content which is then displayed in full screen mode You can choose from the set of predefined page layouts that come with the software Specifically the Overlay Layouts see Overlay Layouts Layers offer interesting design options Additionally you can also define your own custom layouts see section Customization and Styling A page layout always consists of at least one or multiple containers that can then be filled with content Add new Page Properties Visibility Background Color ae Be Page abeays vise Duration 00 00 00 Only show page during this window of time Page Layout Start Date End Date Ensen E Custom Layouts Daily Begin Daily End M Standard Weekdays Tuesday Thursday es BSH OS J Friday Saturday can only be sl ia shortcut or page shortcut Fig The properties dialog of a playlist page allows setting the page layout as well as visibility settings Furthermore it is also possible to embed another playlist in a container of a page layout This can be used to make certain parts of a page static while others contain dynamic content see Embedding Playlists in Playlists Contai
4. of FrontFace etc please see the section Continuous Operation Mode Configuration In many cases it is also useful to setup the player PC for remote administration Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 6 2 Creation and Management of Playlists The actual content that is shown on the screens is organized with so called playlists All playlists are managed separately and are not tied to a specific player PC The advantage of this approach is that if you want to show the same playlist on multiple displays you only have to create a single playlist and can then reuse it on multiple displays The actual content is not created with FrontFace for Public Displays but with external applications such as imaging programs video software or applications like PowerPoint Word etc This allows you to reuse your existing content and saves you from having to learn how to use a new complex application just because you want to create content for your screens The Print2Screen feature of FrontFace for Public Displays allows you to create high quality content with ANY Windows application You can add new pages to a playlist remove existing ones or change the ordering Besides the possibility to manually add new pages and assign content to them you can also directly import content files like images videos etc Optionally you can also drag amp drop files from the Window
5. Fig Properties dialog of a playlist page which also contains the settings for the news ticker screen layout and ticker settings Please note that the ticker will only be shown if you choose a screen layout that contains a news ticker bar either on the top or on the bottom of the screen Furthermore you can set the font and the colors of the news ticker as well as the scrolling speed in the playlist properties window Other aspects like the size of the ticker can also be customized But therefore it is required to modify the appropriate screen layout Some languages like Arabic of Hebrew also need to reverse the scrolling direction of the news ticker see section Adjusting the Language of the Player Application for details It is also possible to use placeholders in the news ticker text in the same way as with text elements inside a playlist page The placeholders get filled with the final text either when publishing the playlist in case the playlist is started by a timer or in the moment when an event is fired if the playlist is started by an event source Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 51 9 6 Using the Weather Widget FrontFace for Public Displays comes with a built in weather widget that can display the current weather conditions a daily forecast and a 3 day forecast for a given location Simply add a Weather content object to a playlist page In the settings dialog you can
6. Preview objects such as images Websites XPS documents videos etc Click on a place holder in the lavout preview to User Manual Fig The Display Assistant application allows you to manage your player PCs contents and schedules conveniently Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Technical Overview All content media files configuration playlists schedules etc are stored in a so called project A project can be saved at any location either on a local computer or on a network share in order to allow multiple users to access the project The Display Assistant is used to create edit and save projects In order to deploy the content to a player PC the Publish feature of the Display Assistant is used It copies all the required files using an intelligent mechanism into the Content Update Folder of the player PC This folder is a local folder on the player PC which is either made available externally as network share or which is replicated using a cloud storage service The Content Update Folder can also be located on a USB thumb drive in case the offline updating method has been selected For more details please see the section Publishing to Player PC s Player PC Playback Content Observe Save Publish ic via network share 5 Hit cloud storage service A gutomaiig ELR y or USB thumb drive Content Update after publishing Content C
7. mirabyte FrontFace for Public Displays User and Configuration Manual Version 3 6 9 Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 2 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Table of Contents W SMROOUCTION fxsschy sexs ac seine Hedi avc seta hay cen Sates thee aki dsc beds iay kas eet eevee et eae eee 4 2 Technical Ove EW aa sata A a hes ee A ie CS A a peaa at 5 3 Step by Step Tutorial zikrin a reien cece ee ceee idore anar h aa Raa rada aaa e a Aaea T Edan 8 4 Supported Media Forttiats etrn aerea e a aaa a ea aaaea Era eeta 12 5 System Reg iremeN Sane a Aaaa otc E E A ete ee neg ee ese 15 6 Working with the Application sieni aa a a a a ais ea 17 Player PG Configuration ra eea eaa een cht Saver ke ae hee ka 18 Creation and Management of Playlists cccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee tees aaa teense ee esse aaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeaaaaeeeereeeees 20 Determination of the Duration of a Playlist Page ceeeeeeeee cence eeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaaaeeees 21 screen Design and Layout s c c0c vi ars ei i eee ae eee ee a ae 23 Controlling Screens and Schedules cecceeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeaaaeeeeeeeeseaaaaaaeeeseeeseaaaaaaeeeeeeeees 25 Time based Scheduling 2 0 2 2 cceeeceee cece cece cea e eee te tree ee ee ceca nate e eee ee sede aaaate ee ee ee ee aa aaaaaaeeeeeeeeaaaae 25 Event based Scheduling atiras ani ei ae ie een a cee ei a 27 Scheduling of Individual Playlist Pages ccceceeeee
8. RSS Apart from any custom text the news ticker can also display any RSS 2 0 RSS 1 0 RDF or Atom news feed Audio Background music in WAV MP3 or WMA format can be defined for entire playlists or invidiual playlist pages Apart from that also audio streams e g Internet radio are supported by using WPL playlists or ASX W VX files Automatic scaling of content Thanks to intelligent algorithms and modern image processing technologies FrontFace for Public Displays is able to always display any type of media in a perfect way no matter which resolution or orientation the target display has In addition to that the software offers you ways to influence how content is scaled or aligned if they do not match with the target view port The following stretching options are available for content types Uniform Uniform to Fill Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 4 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Hint For best rendering performance it is recommended to use only content that are not significantly larger or smaller than the intended display size This reduces the necessary amount of up and down scaling which guarantees a fluid rendering even on computers with less performance When importing images or photos which are very large e g those that where made using a modern digital camera the Display Assistant asks you if you want to automatically scale down the pictures in order to
9. chd are available here Number of Loops E Skip parent page with this content if this playlist is empty Fig Dialog for embedding a playlist into a page of another playlist Simply select for an empty container Another Playlist and then select the playlist you want to embed The referenced playlist has to be defined in the same project as the other one Additionally you can define the number of playback loops for the embedded playlist A value of 0 indicates that the playlist will be played only once before the next page of the superordinate playlist is shown A value of 1 2 3 etc defines the number of additional loops of that playlist A value of 1 indicates that the superordinate does not wait for the embedded playlist to finish instead the duration of the current page that contains the embedded playlist defines the overall display length If you embed a playlist into another there is no copy being created but a reference on the embedded one This causes updates to the embedded playlist to directly affect the superordinate playlist This very powerful feature opens up a huge range of useful applications In the following some examples and suggestions are described 1 Creating pages with static and dynamic elements You can assign normal media objects like images text etc to containers of a page which represent the static elements and a playlist to another container on that page which then represen
10. gt FrontFace Display Assistant J Project D Ag Publish S Click on Publish to deploy the current project to the assigned player PC s z Player PCs Sample Project Publishing Playlists Scheduling G Publish 0 error s occurred while publishing Here you can deploy the updated content to the player PCs In this case all updated media is packaged and copied to the Content Update Folders of the player PCs that you have set up After the updated E Verbose Logging Use intelligent publishing mode only copy new updated files content has been fully deployed the player application will pick up the new content and display it according to the defined schedules User Manual Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual FrontFace for Public Displays supports three main deployment methods During the so called publishing process the content media files playlists schedules etc is deployed onto the player PC s Choose the best method for you based on your infrastructure and your individual requirements The following deployment methods are available o LAN based Deployment via a network share o Internet based Deployment via a Cloud storage service such as OneDrive or Dropbox o Offline Deployment via USB removable media The interface between the player PC and the Display Assistant is the so called Con
11. 4 3 Offline Deployment USB flash drive In a case where no network connection between the player PC s and the computer on which the Display Assistant is installed on is available an offline medium like an USB bar a SD card or any other removable media can be used to update the player PC Please create a folder PD_DATA on the USB thumb drive and select this folder as Content Update Folder in the Display Assistant After the display content has been copied onto the removable media by the Display Assistant the removable media may be plugged into the player PC which will then update itself automatically No further action is required and this procedure can also be performed while the player is running Removable Media USB bar or SD card Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Tips on Content Creation 35 Tips on Content Creation A major advantage of FrontFace for Public Displays is the fact that you can use virtually any Windows application for creating your screen content You will not have to familiarize with a new application instead you can keep on using your favorite applications E g you can use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint but also applications like a Open Office or any other application of your choice In this section you will find some valuable tips amp tricks on creating screen content easily 7 and professionally Content creation with PowerPoint PowerPoint is a very good choice for creating
12. Configuration Options 00 ccccceeeeene tite te errr ee ee etter eres ee ead te eeeeeeee ae aaaaneeeeeeseeaeaaea 88 ROR Eoo RENAE tend acted neki ns A E oer Ste ahd ol ere dee Te seas Salaam ttt aise Oba deel adds tad eee ttt 93 11 Software Deployment and Updates ccc cececeeeee cece ee eenee teeter sees ae aa ae neeeeeeeeeaeaaaaeeeeeeeeeaeaaaaaeeees 94 12 gt icense ACTIVATION ccf ie aatiasee cap tei a ea tat balsa rasta eet Sheet a ab teal aaes cay eae Hae A teeta eee 96 13 IKOUDIESHOOUNG EE EAE A ho ihe hh oh ROR E OREN ibe koala ee 97 14 Further Information and Help 0 ccccecceeeeeeeee cece ee eae ee tees sees ae aa ee teeeee esse aeaaaaeeeeeeeeeaeaaaaaenees 99 WIND AR eG Mat ete eee TEAS ete he ia shee ae Reed hd as OA eh ales eae 100 Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 4 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 1 Introduction FrontFace for Public Displays is a very powerful and flexible digital signage software application that allows you to easily display any kind of media content such as images videos Web sites including Flash HTML5 video etc text and even printed documents E Paper on public displays and digital signage appliances FrontFace for Public Displays FrontFace includes very useful features such as scheduling live content updates while the application is running cloud replication for deploying content over the Internet and much more Fron
13. Manual 9 17 Digital Signage Screensaver It is also possible to use FrontFace for Public Displays as a screensaver This is very useful when you want to display digital signage content on interactive kiosk terminals while there is no interaction with the user like a stand by mode As soon as some form of user interaction using either mouse touch or keyboard happens the player application is closed and the actual interactive kiosk software can be used again How to set up FrontFace for Public Displays as screensaver 1 2 5 6 Install the player software of FrontFace for Public Displays on the computer on which you want to run the screensaver Configure the player software in the normal way using a Content Update Folder and publish the content to this player PC using the Display Assistant Now open the FrontFace for Public Displays installation folder by default this is C Program Files mirabyte FrontFace for Public Displays and click on the file FrontFace Screensaver scr with the right mouse button and select Install from the context menu The Windows dialog for configuring screensavers now appears Make sure that the FrontFace Screensaver is selected and define the number of minutes after which the screensaver is supposed to start if there is no user interaction Click on Settings and select the installation folder of FrontFace for Public Displays the folder in which the file FrontFace Pl
14. O z Image c5 Video Website 5 g gt Text i Print2Screen Weather E I e Another Playlist IE Slide Show PDF XPS Li Plugin Hot Folder Flash Silverlight a Web Playlist Te Streaming Video Ne gt AN Source a oe e The following media formats are supported naively Media Format Description General Image Any pictures images or photos in BMP PNG or JPEG format photos can Website HTML be automatically enhanced with an optional Motion Zoom effect for more dynamic presentations WMV MOV MP4 AVI and all formats which are supported by Windows Media Player 10 or higher please see System Requirements for details Any Website HTML can be displayed with full support of HTML5 CSS3 as well as Flash and Silverlight both static offline Web pages as well as those which are accessed online via URL are supported Text Print2Screen Free text input incl rich formatting such as font color bold italic etc see Working with Placeholders for advanced text features A special E Paper format by FrontFace which can be generated with any Windows application using the included virtual printer driver see How to use Print2Screen Weather Advanced Displays the current weather conditions for any location plus a 3 day weather forecast see Using the Weather Widget Another Playlist You can embed any other playlist within your playlist see Embedding Playlists in Playlists
15. Open the project folder of your current FrontFace for Public Displays project in the Windows Explorer and select the folder Media Now create a new folder Static if this one does not exist yet Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 65 3 Copy your HTML files and all dependencies into this folder 4 Add a new Website content to your playlist in the Display Assistant and reference the local HTML file by its relative path If your HTML file has the name demo htm1 simply enter Media Static demo htm1 as URL After that you can preview or deploy your playlist as usual All files which reside in the Static folder will then be copied to the player PC s automatically by the Display Assistant 9 12 2 Using Web Playlists Integrating individual Web pages HTML in FrontFace for Public Displays is easy However whenever you want to add a new Web page to a playlist you have to do this in the Display Assistant and republish the project When using a Web CMS or an Intranet software to manage content it can be desirable to not only manage the content of Web pages but also the the actual pages that are supposed to be shown e g instantly adding or removing Web pages from the playlist This is also possible by using a Web Playlist a sequence of Web pages A Web Playlist can be regarded as a playlist within a playlist where the embedded playlist solely consists of Web pages Which Web pages
16. PDF XPS Plugin o Hot Folder a Flash Silverlight Web Playlist Streaming Video Y AV Source Free text input incl rich formatting such as font color bold italic etc and placeholders Fig Selection of the Hot Folder content type This allows you to make modifications and updates to your playlist on the fly without having to start the Display Assistant and to re publish your project Just add remove or updates files in the hot folder while the player is running By using a hot folder you can automate updating your playlists or certain parts of it e g by using external copy scripts Notice In case a hot folder is empty not accessible or in case it only contains files which cannot be displayed the playlist page that contains the hot folder object will be skipped until any displayable files are found in the hot folder This behavior is only the case if you have not 1 defined a value of 1 for the repeat count of the hot folder Otherwise an opaque area with the background color of the hot folder is shown on the screen Notice File formats that are not supported by FrontFace are ignored in hot folders Additionally all file names that start with an underscore _ are being skipped as well E g if you place a file named _test jpg in a hot folder the file will not be displayed even though the JPEG format is fully supported by default If you change the file name to test jpg the Player Appli
17. are implemented as so called Event Source Plugins The FrontFace software comes by default with the Calendar event source plugin which provides a calendar This calendar holds appointments which fire an event as soon as an appointment becomes due You can use this to implement a welcome board system that welcomes visitors on a screen with a personalized welcome message Event source plugins are used to establish a link with external systems or sensors in order to control what is currently shown on the screen For more information about event source plugins please see the section Using Plugins Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 2 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 6 3 3 Scheduling of Individual Playlist Pages It is also possible to define date time controlled visibility settings explicitly for a single page within a playlist These settings are available on the Visibility tab of the playlist s settings dialog Here you can define whether the page is supposed to be always visible default or always hidden in this case the page is only accessible through a shortcut or if you want to define a time window during which the page will be shown This allows you to define a playlist which contains pages which are only shown in specific windows of time or during certain days of the week Add new Page Add new Page Properties Visibility j Name Page 1 Page is hidden can only be shown vi
18. customize the widget in regards to colors icon style and font In order to show the weather conditions and forecast for a location you have to enter the location name in the field Location using English spelling e g Munich instead of M nchen Please make sure that you select the final location name from the drop down list using the mouse In case your location town does not appear in the list please select the next bigger town nearby that is found in the list You can then enter the name of your town in the field Alternative Display Name to override the name that appears on the screen The weather data is updated approximately every three hours The small time stamp that is shown in the lower right corner on the screen in the weather widget is not the date time when the data was fetched last from the Web but the time stamp of last observation of the currently shown weather data Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 52 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 7 Clock Date and Countdown FrontFace for Public Displays comes with a clock plugin that can either show a digital or analog clock and the current date in various formats as well as a timer egg timer or a countdown clock Add a new Plugin content object to your playlist page and select the Clock In the settings dialog of the plugin you have to first select the style Analog Digital Date Timer or Countdown Depending on your selecti
19. e DirectShow AV Source Allows the integration of live AV sources such as Webcams or video grabbers e Live TV Plugin Allows the integration of live TV channels DirectShow AV Sources Basically any DirectShow video source and any audio source can be used DirectShow video devices include Webcams video in ports of graphics adapters and external USB AV bridges such as cheap video grabber cards If you have any questions concerning the hardware please feel free to contact mirabyte support SNe FrontFace for Public Displays AV Device Setup AV Device Set TV Source x Properties Source Name TV Source Video Device USB2 0 ATV V Audio Device Stereomix Fig FrontFace for Public Displays AV Device Setup How to integrate an external AV source e g a TV set top box i Connect a compatible video grabber card to the player PC and connect it with the external AV source e g a TV set top box or a DVD player 2 Install the drivers of the video grabber card 3 Start the AV Device Setup of FrontFace for Public Displays AVDeviceSetup exe on the player PC the file is located in the installation folder of FrontFace for Public Displays which is by default c Program Files x68 mirabyte FrontFace for Public Displays r 4 Select a video source and an optional audio source Give your selection a meaningful name e g Live TV and then save the configura
20. easily e g by using the placeholder feature vv E Pages in Playlist 1 Page 4 F Duration auto Page 3 5 Duration auto Background Image Text Edit Content of Page 3 T Welcome SNAMESS Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 19 Creating Custom Templates FrontFace for Public Displays comes with some predefined templates and styles for screens and display pages e Page templates define how a playlist page is partitioned e g a split screen for displaying two contents e Screen templates define the style of global visual elements on the screen such as colors font and size of the ticker bar It is possible to customize existing templates or to create new ones All templates are based on the XAML Extensible Application Markup Language language by Microsoft Templates are located in the Screen Layouts and Page Layouts folder of your project folder For more details on XAML please refer to MSDN documentation For every custom template you should also create a PNG file with the same file name as the XAML file which holds a preview icon for the Display Assistant The PNG files should be 32x32 pixel If you are not familiar with XAML please feel free to contact mirabyte http www mirabyte com in order to request an individually customized template if you require one Naming Conventions Containers in a layout tha
21. every 60 minutes Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG s FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 5 Using the News Ticker Tape When choosing a screen layout for a playlist that also contains a news ticker tape you can either define custom text text from a text file or RSS news feed to be shown in the ticker bar These RSS formats are supported RSS 2 0 RSS 1 0 RDF and Atom There are both screen layouts with a news ticker tape available that contain a real time clock and those that do not contain a clock Simply enter the text you want to display line by line in the text box of the playlist properties window in the Display Assistant or enter the URL to an RSS news feed such as CNN hitp rss cnn comrrss edition rss Alternatively you can also enter the URL to an UTF 8 encoded text file instead of an RSS file The content of the text file will then be displayed line by line as news ticker headlines Instead of an Internet URL http ww example com news ticker txt you can also enter a local file name using the file protocol file c news ticker txt Default Item Duration 00 00 10 12 25 K Ticker bottom v ae To x Page Shuffle Play Screen Layout Notifica un Source RSS feed URL or custom text multiline FrontFace for Public Displays Digital Signage Software Display Images Videos Text RSS Web Pages and even E Content deployment update via network share Web or U
22. have to enable the transparency feature in the Web page dialog of the Display Assistant and also your Web page needs to define the transparent background color which can be achieved by using the following CSS rule BODY background color transparent Notice In case you want to use special browser plugins or features that are not supported by the integrated browser engine of FrontFace or that only work partially you can also use the Internet Explorer Web Browser Plugin free to integrate Web pages into your playlists as an alternative Embedding Offline HTML Content By using the content type Website you can easily integrate HTML based Web pages into your playlists You only need to enter the URL of the Web page you want to display Apart from that it is also possible to integrate local offline HTML content incl CSS images Flash etc into your playlists This can be very helpful if your player PC does not have access to the Internet In this case all HTML file as well as any accompanying files images CSS etc get copied together with the playlist to player PC How to embed local offline HTML content into a playlist 1 Make your that your Website is working offline All HTML pages images CSS files and other dependencies are supposed to be in available in a local folder You can also use sub folders to organize dependencies such as images 2
23. iiini activation code In order to request your personal license finan key for this computer please follow the instructions you Enter License Key received when you purchased the license delivery accompanying documents Once you have received the license key please click on the Enter License Key button in the dialog with the activation instructions After you have entered the license key and clicked on Save the license key is installed When you start the player application again the demo dialog should not appear any more Alternatively you can open the file License licx in the installation folder of FrontFace for Public Displays using a text editor e g Notepad exe and enter the license code there manually Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Troubleshooting 13 Troubleshooting This section covers typical problems and describes possible reasons as well as solution proposals For more more up to date information please also consult the mirabyte Knowledge Base Problem The FrontFace Player Application only shows a black screen or the FrontFace logo and a message that no content has yet been published Solution gt Please check if the content update folder is set correctly both in the player application as well as in the Display Assistant gt In case the player application shows a short Updating message when you publish to the player but the screen re
24. integrated into your playlist Alternatively you can also use the Print2Screen printer driver to create an output that can be used by FrontFace please see How to use Print2Screen for more details Print2Screen can also be used with any other Windows application that is capable of printing Content creation with Microsoft Word Hint For the use with the Print2Screen printer a special paper size form is available Display 16 9 which is optimized for the use on 16 9 screens However it is possible to create custom virtual paper formats e g 4 3 or other aspect ratios Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 33 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 8 How to use Print2Screen Print2Screen is a unique feature of FrontFace for Public Displays that allows you to create high quality HD display content with any Windows application that is able to print In order to use Print2Screen you have to install FrontFace for Public Displays Display Assistant on a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 8 For the player PC s Windows XP is sufficient Hint Alternatively you can also use PDF documents with FrontFace for Public Displays directly In case you have a PDF document that you want to use in one of your playlists you do not have to use Print2Screen But you should keep in mind that the display performance of Print2Screen documents is generally much better than of PDF documents especially if your PDF
25. is then assigned to a playlist It is possible to define multiple timers for a single screen Which playlist is shown depends on the schedule which is the most current one compared to the current date time If a timer becomes active because the matching point of time has been reached the player PC will automatically start the playlist which is assigned to this specific timer Once a playlist has been fully shown it is repeated automatically infinite loop until another timer breaks the current playlist and starts another playlist Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual gt FrontFace 7E Display Assistant f Project DA v Player PCs E Playlists Scheduling o Main Screen on Player PC Sample Project Scheduling Schedule for Main Screen 1 bald Timer starts playlist Demo Playlist From Tuesday October 29 2013 To Friday Decemb Start Time 12 00 00 AM Recurrence Daily Priority 0 Enable all Timers Event Sources of this Group Playlist Name Demo Playlist E Scheduling Enabled Group Priority Start Date B Publish 0 2 o Tuesday October 29 2013 Start Time 1200 00 al Timer options _ Recurrence Pattern Settings Screen selection Add edit or remove screens Add or remove timers fil Recurrence Daily End Date Friday Dec
26. order to feed the digital signage display You can either install FrontFace on this PC using the option Only install the player application or Full installation see step by step tutorial If you choose the latter option you can also use the PC for creating and maintaining the content The installation and usage of the software does not differ from the normal setup with two PCs where one PC is a dedicated player PC see step by step tutorial A Content Update Folder needs to be defined as well which is used to transfer the content from the Display Assistant to the FrontFace Player Application In case the Display Assistant and the FrontFace Player Application are installed on the same PC it is of course not required to make the Content Update Folder available as network share Nevertheless some modifications have to be made to the installation in order to allow a trouble free operation on a workstation PC that is used as regular desktop PC and as player PC at the same time Please open the file FrontFace Player exe config with a text editor of your choice e g Notepad to apply the following settings 1 Set the value for the property DefaultScreens In case your digital signage display is connected to the PC as secondary screen please enter 0 instead of 1 This makes the player application start up on the secondary screen and not on the primary one which is needed for the normal use of the PC 0 first screen 1 seco
27. that do not have a mouse and keyboard attached or that are remotely located e g behind a screen and that can only be accessed physically with some effort In order to be able to administer and maintain the operating system of the player PC remotely it is recommended to setup a remote access using Remote Desktop This means that you can access the player PC over a network connection from another PC You then see the content of the player PC s screen in a window and can use the mouse and keyboard to seamlessly interact with the player PC There are several free and commercial tools available for this purpose e g TeamViewer UltraVNC etc We recommend the application Remote Utilities by Usoris Systems This software is very easy to use and for up to 10 player PCs it is free of charge even for business use The following tutorial shows how to install and use Remote Utilities to remotely access a player PC 1 Download Remote Utilities from the Website of Usoris Systems iliti Call Sales 855 945 3868 2 Remoteutilities For technical support please submit a ticket Windows j0S Android Upgrade Center Remote Utilities for Windows Y Tweet 26k Version details Release Stable Number 5 6 0 6 Free for business use gt Language Multilingual on 10 remote PCs gt Release date February 12 2014 Download Sou ake note Viewer Host zip 16 MB Need to control more than 10 remote PCs View pri
28. to which your screens are connected to The other application the Display Assistant is used to remotely control and update the FrontFace Player Application from another PC which is usually a common workstation PC that can also be used for other purposes For convenience the installation package has a special option EER for only installing the player application installation on a player gt cin es inca P PC and the full installation incl Display Assistant option The EEE EAE E N player application displays your playlists on the screens cece according to the configuration that have defined using the epee eds Display Assistant The player application also automatically L cares about updates when new content is deployed using the ae Display Assistant The Display Assistant helps you to manage and configure your screens and the display content All content and configuration data is stored locally as a so called project A single project can be used to control multiple player PCs and screens When everything is configured correctly the Display Assistant is then used to automatically deploy the content to the player PCs Prior to that the Display Assistant can also be used to test and to preview the playlists on the local computer After the content has been deployed to the player PCs these are then running autonomously A separate server or a permanent network connection is not required A player PC can also be run co
29. 1 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 63 9 11 Integration of Internet Radio Stations Audio streams can be integrated as background music in a FrontFace for Public Displays playlist or playlist page If the radio station supports the ASX format you can simply download the ASX file to your computer and select it as background music in the settings dialog of a playlist or playlist page In this article you learn how to integrate an audio stream from the Shoutcast Internet Radio Portal in FrontFace for Public Displays 1 Go to http www shoutcast com and select an Internet radio station of your choice 2 Download the pls Winamp format file to your computer by using Right Click gt Save as and open it in a text editor Look for the line with the actual streaming URL which starts with file1 3 Create a new text file with the following content lt asx gt lt entry gt lt ref href URL gt lt entry gt lt asx gt 4 Replace URL by the URL of the audio stream you have just extracted from the pls file Now save the new text file with the asx file extension 5 Finally select the ASX file in FrontFace for Public Displays as background music for your playlist or playlist page Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG e FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 12 9 12 1 Integration of Web Pages Web pages can be integrated into FrontFace like an
30. 50 65 Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 102 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual ae SaaS license 96 scaling 79 schedule 17 25 27 28 scheduling 25 27 screen 17 23 25 27 85 screen design 23 screen layout 23 50 screen partitioning 23 screen resolutions 20 screen template 76 screensaver 74 SDcard 34 SDK 54 settings 44 81 setup 15 94 shared use 45 shell replacement 82 shortcut 78 silent installation 15 Silverlight 15 67 slideshow 35 static content 47 stream 63 68 streaming 62 styling 76 subscription license 96 support 99 system requirements 15 Te templates 44 76 text 12 56 58 ticker 50 80 time 52 timer 25 27 52 timing 21 25 touch link 71 touch screen 71 transparent 75 trial version 96 troubleshooting 97 tutorial 8 TV 12 60 TV channel 62 TV server 62 TV tuner card 62 update 44 94 upgrade 94 URL 64 USB 34 USB dongle 96 USB thumb drive 15 34 user interaction 71 variable 56 58 version 94 video 12 49 60 68 video grabber 12 60 video signal 60 video wall 79 virtual private network 32 visibility 28 VPN 32 W waiting queue management system 73 weather 12 51 Web 32 64 Web cam 12 Web pages 12 Webcam 60 Website 49 64 65 welcome board 56 58 73 welcome message 73 windowed mode 79 Windows 15 Windows Media Player 11 12 Windows version 15 Word 35 workflow 17 workstation PC 45 X XAM
31. DEBUG detailed verbose output do not use in production mode WARN log all errors and warnings default setting e ERROR log errors only In addition to the internal logging you can also make the player application to output a log into the content update folder This makes accessing the log file from a remote computer very easy when you are using the local network or Internet based deployment method In order to write a log into the Content Update Folder this feature has to be enabled in the configuration dialog of the FrontFace Player Application please launch FrontFace Player Setup from the Windows start menu By using the advanced configuration option LogErrorsLevel you can also set the verbosity level of the log output Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG a FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 11 Software Deployment and Updates When a new version of FrontFace for Public Displays is released you can update your existing installation in case this is covered by your license It is also possible to automatically install the software without any user interaction e g for large scale deployment scenarios with many PCs Notice Please make sure that you always perform an update on both the player PC s as well as on your workstation PC s with the Display Assistant Otherwise the FrontFace Player Application might not accept an update that has been published using a newer version of the Displ
32. L 76 XML configuration file 88 XPS 12 Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Index 103 _ Y YouTube 68 Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG
33. Panel in order to be able to access the network share Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Step by Step Tutorial 9 remotely Alternatively you can also use a user account and password of the player PC to remotely log into the player PC for accessing the network share It is recommended that you test if you can successfully access the content update folder from a remote PC using the Windows Explorer before you proceed For more details on this subject please refer to this online information resource Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 0 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Step 2 Installation of the Display Assistant 4 Install FrontFace for Public Displays on your computer that will be used to remotely manage the content and the screens Please choose the installation type Full installation for this computer Start the Display Assistant application on your computer and create a new project A project contains all content and configuration information of a screen presentation On the welcome page of the Display Assistant please click on Click here for Quickstart and Tutorial Then choose Create New Project in order to create a new project with a pre configured setup for a single player PC with a single screen Inthe Playlists section an empty playlist Ge a cae has already been created Add a new page to the playlist by clicking on icon above the page
34. The FrontFace Player Application contains several features e g RSS news ticker weather data displaying Web pages etc that require access to the Internet in case they are used Therefore it is possible that you might need to modify the proxy configuration of the player software in case your player PCs can only access the Internet through a proxy server All proxy related settings can be adjusted using a normal text editor e g Notepad in the configuration file FrontFace Player exe config which is located in the installation folder In the following the proxy configuration options are described For a detailed list of all advanced configuration options please see the section Advanced Configuration Options In case you use a proxy server make sure that the option DisableWebClientProxy is set to False If set to True no default proxy server is used for performing Web requests e g news ticker update weather forecast etc Further proxy configuration settings can be provided directly within the FrontFace Player exe config file according to the MSDN documentation The default proxy server configuration is the one that you have defined for the local PC in the Internet Explorer settings If you have configured the proxy settings of the Internet Explorer correctly you simply need to set the option DisableWebClientProxy to False in order to use the same settings for FrontFace Advanced Proxy Confiquration For a more advan
35. a shortcut or page shortcut cand Cl AERE E ie Duration 00 00 00 Only show page during this window of time Page Layout Start Date End Date Erase gt S Custom Layouts Daily Begin Daily End Standard Weekdays Shortcut None es teisena masie ME EI EA Fig Page properties dialog of a playlist showing the visibility settings for a page Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 29 6 4 Publishing to Player PC s Here you can execute the publishing process which deploys the content onto to player PC s Publish The Display Assistant automatically compiles the required files and informs you about the progress and the result of the publishing process Once you click on the Publish button all player PCs that are configured in the current project will be updated In case you only want to update a specific player PC simply click on the arrow icon on the right part of the Publish button A drop down menu will appear that allows you to choose which player PC you want to update In the Player PCs section you can also select for every individual player PC if you want to be skipped during the publishing process In this case the palyer PC will only be updated when you select it explicitly from the drop down menu of the Publish button If you directly click on the Publish button the specific player PC will not be included in the publishing process
36. ache Folder Folder Project Folder Fig Folder based concept of the update and data storage mechanism of a player PC The red arrows represent the operations performed by the Display Assistant whereas the blue ones are performed automatically in the background by the player application and is only shown here for information purposes The player PC permanently monitors the Content Update Folder for changes and automatically reacts on updates In case new data from a recently executed publishing process has been detected the data is validated and then loaded into the so called Content Cache Folder by a background task This local folder serves as persistent data storage and is used for playing back media files in actual operation mode Due to this concept the player PC can can be operated autonomously without requiring any permanent network connection Even after a restart of the player PC the previously published content is still available Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 3 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Step by Step Tutorial This tutorial explains step by step how to setup a player PC as well as another PC for controlling managing your display Both PCs communicate with each other using a simple network share in the local network In case you only want to use a single PC which serves as player PC addressing the secondary screen and for managing the content please also make sure that you have r
37. age settings dialog In case no duration has been defined 00 00 00 auto the default display duration from the playlist settings are used instead which is by default 10 seconds 00 00 10 A special case is embedding content into a playlist page which has it s own natural duration e g video clips or embedded playlists In this case the shortest duration of any content on that page determines the duration of the whole page unless an explicit duration has been defined for that page The actual duration of a playlist page is determined by the following aspects in this order 1 Is an explicit duration defined for the page If yes the page will always be shown for this time span 2 Else if the duration of the page is set to 00 00 00 auto the default page duration which is defined in the playlist will be applied 3 Unless the page does contain content which has a natural duration e g video clips embedded playlists slide shows etc the page will be shown until that content has been fully shown In case more than one content element with a natural duration is used on a page the page will be shown until the shortest content element with a natural duration has been fully shown Examples Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 22 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual e A video duration 2 min is embedded in a page where no explicit duration for this page has been defined 00 00 00 in thi
38. already defined a different content update folder please launch FrontFace Player Setup from the Windows start menu to be able to redefine the Content Update Folder If you prefer to manage the displays from more than one computer install the Display Assistant on further computers and store the project file on a central network share instead of a local folder This will allow accessing the project file from any computer in the network lt y PC with Display Assistant Cable or WiFi Content Update Folder Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 32 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 6 4 2 Internet based Deployment In case the computer with the Display Assistant and the player PC s are not in the same network but do have access to the Internet it is possible to use a cloud storage service such as OneDrive or Dropbox for the deployment of the content All cloud storage services offer free packages with a capacity ranging from 5 to 15 GB which is totally sufficient for most scenarios The Display Assistant does not directly publish the content onto the local hard drive of the player PC s but into a local folder which is synchronized by the cloud storage service On the player PC s a local folder is selected as Content Update Folder which also synchronizes with cloud storage service The basic concept of this setup is that the Content Update Folder is replica
39. amp showinfo 0 Finally you have to set the duration of the page with the YouTube video to the length of that video Since the YouTube video is streamed from the Web FrontFace for Public Displays can otherwise not detect when the video has ended Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 69 9 14 Dynamic Playlists Hot Folder Normally you compose the contents of a playlist using the Display Assistant and then publish it to the player PC In certain situations it may be desirable to define a certain folder which will then serves as a dynamic source for the playlist By adding deleting or updating files in this folder the displayed content is controlled directly FrontFace supports this features which is called Hot Folder Simply add a new Hot Folder content object to a playlist page and assign a network path to it e g MY SERVER Shared Folder It is very important that this network folder is accessible by the player PC since the player PC will scan this folder for displayable files at runtime Inside the hot folder you can place pictures png jog omp videos PDF XPS and HTML files As soon as the player application shows a page which contains a hot folder object the hot folder is scanned for displayable files These are then shown as a dynamic playlist ordered alphabetically by file name General eral B mae I Text Advanced Another Playlist Slide Show ie
40. are being shown is defined by one of these ways By providing a RSS file XML feed e g http www example com feed rss By providing the path to a network folder that contains HTML files e g SERVER Directory oder X Directory When ever a Web Playlist is shown the FrontFace Player Application will request the RSS file and then shows the Web pages with are linked in the RSS file one after the other In case a network folder is given as source the software will enumerate all HTML files htm html in that folder and show them one after the other More advanced options for RSS feeds If you now also create the RSS file dynamically using your Web CMS it is possible to control which Web pages are shown without having to modify or republish the FrontFace display project Any RSS file RSS 2 0 or Atom can be used Additionally you can add some optional FrontFace specific extensions to that file to also control properties like display duration of a page or the transition effect that is going to be used Example of an RSS feed for a Web Playlist with FrontFace specific extensions lt xml version 1 0 encoding utf 8 gt lt rss version 2 0 front faceWebFeed xsd gt lt channel gt lt title gt Web Slide Show lt title gt lt lastBuildDate gt Thu 22 Nov 2012 15 53 38 0100 lt lastBuildDate gt lt item gt lt title gt Page 1 lt title gt lt link gt http www example com pagel html lt link gt
41. ay Assistant How can determine which version of FrontFace is currently installed In order to determine the currently installed version please start the Kiosk Assistant This will bring you to the Welcome Page The version number is shown in the lower right corner of that screen By clicking on the version number you can perform an online check if there are any updates or new versions available to be installed In order to determine the version number of the Player Application select the file FrontFace Player exe in the Windows file explorer and open the context menu right click then select Properties In the Details tab of the properties dialog of that file you can find the version number Updating the FrontFace Player Application Copy the installation package of the new version on the player PC and execute it Do not make any changes to the options provided by the installation wizard Simply click on Next and finally on Finish The software is then updated automatically Both configuration information and any display content are recognized automatically by the update process It is also possible to run the installation process in an unattended mode on the player PC In order to do so execute the installation package with the following command line switch frontface pd exe SILENT Updating the Display Assistant Simply execute the installation package of the new version of the computer on which the Display Assistant
42. ayer exe resides Finally press OK and close the screensaver settings dialog with OK as well Once the defined interval has elapsed and there was no user interaction so far the player will start automatically and shows the previously published content as long as the user does not interact with the computer by mouse touch or keyboard Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 9 18 Overlay Layouts Layers For every playlist page you can choose a so called page layout which determines how the screen is actually partitioned The included layouts also contain a group of layouts called overlay layouts In contrast to the other layouts these are built of layers Since content elements may be entirely or partially transparent the overlay layouts provide a lot of potential for interesting design effects The layout Overlay center e g lets you put two content elements over each other This can be very helpful if you want to implement a great looking welcome board First create a background image an image file or using Print2Screen that covers the entire screen e g by using PowerPoint and put this one in the background container of the Overlay center page layout Then add a text element to top level container of the layout and make sure that you set it s background color to transparent Now you have a way to put custom text on top of a predefined background artwork that can be updated
43. byte GmbH amp Co KG s FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 9 Working with Placeholders Besides various content types you can also add formatted text to your playlists This allows you to easily display text like welcome messages on reception screens or to implement text elements that need to be changed frequently e g price tags It is possible to either enter the text directly or to use so called placeholders Placeholders are being either replaced by user defined text during the publishing process or in the moment when an event is raised by the scheduling feature Placeholders can be regarded like a variable Placeholders are defined by a double dollar sign at the beginning and at the end e g SA Sample Placeholder Simply enter placeholders manually in the same way as normal text in text editor of the Text content type or use the button Insert placeholder BE 080 685 cE Welcome to our office Vistor Name Background Color 2 Padding to border os Insert placeholder v OK Cancel Fig The text editor of the Display Assistant allows you to insert placeholders Hint It is not only possible to use placeholders in text elements but also in the news ticker tape The way how placeholders are defined and used in the news ticker is identical to normal text elements as described in this section How placeholders work After you have added a text content object in a p
44. cally create a Content Update Folder in the previous step only then you will be promoted to select the Content Update Folder upon the first start of the FrontFace Player Application Please create a new empty folder on the player PC and select this one during start up Also make sure that you make this folder available as a network share in your local network After starting the player application a black screen with the FrontFace logo and a notice that no content has yet been published will appear In order to exit the player application press the ESC key or leave the application running As soon as your first content has been deployed to the Content Update Folder the FrontFace Player Application will automatically pick it up and display it Furthermore it is recommended to configure the player PC in a way that it boots without requesting a password entry and to automatically start the FrontFace for Public Displays Player Application Additionally you should configure the PC for continuous operation mode both standby mode and screensaver disabled All these settings can easily be applied with one click using the free FrontFace Lockdown Tool please see section Continuous Operation Mode Configuration which is available separately Hint Depending on the operating system that you are using Windows Vista 7 or 8 on the player PC it might be required that you enable access without password in the System and Sharing Center Control
45. cation will show the file as expected Notice If the hot folder only contains a single video file and you want to replace this file you have to first copy the new version into the hot folder using a different file name Then you can delete the old version of the video file Overwriting an existing video file is not supported if the file Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 9 15 Advanced Features Interactive Features FrontFace for Public Displays primarily addresses the non interactive autonomous operations mode However there are also some features available that cover user interaction with the software e g when using a touch screen device The following types of user interaction are supported Touch screen Mouse Stylus Keyboard and other devices Interaction with mouse stylus or touch Navigation of Web pages For Website content you can define when assigning them to a container of a playlist page if you want them to be interactive or not In case interaction is allowed the user can e g navigate hyperlinks on a Web page By default the scroll bars of the Web browser are disabled In case of user interaction it can be helpful to have the scroll bars visible The advanced configuration option HideWebBrowserScrollbars allows you to define whether you want to hide or show scroll bars in ge
46. ce and Personalization clicking Personalization and then clicking Display Settings Select the Mirrored option for all screens In the Display Assistant go to the Schedules section and create one screen to which you assign the playlist that you want to show on all screens Different Content different playlists are shown on the screens This configuration allows you to show different playlists on the screens which are connected to the player PC Open Display Settings by clicking the Start button clicking Control Panel clicking Appearance and Personalization clicking Personalization and then clicking Display Settings Select the Extended option for all screens This extends your desktop across all displays You can move program windows between the displays which increases your desktop area This is also the typical setup for multi screen setups of regular desktop PCs In the Display Assistant go to the Schedules section and create a screen for each monitor that you have connected to the player PC You can then assign an individual playlist to every screen In case you plan to use one screen as display screen for your playlists and the other one for working with regular Windows applications simultaneous please also see the section Shared use of a PC as Workstation PC and Player PC Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG s FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 10 4 Proxy Server Configuration
47. ced proxy server configuration you have to edit the file FrontFace Player exe config and add the following snippet inside the lt configuration gt tag with you custom options lt system net gt lt defaultProxy enabled true false useDefaultCredentials true false gt lt proxy usesystemdefault True False proxyaddress http 192 168 1 103 3128 bypassonlocal True False gt lt bypasslist gt lt add address a z contoso com gt lt bypasslist gt lt defaultProxy gt lt system net gt You can provide the URL of the proxy server a bypass list and other options like the desired authentication method For more details on the available options please refer to the MSDN documentation Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings In case your proxy server requires and explicit authentication with user name and password and these credentials cannot be reused from the currently logged in Windows user account there is also an option to provide the proxy server credentials explicitly in the FrontFace Player exe config file Use the settings WebViewAuthLogin und WebViewAuthPassword from the advanced configuration options for this purpose However it is NOT recommended to do so since storing user name and password in a unencrypted form in the settings file implies a severe security risk Additional Settings for the internal Web Browser Engine In case you are experienc
48. cently created After choosing this option you will see a confirmation dialog and you are done Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG How to use Print2Screen 39 me FrontFace Print2Screen A new Print2Screen content was created successfully How do you want to use al this content You can either insert the new Print2Screen content on a playlist page or you can update an existing Print2Screen content in a playlist with this new content Add as new content to a playlist page New name for this printout printout_09102013_163957 Update existing an Print2Screen content with this printout 4 Use Cases 4 F Excel Sample 4 printout_20032013_142637 OK Cancel Fig The Print2Screen Dialog allows both adding new content and updating existing content 4 If you previously selected the option to add the printout as new content you can now add a new page to a playlist of your project or create a new page When adding a new content element to that page the dialog showing the available content types also includes an item named Print2Screen Choose this one in order to add the recently created document as screen content T Advanced Another Payot E se Show Por xs amp a N ee Pug Dorrie pg sterion ery worms A stemorizo So avs Free text input incl rich formatting such as font color bold italic etc and placeholders Fig Selec
49. ces gt Windows 8 7 Vista XP gt Windows Server 2012170027003 2 The ZIP file contains two installation components rut host5 Xde msi Host has to be installed on the player PC while rut viewer5 Xde msi Viewer is being installed on your normal workstation PC from which you want to remotely access the player PC T Ld gt rut5 6en zip Name y quick start guide pdf j5 rut host5 6en msi iB rut viewer5 6en msi 3 After the installation of the host application has finished you have to set an access password that protects the remote access of the player PC Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG a FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual ie Remote Utilities Host InstallShield Wizard F Installing Remote Utilities Host D e Ka Create a password min 4 chars you will use to access this computer For advanced security options click Advanced Password lt Password gt Confirm password lt Password gt Advanced InstallShield Back Next 4 After you have installed the viewer application on your PC click on Add Computer and enter the IP address see below or the network name of the player PC as well as the previously defined password Finally click on Full control in order to remotely interact with the player PC or click on View only in case you only want to see the screen content of the player PC General Connection View Tools Help Fu
50. cker x Name PART_ TICKER Speed 70 gt so that the result looks like this lt mc Ticker x Name PART TICKER Speed 70 ScrollDirection LeftToRight gt Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings at 10 Advanced Settings FrontFace for Public Displays offers several advanced configuration options which are explained in detail in the following sections If you have any technical questions or problems feel free to contact the mirabyte technical support Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 2 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 10 1 Continuous Operation Mode Configuration Since a player PC is usually not used interactively with mouse and keyboard it is recommended to configure the player PC in a way that it boots automatically without requesting a password and that the FrontFace Player Application is also started automatically The easiest way to configure a player PC like this is to use the free FrontFace Lockdown Tool Lockdown exe which can be installed optionally with FrontFace for Public Displays or which can also be downloaded separately from the mirabyte Website http www mirabyte conm go fflockdown FrontFace Lockdown Tool for Windows Welcome This application allows you to easily configure a Windows PC Windows Vista 7 or 8 for continuous operation mode e g digital signage applications or protected kiosk mode e g for public comput
51. ddition to the list view of defined timers a calendar like preview is also available which allows you to easily find out which playlist will be shown at a specific point of time Furthermore it is possible to assign timers and event sources to groups This helps getting a better overview in case you have defined a lot of timers event sources which belong together semantically But the grouping feature also allows you to enable all timers event sources of the currently selected group with one click while all other schedules are being disabled This is a very helpful feature to implement so called scenarios which can then be activated very easily Example In order to show a playlist on a daily basis from 08 00 to 23 59 create a new timer of the Daily type which starts at 08 00 This makes the player start this playlist every day at 08 00 Before that point of time 00 00 until 07 59 the software will show a black screen because no schedule is defined If the FrontFace Player Application is started at a later point of time e g at 15 00 this 8 o clock timer is still the most recent one which causes that the associated playlist is started instantly Hint The timers in FrontFace allow you to define when a playlist is being startet but not when it Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 6 3 2 Working with the Application is being terminated stopped You can however define another timer that starts a different playlis
52. deos Web pages texts etc You can also preview your playlists in this menu Scheduling In order to assign playlists to the screen s of your player PC s you have to define when and which playlist is supposed to be displayed Because a player PC can control multiple screens the playlists are assigned to the screens of the player PCs using schedules Publish After you have configured your player PCs playlists and schedules the content has to be transferred to the player PCs This can be done using the Publish page of the Display Assistant Hint This manual also comes with a a simple step by step setup tutorial that explains you how to set up and to use the software Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 3 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 6 1 Player PC Configuration You can control a single or multiple player PCs with a single project Please create an entry for every player PC that you want to address in the Display Assistant Apart from a name for each player PC you also have to assign the so called Content Update Folder please see section Publishing to Player PCs for details Usually these settings do not have the be modified after you made the initial setup Modifications are only needed if you add new screens to your systenvdisplay network gt FrontFace P Display Assistant Sample Project J Project lia Fl v Player PCs P E Player PCs Player PCs Options for Pla
53. display content You can integrate your PowerPoint presentations in two different ways into your FrontFace for Public Displays playlists You can either export your slide show to the XPS file format or you can export it as a video While XPS files are much smaller in size than video files they do not include any animation or transition effects In contrast to that videos cover all animation and transition effects as defined in your original PowerPoint show z Presentation1 Microsoft PowerPoint o B ey Jie Home Insert Design Transitions Animations SlideShow Review View Add Ins Acoolsoft PPT To Flash H Save rS Save amp Send Create a PDF XPS Document E Save As f JA Send Using E mail Save this presentation in a fixed format g BF Open Document looks the same on most t Cat Close Saveto Web Preserves fonts formatting and images Content cannot be easily changed Info EB Saveto SharePoint Free viewers are available on the Web 1 Ge Broadcast Slide Show Recent i d Publish Slides a New reate n PDF XPS mg File Types P Print f Change File Type H P 2 GratePoFn Specument Help Create a Video E Options Package Presentation for CD GQ ext Create Handouts 4 P gr T P Fi I pa a va f a 2 a noe P J pF f aii a py f ia m f abl In PowerPoint 2009 or PowerPoint 2010 simply click on File gt Save amp Send and select Create PDF XPS Document in order to save your presentation in XPS fi
54. documents have been originally created for professional print reproduction So in case you should experience a poor system performance when the FrontFace player application is showing PDF documents you can use Acrobat Reader and Print2Screen to convert PDF documents into Print2Screen documents How to use a Print2Screen content in a playlist l Start the Display Assistant and open your project 2 Now start another Windows application e g Word and create or open the document you want to use as screen content Choose the print command of your application and make sure that you have selected FrontFace Print2Screen as printer This virtual printer is created automatically by the FrontFace installation program Especially for this use on 16 9 displays there is also a paper format called Display 16 9 available which you can use instead of common paper formats such as DIN A4 3 After you have printed your document please return to the Display Assistant A dialog as shown below will ask you how you want to use the latest printout You can add the printout as a new content In this case you should enter a meaningful name in order to better identify the content later on n case you choose the option Update existing Print2Screen content with this printout you have to select an existing Print2Screen content from your project from the displayed list This one will be overwritten updated with the printout that you have re
55. dvanced configuration options and maintenance features QuickStart amp Help This button allows you to access the application s welcome page which contains the QuickStart options user manual sample project creating a new project etc Send Feedback The feedback button allows you to send us your comments and ideas online in order to help us to further improve the software Update Templates amp Plugins FrontFace for Public Displays comes with various ready to use templates screen and page templates as well as some plugins When you install a new version of FrontFace e g an update it is likely that also the templates and the plugins will get updated as well In order to also use the newest versions of the templates and plugins in your existing projects please use this function to update your projects Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 45 9 2 Shared use of a PC as Workstation and Player PC In the default setup a digital signage display is connected to a dedicated PC which is called player PC The only purpose of this PC is to run the FrontFace Player Application Therefore a mouse or keyboard is not required on this PC at all Sometimes it can be desirable to use a regular desktop PC where the digital signage display is connected to as a secondary screen This PC can then still be used as a regular workstation PC while the player application is running in the background in
56. e actual appointments can be managed using Outlook Lotus Notes Calender The Lotus Domino Calendar event source plugin allows the integration of Lotus Notes calendars on a Lotus Domino server to start playlists based on appointments in the calendar Furthermore you can also use appointments to assign text placeholders in your playlists This makes the Lotus Domino Calendar plugin a perfect choice for implementing a convenient time controlled welcome board for visitors where the actual appointments can be managed using Lotus Notes In case you want to display the calendar data as a table schedule on the screen please use the Schedules and Timetables Plugin which is also available separately This Content Plugin allows you to display schedules and or occupancy plans for rooms either for an individual room or an overview for all rooms The live data for the plugin can be provided as an Excel file as an Exchange calendar via EWS Exchange Web Services or as a Lotus Domino calendar The calendars can then conveniently be edited using Outlook or Lotus Notes Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG e FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 10 9 10 1 Integration of TV Programs and AV Sources FrontFace for Public Displays is not only capable of playing video files like WMV or AVI itis also possible to integrate live AV sources such as TV or a video signal from an external DVD player or a Webcam
57. ead the section Shared use of a PC as Workstation and Player PC For other deployment scenarios please see Publishing to Player PC s 3 Hint On the Product Website of FrontFace for Public Displays you also find some helpful video tutorials that show you how to install and use the software step by step Step 1 Player lication Installation 1 First install the FrontFace for Public Displays Player Setup mirabyte Frontface for Public Displays Application on the computer to which your screens are i conperent shad be stle connected to referred to as player PC Please choose see ener you nart to veisti ew he conpenents yuo the installation type Install player application only and make sure that you have selected the option to automatically create a network share for the so called Content Update Folder that serves as link between the player application and the Display Assistant By default the name of the network share that is created by the installation wizard is lt PCNAME gt FrontFace Player This share points to C ProgramData mirabyte FrontFace for Public Displays FrontFace Player on the player PC Alternatively you can also create that folder manually on the player PC and make this folder available as network share on the local network Start the FrontFace for Public Displays Player Application on the player PC Notice If you did not select the option to automati
58. ed with the player PC either the hardware has changed or you issued the license key for a different wrong player PC Please contact the technical support in this case Problem When using an intel HD graphics adapter on Windows 7 animation and transition effects may look choppy or show cubic artifacts tearing Solution gt Please make sure that you have installed the latest drivers for your graphics card Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 98 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual gt Make sure that you have enabled the Windows Aero desktop theme which makes the windows look like glass in Windows 7 Only if Aero is enabled the graphics card will use the so called vsync feature correctly that prevents the tearing effects described above Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Further Information and Help 99 14 Further Information and Help This quick start manual is intended to give you a basic overview of the concepts and the functionality of FrontFace for Public Displays Additional documentation and information as well as free support are available directly from the mirabyte Website Please visit http www mirabyte con for contact information or send an e mail to support mirabyte com g mirabyte also offers complementary support and consulting services in case you are either looking for a full service provider for your digital signage project or if you sim
59. ee ee eeeeeeee cree esse aaa a etter eeeeee saad neeeeeeeee aang 28 Publishing t Player PO S s ctivissietetectiw a aa aaa eas E is Me ete a 29 LAN based Deployment eann oa a ede a a a E a eee 31 Internet based Deployment cccecccceeeeeeeeee cece ce aeaaee ee eeeeee seas aaaaaaeeeeeeeeaeaaaaaaeeeeeeeeaeaaaaaaees 32 Offline Deployment USB flash drive cc cece cece eee e ee nett eter eee e ee eee eter eres ee ae aaeneeeeeeeeeaeaae 34 if Mps on Content Creation esas es aeee attest eee eset et Ao K Aa adas 35 How tose Print2screenees ccs i sices aceite Gere es eee es Se el eee eee 38 Custom Paper Formats icteice ss chiki ceden cheek ecobites aa ee sede dad dea etek eae at ah Sade ae aed 40 9 Advanced Features aaa a t tee etek et a ee ee ee 43 Advanced Options amp Help serie ta caine aa la aan eat nla EEEa 44 Shared use of a PC as Workstation and Player PC 0 ccececceeceeeeeeeeeee sees aaa eeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaeeeeeeeeees 45 Embedding Playlists in other Playlists 0 ccccceeeeeeeee sees eee teeter ee ee ee aed eter sees ee aa aaeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaea 47 Playlists with a Single Page isivssi wer a ti el et ne eee eee 49 Using the News Ticker Tape cc ceeceeeeee cece ce ae ee ee cree ee ee ee e a A a aaa a aa a Na aeaa 50 Using the Weather Widget asmeniniais rriari ae E cea a aaa tree ee ee ee aa aaa a a Te a Ti etia 51 Clock Date And Countdown cccccccccececececece cece ceeeeeeeeeeeee
60. ember 31 9999 fis For each screen of a player PC a Interval 1 schedule needs be specified which defines when a certain playlist is displayed Also complex schedules can be defined using various recurrence patterns e g only once daily weekly monthly etc Breson over G Be Fig Overview of the defined timers of a screen Windows Display Settings User Manual gt FrontFace 7E Display Assistant Sample Project DAG Player PCs J Project Scheduling Schedule for Main Screen 1 Ce Fia Playlists Main Screen on Player PC gt November 23 29 2014 23 Sunday 24 Monday 25 Tuesday Timer Timer Demo Playlist Demo Playlist Priority 0 Priority 0 28 Timer Demo Playlist Priority 0 26 Wednesday 27 Thursday Timer Timer Demo Playlist Demo Playlist Priority 0 Priority 0 29 Saturday Timer Demo Playlist Priority 0 Scheduling Friday Timer Demo Playlist Priority 0 00 Publish For each screen of a player PC a schedule needs be specified which defines when a certain playlist is displayed Also complex schedules can be defined using various recurrence patterns e g only once daily weekly monthly etc 06 07 GB Timers 1 Fa Preview QB events Fig Preview of the defined timers of a screen Windows Display Settings User Manual Windows Display Settings In a
61. er terminals More Information Startup amp Shutdown In case you want to configure this PC as a digital signage player PC or as a protected interactive kiosk terminal you can start using one of these predefined profiles You can then adjust them according to your individual requirements Predefined Profiles 1 2 Load profile Sa Continuous Operation amp Protection amp Security S System Information 1 Select profile Eo 3 Apply profile User Account System Control Commands O Restart Windows a Shut Down Windows Copyright 2014 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG All rights reserved Version 1 0 0 For the use with FrontFace for Public Displays simply start the FrontFace Lockdown Tool on the player PC and select the predefined profile Digital Signage Player PC on the welcome page of the application Then click on Load Profile and finally click on the button with the check mark in the main menu of the FrontFace Lockdown Tool to apply the profile Please make sure that you select the right Windows user account It is recommended to create a separate standard type user account unter Windows for running the FrontFace for Public Displays player application In many cases it is also useful to setup the player PC for remote administration Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings 33 10 2 Remote Administration of a Player PC In most cases player PCs are computers
62. eseeeueeneeeeeeucecaceeeeeeseeaeeeegeeggeeeneneeeees 52 WSIMG RIUGINS 3 E E the tinct Aeieel sh Sie Hebets eh os Siete a AD aia eats 54 Working with Placenolders 2 3 ani ae ae eee ee eae eee 56 Example A Welcome Board with PlaceholderS cceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeaneeees 58 Using Exchange and Lotus Notes Calendars c cceeceeeee tees ae eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeaneeeeeeseeaeaaaaaeeees 59 Integration of TV Programs and AV Sources 0 c cceeeee eee ceeeee eter eter ee aaa ee eeee sees aa aaeneeeeeeeeeaeaaea 60 DirectShow AV Sources ccceceee cece cea eecee tent ee ee ceca aaa te eran ee ee ae aaaaaeeeeee ee aaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeseaaaaaaeees 60 TV Channels with Live TV PIUQIN eieiei aiee aaa eee erence an aaa eaea 62 Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Contents 3 Integration of Internet Radio Stations ccc cece eter ee ee eet terres ee ee aan ee ee eeee ee aa aaeeeeeeeeeeeaeaae 63 Integration of Web Pages cases is sfie cts ai feet ene e Aa ac tet ed ieee tee a diese eee 64 Embedding Offline HTML Content 0 ccceceeeee cece ae eeee eters eee ee ae aaeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaaaeeeeeeeeeaeaaaaeeees 64 Using Web Playlists icc a T ea eae betel sneak de ee chet ete oided aes Mees ti ee ea a eee eee 65 Using Flash Silverlight and other Browser Plugins c ceceeeeeeeee cece ae eeeeeeee sees ee aa aaa eeeeeeeeeeaeaaea 67 Embedding YouTube Videosi ana
63. et as default printer Printing preferences Printer properties Create shortcut lS Troubleshoot Remove device Properties oe 5 b w i r P 5 Then click on Settings in the tab General 6 Selectthe Layout tab and click Advanced 7 Under Paper Output select the new custom form created for Paper Size then click OK We recommend that you play a bit around with the width and height values of your custom paper size to find the right size that is best for you Some paper sizes that have proofed to be helpful are B 17 65 cm H 30 00 cm 16 9 fullscreen B 29 70 cm H 16 71 cm 9 16 fullscreen B 16 71 cm H 29 70 cm 16 9 with ticker Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG a FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 3 9 Advanced Features FrontFace for Public Displays offers a lot of advanced features special use cases which are explained in detail in the following sections If you have any technical questions or problems feel free to contact the mirabyte technical support Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG aa FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 1 Advanced Options amp Help The button Advanced Options amp Help provides access to a menu in the Display Assistant which contains all help resources available as well as the sample project and some a
64. f the software e g weather multimedia features such as videos and graphical transition effects are being used or if only static content is supposed to be shown The player PC should have at least 1 GB of RAM However 2 GB of RAM is recommended for a robust setup All screen resolutions and orientations landscape portrait are fully supported incl Full HD and 4K You can control multiple screens also showing different content with a single player PC Automated installation Apart from the normal interactive wizard based installation it is also possible to fully automate the setup process by command line switches silent install This allows the use of specialized deployment software tools in order to automatically deploy a large number of player software installations The full description of the command line options that are available for the setup as described in section Software Deployment and Updates Setting up the player PC for continuous operation mode The player PC should be configured in a way that it does not request a password at boot time and that the FrontFace for Public Displays Player Application is started automatically Furthermore screensaver and standby mode should be disabled You can use the separately available free FrontFace Lockdown Tool in order to apply all these settings to the configuration of the player PC with only one click please see section Continuous Operation Mode Configuration Co
65. ight 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Intranet 65 JavaScript 64 67 keyboard 71 LAN based deployment 31 language 80 layers 75 layout 23 75 76 LED wall 79 length 21 license key 96 link playlist 47 live AV sources 12 live content update 4 live TV 60 local HTML content 64 local network 8 localization 80 Lockdown Tool 8 2 log 93 logging 29 loop 47 49 Lotus Notes 59 media formats 12 MediaPortal 62 monitor 85 Motion Zoom 12 35 mouse 71 MovieMaker 35 multi screen setup 85 music 63 N network share 8 31 69 new version 94 news ticker 12 50 80 notification 73 O Offline deployment 34 offline HTML content 64 OneDrive 32 on screen notifications 73 operating system 15 options 44 81 88 overlay 75 P page 20 21 28 47 49 page duration 21 page layout 23 75 page template 76 paper formats 40 parallel installation 45 PDF 12 photos 12 35 placeholder 27 50 56 58 player application 5 80 player PC 5 17 18 25 45 80 82 playlist 17 20 21 23 28 29 47 49 64 69 plugin 27 44 52 54 59 67 portable app 15 PowerPoint 35 presentation 35 preview 17 20 Print2Screen 12 15 35 38 problem 97 protocol 93 proxy server 86 88 publishing 17 29 78 R radio 63 RDP 83 remote administration 83 remote control plugin 73 remote control service RCS 73 88 remote desktop 83 removeable media 34 repeat 49 requirements 15 reset 31 34 RSS 12
66. ing a password without encryption in a plain text file is a high security risk it is recommended that you use the implicit authentication method instead see also section Proxy Server Configuration DisableHwAcceleration This option prevents that the hardware acceleration is used on all screens Please only use this option in case video playback does not work properly or in case you are using a very old graphics adapter DisableHwAccelerationOnSec This option prevents that the Screens hardware acceleration is used on other screens than the primary one This prevents problems with video playback of H 264 encoded video content on secondary screens LogErrorsLevel This option allows you to configure the verbosity level of the log which is output into the Content Update Folder The following log levels are available ERROR WARN INFO and ALL In order to write a log into the content update folder this feature has to be enabled in the configuration dialog of the FrontFace Player Application please stat FrontFace Player exe with the command line switch configure LogFileMaxSize 104857600 Maximum size of the log file of the FrontFace Player Application in bytes If the log file gets bigger Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 2 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Settings Name Default Value Description name lt value gt lt value gt than the given val
67. ing problems with the proxy configuration and displaying Web pages especially when showing both Intranet and Internet pages where Intranet pages are not fetched using the proxy you can explicitly set the proxy configuration for the internal Web browser engine of FrontFace using the advanced configuration option WebViewProxy Optional Proxy Configuration of the Display Assistant In case you also need to access the Internet with the Display Assistant e g for entering a location for the weather forecast plugin you also have to apply the proxy settings to the Display Assistant exe config file in the same way as for the previously described FrontFace Player exe config file Here you only have to add the lt system net gt configuration section if you are using a configuration that differs from the default configuration of the Internet Explorer If you do not make any changes to the Display Assistant exe config file the Display Assistant will try to determine the default proxy configuration from the default configuration of the Internet Explorer Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 10 5 Advanced Configuration Options Some configuration options of the FrontFace Player Application can be set in the XML configuration file FrontFace Player exe config in the installation folder You can use a text editor like Notepad exe to edit this file You also need administrator right
68. is already installed on Keep any setup options as the are and simply click on Next and finally on Finish As with the player software all configuration options are also being kept as well Like with the player software you can also use the SILENT command line switch for updating the Display Assistant installation Further command line options for the automated deployment and installation Apart from the SILENT option the following command line switches are available Command Line Switch Description SP Deactivates the This will install Do you wish to continue prompt on start up VERYSILENT Disables any kind of interactive elements during the installation process like e g error dialogs etc to be used instead of the SILENT option LANG en Defines the installation language de German en English TYPE playeronly Installs only the player application and not the entire setup which Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Software Deployment and Updates 95 also includes the Display Assistant TASKS autostarticon A comma separated list of installation tasks that shall be Firewall performed possible values are autostarticon Firewall print2screenDriver createNetShare LOG installlog txt Defines a log file into which the setup will log all installation activities for diagnostic purposes Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Fron
69. isplay will show any critical errors on screen EnableKeyboardShortcuts If set to True keyboard interaction will be accepted AutoHideMouseCursor Language TopMost lt empty gt If set to True the mouse cursor is hidden after some seconds of inactivity Language culture of the UI By default the current culture of the system is used In order to force e g a US English culture enter en US This language culture is also used by the internal browser engine HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE If set to True all player windows will be shown on top of all other windows EnableNumKeyPadSelector ShutdownWindowsShell If set to True the input of page shortcuts using the numeric key pad is allowed If set to True the Windows Shell explorer exe is shut down when the player application is started Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings pa Settings Name Default Value Description name lt value gt lt value gt When the player application is closed the shell is be restored automatically WebViewAuthLogin This optional settings allows you to provide a user name login that is used for explicit authentication with a proxy server see also section Proxy Server Configuration WebViewAuthPassword This optional settings allows you to provide a password that is used for explicit authentication with a proxy server Since sav
70. ist of screens separated by e g 0 1 in order to use screen 1 and screen 2 on this computer for displaying content TickerUpdatelnterval The interval in minutes after which the RSS feed of the ticker is Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings 89 Settings Name Default Value Description name lt value gt lt value gt checked for updates InteractiveScreen The number of the screen which reacts on interaction like page shortcuts A value of 0 will use the first screen on the computer as interactive one HideW ebBrowserScrollbars If set to True any scrollbars will be hidden if the player application displays Web pages DisableW ebClientProxy If set to True no default proxy server is for performing Web requests e g Web pages news ticker update weather forecast etc In order to use a proxy server to access Internet resources this value has to be set to False Further proxy configuration settings can be provided directly within the FrontFace Player exe config file according to the MSDN documentation see also section Proxy Server Configuration WebViewProxy This setting allows you to further configure the proxy settings of the internal Web browser engine The following values are supported auto uses the default settings of this PC Internet Explorer settings default uses the default settings of the player applicati
71. laylist with at least one placeholder you can assign this playlist either directly to a screen by using a timer or by using an event source in the Scheduling menu of the Display Assistant How the actual values text for the placeholders a being assigned depends on which type of scheduling you use for this playlist e Direct assignment of the playlist or time based scheduling using a timer For every placeholder you have defined a dialog window will appear during the publishing process which asks for the actual value of the placeholder that is then used as replacement for the placeholder in the text In order to enter line breaks please use the character Every time Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features you publish the project the Display Assistant will ask for new values for the placeholders e Display Assistant Sample Project J rojet D Or Publish Please enter a value for the placeholder Visitor Name Mr Jefferson _Aberuch Click on Publish to deploy the current project to the assigned player PC s Here you can deploy the updated content to the player PCs In this case all updated media is packaged and copied to the content update folders of the player PCs that you have set up After the updated content has been fully deployed the player application will pick up the new content and display it according to the defined schedules Fig The in
72. le format or click on Create a Video to export the entire presentation as WMV video use the Computer amp HD Displays preset for best results Rendering a video may take some minutes depending on the complexity of your presentation and the overall processing speed of your computer Both XPS files and WMV video files can then be directly integrated in FrontFace for Public Displays playlists Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Easily create stunning slide shows By using the Slide Show content type it is very easy to create professional looking sideshows from images or photos The optional Motion Zoom effect allows you to create highly dynamic slide shows and presentations based on static photos Simply add an new Slide Show media object and select some photos Make sure that you tick the Use Motion Zoom Effect check box to apply the motion zoom effect to the newly created slide show Great looking slide shows with Windows MovieMaker In order to create even more impressive slide shows with dynamic transition effects you can use an application like Windows Movie Maker by Microsoft If you have not installed Movie Maker yet you can download it for free from the Microsoft homepage as part of the Windows Live software package http go microsoft conv fwlink LinkID 255475 Blu 2009 802 Test Tools Home Animations Visual Effects Project Edi
73. ll control Viewonly Filetransfer Power control Task manage Connection F E Get free license key for personal and home use an a Groups Home W Office W Production Adds new connection Hint In order to determine the IP address of your player PC click on Start and then look for Run Then enter cmd which will open up the console In the console enter ipconfig without quotation marks You then see a list of all network interfaces The entry IPv4 address shows the IP address of your player PC in the network For a detailed installation instruction and more information about the enhanced features of Remote Utilities please visit the Usoris Systems Website Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings 35 10 3 Using Multiple Screens With FrontFace for Public Displays you can also address multiple screens that are connected to a player PC Basically two different operation modes are available for multi screen setups Mirrored Content the same content across multiple screens Duplicates or mirrors your display content on each display that you connect Mirrored is the default display option Actually this mode is handled in the same way as systems that only have one screen The graphics card of the player PC cares about mirroring the content on all screens Open Display Settings by clicking the Start button clicking Control Panel clicking Appearan
74. lt description gt Page 1 lt description gt lt pubDate gt Fri 23 Nov 2012 10 27 08 0100 lt pubDate gt lt item gt lt item gt Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG e FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual lt title gt Page 2 lt title gt lt link gt http www example com page2 html lt link gt lt description gt Page 2 lt description gt lt pubDate gt Fri 23 Nov 2012 10 26 50 0100 lt pubDate gt lt ffpd transitionEffect gt CubeTop lt ffpd transitionEffect gt lt item gt lt item gt lt title gt Page 3 lt title gt lt link gt http www example com page3 html lt link gt lt description gt Page 3 lt description gt lt pubDate gt Fri 23 Nov 2012 10 26 36 0100 lt pubDate gt lt item gt lt channel gt lt rss gt The duration property of a page lt f pd duration gt can be defined in seconds As transition effects lt f fpd transitionEffect gt you can choose from the set of effects that are available in the Display Assistant Default None Fade SlideLeft SlideRight CubeTop CubeBottom CubeLeft CubeRight FlipTop FlipBottom FlipRight FlipLeft Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 9 13 Using Flash Silverlight and other Browser Plugins You can display any normal HTML5 CSS3 based Web pages in FrontFace for Public Displays Even JavaScript is fully supported In case you want to also use browse
75. mains black afterwards please check if the clock and the date of the player PC are set correctly Also make sure that you have assigned a schedule for the playlist on this player PC in the Display Assistant that is active at the current point of time Furthermore you should check that you have assigned the playlist to the correct screen of the player PC If you player PC has only one screen and you assigned a playlist to screen 2 the playlist will not be shown gt Please make sure that you are running the same FrontFace version both on the player PC and on your workstation with the Display Assistant The FrontFace Player Application will not accept updates that have been published using a newer version of the Display Assistant Problem The NET 4 Framework cannot be installed on Windows XP Embedded Unknown Error Solution gt Prior to installing the NET 4 Framework on Windows XP Embedded you have to install the Windows Imaging Component WIC Problem Although the license key has been entered in the full version the player application still shows a dialog stating that the software is not licensed Solution gt Please make sure that you have entered the license key correctly without any typos gt Please compare the middle part of the license key between the two dashes with the activation code that is shown in the dialog when the player application is started If these do not match this license key cannot be us
76. mpletely offline In this case content updates are deployed using an USB flash drive plug amp play Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 6 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual PC with Display Assistant Management Software LAN WiFi Internet USB Bar Display amp Player PC with Display amp Player PC with Display amp Player PC with FrontFace Player Software FrontFace Player Software FrontFace Player Software Fig The different ways of deploying content to player PCs which are supported by FrontFace Hint For more information on how to install and use these applications please refer to the Simple Step by Step Setup Tutorial gt FrontFace 7E Display Assistant Sample Project J Project lia Ag Playlists S a G Player PCs Playlists 7642 vie Pages in Sample Playlist T Intro D Playlists Sample Playlist Duration 00 00 08 ca Preview Formats and Features Scheduling senie aae GOAN Video Clip Be Publish Duration 00 00 00 Media Demo Website Demo Preview Edit Content of Page 3 a choose from various layouts Use Cases Preview A playlist is a list of pages slides that are shown sequentially in an endless loop on a screen For each page you can define properties like z Media Info duration and page layout A Video Clip page layout is filled with media
77. n lets you specify a date and time which indicates the end of the countdown You can also define how the remaining time of the countdown is shown on the screen Format String Result on the Screen Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 53 0 00 T 1 00 S 2 00 M 3 00 S O5T 10S 50M 29S 0 00 Days 1 00 Hours 2 00 05 Days 10 Hours 50 Minutes 29 Seconds Minutes 3 00 Seconds 0 00 d 1 00 h 2 00 m 3 00 s 05d 10h 50m 29s 0 0 Days and 1 00 Hours und 5 Days and 10 Hours and 50 Minutes 2 00 Minutes Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG s FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 8 Using Plugins Plugins represent another possibility to extend the existing functionality of FrontFace for Public Displays A plugin can basically provide any kind of custom functionality of a content A common example is a plugin that accesses a Web Service and visualized the requested data on the screen mirabyte already offers some ready to use domain and application specific plugins which are available separately But it is also possible for you to develop your own custom plugins For this purpose a dedicated Plugin SDK Software Development Kit is available The programming technologies for developing a FrontFace for Public Displays plugin are WPF Windows Presentation Foundation and NET Basically all existing NET programming languages can be used to w
78. nd 480 for width In this case the window size would be 48x640 pixel By applying a scale value of 50 the actual window size is again 240x320 This means that the content is scaled down a result is that e g text elements will appear smaller Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG s FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 22 Adjusting the Language of the Player Application Some aspects of the player application are language and or culture specific E g there are differences in regards to the way how date time values are displayed 23 30 vs 11 30pm how weather related data is shown as well as simple language specific texts By default the player application uses the language and culture settings of the current Windows installation on which the application is running In order to change the language and culture specific settings you simply need to change the language and region settings of Windows in the Control Panel of the player PC Alternatively you can also set the language and culture directly Therefore the advanced setting Language is provided Some languages like Arabic of Hebrew also need to reverse the scrolling direction of the news ticker This change can be applied by modifying the screen layout which is used by the playlist The XAML file of the screen layout needs to be modified as described below Add the parameter ScrollDirection LeftToRight to the following XML tag lt mc Ti
79. nd screen 2 Change EnableKeyboardShortcuts from True to False in order to stop the player application from reacting to keyboard keys 3 Change AutoHideMouseCursor from True to False to prevent the mouse cursor from being hidden after a certain period of inactivity 4 Change EnableNumKeyPadSelector from True to False to allow the regular use of the numeric key pad 5 Change ShutdownWindowsShell from True to False to prevent the player application from shutting down the Windows Explorer task bar Once you have applied the above changes the player application is ready to be used Please make sure when you define your schedules in the Display Assistant that you assign all playlists to screen 2 Otherwise the primary screen will be occupied by the player application as well and prevents the normal use of the PC Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 46 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 9 3 Embedding Playlists in other Playlists A playlist consists of pages which contain containers for contents such as images video Web sites text etc But it is also possible to embed another playlist into a container within a page This is a great feature if you want to display certain static and dynamic elements playlists together on the screen Add New Playli Playlist Only play
80. neral In case the user has interacted with a Web page the current playlist is paused After a certain period of time with no further interaction the playlist continues to run automatically The length of this interval can be defined by the advanced configuration option InteractionAutoContinue Navigation of playlist pages It is also possible to define a touch link for any media object in a page of a playlist This link points to another page in the same playlist and is activated when the user clicks or taps on the media object Apart from direct links to other pages you can also use commands such as next page previous page or first page last page By using this feature it is very easy to create also complex menu structures How to insert a Touch Link First create a normal playlist page and assign media objects to the Playlist containers of that page Then right click on one of the content that is supposed to become an interactive element and select Touch Link from the context menu A dialog appears that allows you to select the Grit Cote target for this touch link Possible targets are the pages of the current playlist as well as navigation commands such as next previous page or peel first last page After you have made a selection a small hand icon is shown next to the content icon which indicates that this content is now an interactive touch link Content Content yur yono Page 2 4 Edit
81. ners for media objects Screen Layout Page Layout is set per Playlist is set for every page Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 25 6 3 Controlling Screens and Schedules FrontFace for Public Displays has different modes to assign playlist s to screen s Scheduling disabled Direct assignment of a playlist to a screen e Scheduling enabled Time based assignment of a playlist to a screen Event based assignment of a playlist to a screen In case of a direct assignment when scheduling is disabled you simply define which playlist is supposed to be shown on which screen This will cause the playlist to be shown permanently on the assigned screen as infinite loop In contrast to that if you set the option Scheduling Enabled you have more advanced options This mode allows you to assign playlists to screens depending on a time based schedule or triggered by events You can turn the scheduling feature on and off on the Display Assistant Ef Scheduling Enabled in the Scheduling item of the main menu Depending on the selected mode you can either assign a playlist directly to a screen or you can use the advanced scheduling options that are described in the following sections 6 3 1 Time based Scheduling The time based scheduling uses so called Timers A timer defines a point of time e g today 4pm or a sequence in time e g every day at 50m which
82. ni ennan a a E e Ee aa indata AER LAE ies 68 Dynamic Playlists Hot Folder rase a aaa a eG ee 69 Interactive FEAU ES k a aa e ea ae a e aa a e ted eee eee tiv 71 Remotely Controlled Onscreen Notifications 0 cceceeeee ee neeeeeeeeeeeee ee ee aa eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaeneeeeeeeeeaeaaea 73 Digital Signage Screensaver cece cece ee cece cece ae eeee teen ee ee ceca aaa ee nese ease aa aaaaee ee eeeeseaeaaaaaaeeeeeeeeaeaae 74 Overlay Layouts Layers reari Aus riai Airy eens As eed ay a tai A eet ae 75 Creating Custom Templates ccccceeeceeeee ee ee cree ee eect terete ee ae aaa ee eres esas aaaaeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaeeeeeeeees 76 Command Line Rublic ation zs 2 si venience ie ate ed ee ee ee ae 78 Windowed Mode f r LED Walls 4 0 aes aesiaeie deel te ae dada eee eee 79 Adjusting the Language of the Player Application ccccccececeeeeeeeeeee eee eeteeeeeeeeeaeaaeaneeeeeeeeeaeaaea 80 10 Advanced Settings aieea cece cece ete cree ee ee ae eia pent enna ee ae a eee eee ee ae aaa ean ida ee saad orii sees aeaaaaanees 81 Continuous Operation Mode Configuration cccccceceeeeeeeee cease eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeaeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaeeeeeeeeees 82 Remote Administration of a Player PC 00 cccccceee cece cece ee ee nee te cere ee eee aaa eee ee eeee ee aaaaeneeeeeeeee naan 83 Using Multiple SCreens ec kes a ysstivet eile eed ie eee Ane eet 85 Proxy Server CONTIQUIATION yrsa a a E E pias cot arena bid EE E E aE 86 Advanced
83. ntain a content as one of its child elements at runtime This attribute can be used to automatically hide an empty containers in a layout to which no content has been assigned This is e g used in the blackboard templates where unused notes are hidden automatically Aligns the element at runtime to the left Aligns the element at runtime to the right Aligns the element at runtime to the top Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 20 Command Line Publication Any media files of contents images videos XPS etc which are used in a playlist of a project are stored in the Media folder of your display project In certain situations it can be desirable to directly exchange or update these files without having to open the Display Assistant This is possible by simply overwriting the existing file s However the Display Assistant has to be started afterwards in order to invoke the publication process so that the updated files get populated to the player PC s In order to also automate this last step it is possible to remote control the Display Assistant via command line switches Display Assistant exe c path to display project ffpdx Opens the Display Assistant and loads the specified project Display Assistant exe c path to display project ffpdx publish Opens the Display Assistant and loads the specified project Afterwards the publication
84. old italic etc and placeholders Abb Selection of a Flash Sliverlight content in the Display Assistant Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG e FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 13 1 Embedding YouTube Videos Since FrontFace for Public Displays has an integrated Web browser that also supports HTML5 and Flash it is possible to also integrate YouTube videos into your playlists First install the Flash plugin on the player PC see Using Flash Silverlight and other Browser Plugins Then visit the YouTube Website hitp www youtube com and pick a video you would like to embed You have to identify the video ID of that video and you have to write down the length of that video The video ID is part of the URL which is shown in your browser s address bar The length of the video is shown on the YouTube page itself Example Let s assume you would like to embed the YouTube video from this page http www youtube com watch v q7ENIrkqrFQ In this case the video ID is q7ENIrkqrFQ Now add a new page to your playlist in the Display Assistant and add a new Website content to that page Enter the following string as URL http www youtube com embed VIDEOID autoplay 1 amp controls 0 amp showinfo 0 Make sure that you replace VIDEOID with the video ID you have just identified So the full URL you have to enter is http www youtube com embed q7ENIrkqrFQ autoplay 1 amp controls 0
85. ols the welcome screen That means that for both projects the same Content Update Folder is entered The first project contains a playlist with general information which is used when no visitor is expected By using the pin icon of the Display Assistant a shortcut for automatically publishing this project is created on the Windows Desktop of the clerks PC The second project also contains a single playlist with only one page which has a text content element with the following text Welcome to our company Visitor Name Visitor Name is a placeholder in this case A Desktop shortcut for automatically publishing this project is created as well Now the clerk can start the default or the welcome playlist by simply double clicking on the appropriate Desktop shortcut If the welcome project is chosen an input dialog will be shown which prompts the clerk to enter the name for the expected visitor If he enters Mr Jefferson the screen will show Welcome to our company Mr Jefferson Option B Scheduled welcome messages using a calendar In this case also two playlist are being created one for the default mode and the other for the welcome mode using a placeholder However this time both playlists are added to a single project The playlist for the default mode is assigned by a daily timer in the Scheduling menu of the Display Assistant for permanent playback Additionally an event source is added in the Even
86. on pass through none no proxy is used at all myproxy 80 explicitly uses myproxy for all HTTP requests Please note that this settings only impacts the configuration of the application of the setting DisableW ebClientProxy is set to True SaveCacheAndCookies If set to True the internal Web browser will save and cache cookies UserAgent lt empty gt Allows setting a custom user agent string for the internal Web browser Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Settings Name name Default Value lt value gt lt value gt o FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Description EnablePlugins EnableJavaScript True If set to True the internal Web browser will activate plugins such as Flash or Sliverlight if installed If set to True the internal Web browser will execute JavaScript code LicenseFile License licx Name and optional path of the license file for the player PC InteractionAutoContinue ShowDebugOutput 30 When a user interacts with a Web page on a playlist page using either touch mouse or the keyboard the playlist is paused and will continue to play automatically after the given amount of seconds has elapsed with no further interaction on the Web page If set to True the display will diagnostic information such as memory usage on screen ShowOnscreenWarningMessa ges If set to True the d
87. on of your choice e g Word To create a custom paper size in Windows 7 perform the following 1 Open the Devices and Printers control panel applet Computer Network Control Panel Devices and Printers N 2 Create a new form size by selecting the Print2Screen printer and then clicking on Print server properties Oo xX Eo Hardware and Devices and Printers gt Md Search Devices and Printers pe 4a device Add a printer See what s printing Print server properties j v es 5 and faxes 4 i Te taal PO gh A p 3 On the Forms tab select Create a new form enter a name and select the attributes then click OK Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG How to use Print2Screen oa Forms Ports Drivers Securty Advanced Forms on RTW 10x14 p 1147 m 1147W Save Form Delete Form name 1041 Ei V Create a new form Define a new form by editing the existing name and measurements Then click Save Form Form description measurements Units Metric English Paper size Printer area margins Width 25 40cm Left 0 00cm Top 0 00cm Height 27 94cm_ Right 0 00cm Bottom 0 00cm ichange Form Settings 4 Right click the Print2Screen printer and select its Printer properties axes 4 Epson AL C1100 FrontFace hat s printi Print2Screen Son a S
88. on you can then customize further settings Analog Digital and Date The options Time Format and Date Format define the way how date and time values are being displayed on the screen Default Date and Time Format Result on the Screen T 5 25 pm d 15 05 2015 The way how the date and time is formatted also depends on the language locale that is set on the player PC On a German PC the time will e g appear as 17 25 Instead of using the default formatting you can also compose your own custom format by using the following format strings Format String Description Result on the Screen The full name of the month May S 2 yyyy The year with four digits 2015 aooo s with e wih leading zeo _ zero 09 2 __ fteure with eats wih leading 2210 _ zero 03 The day of the month 15 7 MMMM The day and the full name of the 15 May moth HH mm The hours and minutes both 15 45 with leading zero dddd dth of MMMM yy The date with the full name of Wednesday 15th of May 15 the weekday the month and day of the month and the year with two digits A detailed overview and description of all custom format strings can be found here Timer A timer egg timer allows you to define hours minutes and seconds that are counted down every time the playlist page with the plugin is shown During the last three seconds the remaining time is shown as blinking text Countdown A countdow
89. player PC User Manual E Lock player PC settings Fig Managing player PCs in the Display Assistant Single Player PC or Player PC Group When adding a new player PC you can chose if you want to create a Single Player PC or a Player PC Group A player PC group is helpful in case you have multiple player PCs that are all supposed to show the same content Instead of setting up each player separately and assigning a playlist or a schedule to each player PC you can create a player PC group In this group you enter the Content Update Folders for every player PC of this group In the Scheduling section of the Display Assistant you can then address the player PC group as if it were a single logical player PC by directly assigning a playlist or a schedule This will save you a lot of manual work when you want to make any changes or updates to the content or the schedules that shall affect all player PCs of that player PC group Hint You can use the option Lock player PC settings to disable all options on this page This can be useful to prevent inexperienced users from accidentally corrupting the current player PC configuration For information on how to configure and setup the actual player PC hardware and the Windows operating system e g Windows auto login configuration of permanent operation mode auto start Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 19
90. ply need some additional help Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 100 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Index A activation 96 ad hoc text notifications 73 advanced features 43 audio signal 73 automatic publication 78 autostart 82 AV extension 60 AV source 60 62 B background music 63 E calendar 25 27 59 call up system 73 clock 52 cloud 32 CMS 65 codec 15 command line 15 78 79 94 configuration options 44 81 88 container 23 47 content 12 17 20 23 35 content creation 17 content plugin 54 Content Update Folder 8 18 31 32 34 continous operation mode 82 countdown 52 CSS3 12 64 67 culture 80 custom layouts 23 custom text 50 customization 76 D date 52 deployment 94 desktop PC 45 desktop shortcut 58 78 digital signage 4 directory 69 DirectShow 60 display 25 27 85 Display Assistant 5 17 dongle 96 Dropbox 32 DVD 12 dynamic playlist 47 69 Fa embedded playlist 47 Enhanced Write Filter 15 88 error 97 error log 93 event 25 27 event source 59 event source plugin 25 27 54 EWF 15 88 Exchange 59 SPa feed 65 Flash 12 15 67 68 folder 69 full version 96 Google Chrome 67 Google Drive 32 graphics card 15 H hot folder 69 HTML5 12 64 65 67 images 12 import playlist 20 installation 15 94 interactive features 71 Internet Explorer 64 Internet radio 63 Internet based deployment 32 Copyr
91. process is started automatically In case the process finished without any errors the application will close automatically Otherwise the application will remain running and shows the publication protocol Display Assistant exe c path to display project ffpdx publish Player PC1 Player PC2 Player PC3 This call invokes the same functionality as the one above but in this case the publication is only done for the enumerated player PCs Multiple player PCs may be given as comma separated list In order to suppress the graphical user interface of the Display Assistant during the automatic publication process you may add the silent command line switch along with the publish option In case the publication process ran into an error the application will exit with an exit code gt 0 Hint You can easily create desktop shortcuts for both editing and publishing your project directly within the Display Assistant gt FrontFace pP gy proj y play Display Assistant Simply open a project of your choice and click on the pin icon J Project D al Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 9 21 Advanced Features Windowed Mode for LED Walls FrontFace for Public Displays can also be used for LED video walls In case the LED wall can be addressed as a normal secondary screen under the Windows operating system no further adjustments to the FrontFace setup are required Just make sure that you have
92. put prompt is asking for the actual text of a placeholder during the publishing process Hint You can also use the same placeholder on multiple pages In this case the value will be queried on once by the Display Assistant during the publishing process If you not enter a text at all an empty text will be inserted which makes the placeholder actually invisible e Event based scheduling of the playlist using an event source In case you use an event source the assignment of the actual values to the placeholders is done by the selected event source plugin If you e g use the Calendar event source plugin you define appointments in a calendar that trigger the playlist at the time of the appointment Apart from start end date time you can also define the values for the placeholders of each appointment Every time the event source triggers the playlist the placeholders are then being replaced by the values defined in the current appointment In the next section an example is given that shows how to use this functionality to implement a welcome board system that shows personalized welcome messages to visitors 2 ochre Day Month 24 November 30 November 2014 4 fa gt o ba Subject Mr M Placeholder Se 1972 sevisitoR NAMESS End time iz Value Place Mr Miller Cancel 4 Fig Entering a value for a placeholder in an event source plugin this screenshot shows the Calenda
93. pyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 6 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application Working with the Application The Display Assistant is used to control and manage both the display content as well as the player PC s This section explains the basic concepts and the workflow for creating and managing content and screens Alle settings and content is stored as so called projects pdx file extension A project contains playlists media files and configuration information You can also create multiple projects but in most cases you will only need one single project to work with The project folder should be stored in a secure location It is also recommended to create a backup of this folder from time to time to make sure that your work cannot accidentally get lost The main menu of the Display Assistant has four menu items that provide access to all the relevant features FrontFace E Display Assistant J Projet DAG Player PCs D Playlists E Scheduling Publish 5 P ns j a J f ri ME a oe Player PCs On this page you configure your player PC s which are the computers that actually control your display s Playlists Content is organized in so called playlists A playlist defines a sequence of pages that contain a single or multiple content elements such as images vi
94. r event source plugin Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 5 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 9 1 Example A Welcome Board with Placeholders Welcome screen or welcome board is used at a company s reception desk to show general information and news about the company If a visitor is expected instead of the general information a personalized welcome message is shown e g Welcome Mr Miller Showing a welcome message can be achieved on two different ways but both using the placeholder feature of FrontFace Either the switch between default mode and welcome mode is made manually In this case an ad hoc welcome message can presented to visitors Or the times during which visitors are expected are stored in a calendar which then triggers the welcome message automatically based on the appointments in the calendar Option A Ad hoc welcome messages with manual switching Whenever a visitor is expected the clerk is supposed to start an alternative playlist which consists of only one page showing the name of the visitor and a personalized welcome message In order to keep the clerk from having to change the playlists in the Scheduling menu two separate projects are being created using the Display Assistant Both contain a single playlist which is activated by a Daily timer in order to make them start immediately once published Both projects target the same player PC which contr
95. r plugins such as Flash or Silverlight please make sure that these plugins are installed correctly If multiple versions are available like in the case of the Flash plugin please install the version for Mozilla Firefox on the player PC It is recommended to install Firefox on the player PC and to use it to install the correct plug ins from the following Websites e Adobe Flash hittp get adobe com flashplayer Important Please make sure that you download and install the Flash plugin for the Firefox Browser not for the IE e Microsoft Silverlight http www microsoft com getsilverlight Using Flash and Silverlight in the browser Simply create a new Website content and assign an URL to it that references to a Website where Flash and or Silverlight content is used Using Flash and Silverlight content directly It is also possible to directly embed sw la Flash or xap Silverlight files Select the content type Flash Silverlight and then choose a local file with one of these file extensions It is also possible to pass custom parameter values to the Flash or Silverlight object In case of Flash the parameters are passed on using the FlashVars parameter while the initParams parameter is used in case of Silverlight ree a Another Playlist Slide Show PDF XPS wag Plugin Hot Folder lt gt iS Web Playlist Streaming Video S AV Source Free text input ind rich formatting such as font color b
96. red the chapter about Using Multiple Screens In case the LED wall uses the so called screen capturing method which means that a given area of the Windows Desktop is defined which is then mirrored to the LED wall you can configure the FrontFace Player Application to run in windowed mode at given coordinates on the Desktop First start the LED wall control software and configure the screen capture rectangle on the Desktop e g at coordinates 100 100 a rectangle of 240x320 pixel All content within this rectangle is then shown 1 1 on the LED wall When you now start FrontFace Player exe the player application will take over the entire screen as usual and display the playlist in full screen mode In order to run the player application only in the given rectangle that is captured by the LED wall you have to start FrontFace Player exe with the following command line parameters FrontFace Player exe height 320 width 240 top 100 left 100 The parameters height and width define the desired size of the player window top and left define the screen coordinates of the window on the Desktop All values are given in Pixel unit Optionally you can also provide the scale parameter to apply a scale factor possible values 1 100 This means that the actual content of the playlist is rendered at a higher resolution and then is scaled down to fit into the display rectangle E g you can provide a value of 640 for height a
97. reduce the size Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG System Requirements 15 5 System Requirements FrontFace for Public Displays can be installed and used on all PC s that run a Microsoft Windows operating system Supported Windows versions 2 Windows 7 32 and 64 Bit also Embedded Standard ad Windows Windows 8 or Windows 8 1 32 and 64 Bit also Embedded Standara Windows 10 32 and 64 Bit also Embedded Runtime requirements NET Framework 4 0 4 5 is installed automatically by the setup wizard if required Windows Media Player 10 or higher only required for video content you might also need to install the appropriate codecs to playback certain video formats The LAVFilters codec pack is a good choice In case you require a proxy server to access the Internet either by the player application or the Display Assistant this Web proxy has to be configured properly as described in the section Proxy Server Configuration Additional requirements for the player application In case you want to use Flash or Silverlight content you have to install the appropriate browser plugins see Using Flash and Silverlight Content Hardware requirements There are no minimum hardware requirements for this software In order to achieve a good performance it is recommended to use a decent graphics card e g NVIDIA or ATI Generally the required hardware highly depends on the indented use case o
98. rite a plugin for FrontFace this includes C VB NET and many others In case you need a special functionality that is not provided by FrontFace for Public Displays out of the box you can contact mirabyte regarding custom plugin development Two different types of plugins are supported o Media Object Plugins This plugin type is used to display special types of content on the screen that would otherwise not be supported by FrontFace Also content from remote data sources can be integrated by the use of a plugin A plugin behaves similar to the regular content types that are supported such as images videos PDF or Web pages and can be integrated into playlist pages A plugin as a configuration interface that allows the user to configure an instance of the plugin in the Display Assistant Additionally every plugin has also a presentation interface that shows displays the actual content on the screen in the player application E g the clock plugin that comes with FrontFace can be configured to show either an analog or a digital clock Within a playlist page the clock is then shown using the configured style o Event Source Plugins Event source plugins are used to integrated external systems that generate events which then trigger a certain playlist on the screen By using an event source plugin you can e g integrate an RFID reader that shows specific content on the screen depending on which RFID transponder is scanned by the reader This allo
99. rolling Screens and Schedules Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Step by Step Tutorial 1 1 Step 3 Content Deployment Updating the Player PC 12 Click on Player PCs in order to select the Content Update Folder By default the name for the network share that you have to enter here is lt PCNAME gt FrontFace Player see step 1 for details Please replace lt PCNAME gt with the network name of your player PC e g ASTERIX FrontFace Player 13 Go back to Publish and click on Publish in order to deploy your project to the player PC s Content Update Folder lf you have configured everything correctly you will see a success message in the publication protocol 14 If the FrontFace Player Application is still running on the player PC it will immediately show your recently configured playlist instant update feature Otherwise launch the FrontFace Player Application again in case you have closed it in step 3 It will then show your playlist right after start up because the content has already been deployed to the Content Update Folder Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 12 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Supported Media Formats FrontFace for Public Displays supports various media and file formats This is a huge advantage because it allows you to re use your existing content documents and applications without any 4 modifications dei Advanced y amp
100. s Explorer into a playlist For every file that you add directly a new page that uses the full screen page layout is created It is also possible to drag amp drop single files into empty containers of a page marked by a green icon from the Windows Explorer In order to preview a playlist on your computer simply click on the corresponding Preview button in the list of available playlists A preview of a single playlist page is also possible Therefore every page in the list of pages in the Display Assistant has a separate preview button you can click Whenever you call the preview of a page or a playlist you can also specify the resolution of the screen that is going to be simulated This allows you to test your playlists at different screen resolutions and orientations Besides typical screen resolutions e g full HD landscape you can also specify your own custom screen resolutions which are defined by height and with pixels of the screen when you select Custom from the drop down menu It is also possible to save your custom screen resolutions within your project for quick access Hint It is also possible to change the playlist order for a better overview Please click on a playlist item in the list with the right mouse button and choose from one of the available moving operations Please note that the order of the playlists does not have any functional effect this feature is solely for maintaining a better overview in the Di
101. s case the whole page is shown for 2 min unless any special loop options have been set for the video e A video duration 2 min is embedded in a page with an explicit duration of 00 00 15 for this page in this case the whole page is shown for 15 sec which means that the full length of the video is not shown Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 23 6 2 2 Screen Design and Layout The way how content images videos Web pages is displayed can be influenced in two different ways Screen Layout is defined per playlist On the one hand you can select a screen layout for every playlist This template remains the same for the whole time the playlist is shown and defines static elements such as a news ticker or an station logo as seen on TV channels For more details on how to customize existing screen layouts please see the section Customization and Styling Edit Playlist Name Playlist 1 Default Item Duration 00 00 10 Default Screen Layout Custom Layouts Default Transition Effect gt i Uberblenden Background Music Page Shuffle Play Ticker Content Colors RSS feed URL or custom text multiline El Fig The properties dialog of a playlist allows setting the screen layout Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG a FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Page Layout is defined per page
102. s list M Playlists Pages in Sample Playlist r o Ce Sample Playlist Media Demo Select a page layout for the new page You can also adjust basic properties such as display duration and a transition effect Vise cip A schematic preview of the selected page layout e is shown in the application Edit Content Fig Creation of playlists with the Display Assistant of Click on one of the containers within the layout to assign a content to it e g a picture Empty containers have a green icon To view a preview of the current playlist simply click on the Preview button You can also adjust basic configuration options of the playlist Simply go to the Playlists list and click on the pen icon above the list You can e g configure a news ticker or define default values for options like page duration or page transition effects Repeat steps 8 to 9 in order to add further pages to the playlist When you are done please click on Scheduling As you can see the playlist has already been assigned to the pre configured screen By default the scheduling feature is disabled and you can assign a playlist directly to a screen But it also possible to activate the more advanced scheduling feature in order to define certain time slots or dates when a specific playlist is supposed to be shown For more information about managing schedules please see the section Cont
103. s to be able to edit the file in the installation folder Please make sure that you do not corrupt the file because otherwise the player application may not start correctly and more Notice In order to be able to edit these configuration options you should have basic knowledge about XML and you should know how to edit a text file The configuration options are defined in the XML file as follows lt xml version 1 0 gt lt configuration gt lt applicationSettings gt lt mirabyte FrontFace Player Properties Settings gt lt setting name M serializeAs String gt lt value gt Fallge lt value gt lt setting gt lt mirabyte FrontFace Player Properties Settings gt lt applicationSettings gt lt configuration gt The following configuration options are available Settings Name Default Value Description names lt value gt lt value gt StorageFolder PROGRAMDATA The folder in which the player mirabyte application stores internal data FrontFace for Public Displays Important In case you are using Content Cache the Enhanced Write Filter EWF of an embedded version of Windows you have to relocate the storage folder to a location or partition that is not protected by EWF DefaultScreens Number of the screen s which are supposed to be used as player windows Instead of a single value like 0 for the first screen or 1 for the second screen itis also possible to provide a l
104. splay Assistant when working with a lot of playlists Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 21 FrontFace 7E Display Assistant Sample Project J Project lii Ag Playlists l Player PCs Playlists Playlists Sample Playlist Preview Scheduling Publish Media Demo P Previ Aade E E E Content of Page 3 import or remove A playlist is a list of pages playlists slides that are shown sequentially in an endless loop ona screen For each page you can define properties like duration and page layout A page layout is filled with media objects such as images Websites XPS documents videos etc Click on a place holder in the lavout preview to User Manual Fig Creating and editing playlists using the Display Assistant It is also possible to import playlists from other projects into the currently opened project This allows you to easily reuse existing playlists that have been created in the context of another project into a new project The import also covers all content files like images videos etc that are referenced by the imported playlist 6 2 1 Determination of the Duration of a Playlist Page The display duration of a playlist page in the FrontFace Player Application is determined by multiple factors First of all it is possible to define an explicit duration for every page in the p
105. t which will then stop the current playlist In order to really stop a playlist which means to switch the screen to blank simply create a new empty playlist and assign it to a new timer that starts at the desired point of time Event based Scheduling Apart from using timers you can also use events to trigger a playlist In order to use events you have to define an Event Source which generates or receives from an external system the events In the tab Events you can add a new event source For every event source you have to define which playlist is going to be triggered displayed when an event fires The duration of a playlist that is started by an event is controlled by the event itself E Display Assistant Sample Project J rojet DAG Scheduling piyer pce 2 F 6 Schedule for Main Screen 1 G Enable all Timers Event Sources of this Group Playlists a Main Screen s Playlist Welcome 7 Player PC f Scheduling cli Name Event Source 1 Group Publish Configure Event Source For each screen of a player PC a schedule needs be specified which defines when a certain playlist is displayed Also complex schedules can be defined using various recurrence patterns e g only once daily weekly monthly etc ae i lle PRE sis B Timers 0 B ren G events en User Manual Fig Overview of the defined event source of a screen Event sources
106. t Options Format X cut E P a Titte a A Og RE X Remove EF T E ajm a 3 e Addvideos Add Webcam a Rotate Rotate 55 select all and photos music video 48 Credits left right r Chipboard Editing 2 1 Don t Wanna Go On With You ke That Elton John E Hits Volume M vE A Holiday Trips a 1 Don t Wanna Go On With You Like That Elton John Greatest Hits Volume IV 2009 4 a P F a e Wanna Go On With You Like That Elton John Greatest Hits Volume IV 2009 m 5 mt T nm y J After you have started Movie Maker click on Add videos and photos and select the pictures that you want to include in your slide show Now choose Pan amp Zoom from the AutoMovie themes gallery in order to automatically apply visually stunning transition effects Finally create a video file in WMV format by clicking on Save movie gt For HD displays which can then be integrated into your playlist in FrontFace for Public Displays Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Tips on Content Creation Microsoft Word is also a suitable application for easily creating display content However you should make sure that you set the page format and page orientation to reasonable values e g landscape orientation When using either Word 2009 or Word 2010 you can save a page by clicking on File gt Save amp Send gt Create PDF XPS document as XPS document This file can then be
107. t are supposed to be filled with content objects in the Display Assistant have to be implemented as Border elements in XAML The following naming conventions have to be followed Screen Templates Exactly one element of the type Border has to be present which has the name PART_VIEWPORT lt Border x Name PART_VIEWPORT gt Optionally a screen template may also contain an Image element named PART_STATIONLOGO which represents a placeholder for the station logo of a playlist that can be set in the playlist properties dialog in the Display Assistant Page Templates At least one but also multiple elements of the type Border have to be present that are named Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features PART_X where X is a running index starting with 1 lt Border x Name PART_1 gt Other elements such as Grid may use the name DESTGN_x where is is any custom X string This prevents the elements from being shown in the page editor of the Display Assistant This allows adding decorative elements to a layout which might otherwise interfere with the preview of the layout in the Display Assistant By using the tag parameter you can add a semicolon separated list of additional attributes that trigger special functionality lt Border x Name PART_1 tag attribl attrib2 attrib3 gt The following attributes are available AUTOHIDE Hides the element in case it does not co
108. tFace for Public Displays User Manual 12 License Activation FrontFace for Public Displays is licensed per player PC player PC installation A license entitles you to use the software on a specific hardware The Display Assistant however can be installed on as many PCs as required at no extra charge If you have obtained a license of FrontFace for Public Displays please proceed as described here Only the full version of FrontFace for Public Displays can be activated with a license key The trial version cannot be activated When you purchase a license you will also receive the installation package of the full version You can upgrade your existing trial version installation using that full version installation package by simply executing the setup again No configuration data will be lost in that case After you have upgraded the trial version with the full version installation package the Display Assistant will no longer show the nag screen on start up and you can activate your license in the player PC as described below Activation of the license on the player PC Please install the full version of FrontFace for Public Displays on your player PC Important Make sure that this is the final hardware you are going to use After you start You need the activation code in order to req key the player application a notice dialog appears Switch to GnerterhintiedslegtoschaeQepaiat T the License Activation tab and write down the
109. tFace for Public Displays was developed with three main objectives in mind e Creating a highly intuitive and easy to use easy to install application e Providing a very powerful and feature rich application in order to allow a board range of possible use cases and applications e Guaranteeing a maximum of stability and reliability How to get started P ee f p p j Visit the FrontFace for Public Displays Website Open Sam le Pro ect 4 for some quick start video tutorials or follow the i aig epee erie i Step by Step Setup Tutorial from this manual in x m Public Displays i em a order to get started In addition to that a sample the Playlists menu to instantly view the project is also included with this installation demo package To open the sample project the video eos ri tutorials or this manual simply use on the quick ie a a start link on the welcome page of the Display Assistant Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Technical Overview 2 Technical Overview The FrontFace for Public Displays software consists of two main components applications e FrontFace Player lication e Display Assistant f f Q Display Assistant IE FrontFace Player Create configure and Display media content manage displays amp content based on schedules Normally these application are being installed on different computers Install the FrontFace Player Application on the computer s
110. ted over the Internet from the PC with the Display Assistant to the player PC s The actual replication is handled by the desktop software of the cloud storage service e g OneDrive or Dropbox Cloud Storage Internet Player PC Ss yu PC with Display Assistant Content Update Folder The FrontFace Player Application automatically checks if the content has been completely synchronized by the cloud storage service and starts the automatic update process The following steps are required for an Internet based content deployment 1 Sign up with a cloud storage service of your choice 2 Install the necessary desktop software of the cloud storage service on your computer with the Display Assistant and on the player PC s 3 Create a folder which is used for the replication which is then available both on the PC with the Display Assistant and on the player PC s 4 Select this folder as Content Update Folder in the Display Assistant 5 Select the folder on the player PC s as Content Update Folder as well 6 Publish the content As soon as all files have been replicated to the player PC s the player application is updated and shows the new content Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 33 ed configuration optio Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 6
111. tent Update Folder Usually this is a local folder on the player PC which is accessible from other remote computers as a network share in case of the LAN based deployment so that the Display Assistant is able update the player PC remotely The player application permanently monitors the Content Update Folder and updates itself automatically in case new content and or schedules have been fully transferred into this folder by the Display Assistant The Content Update Folder may also be a folder which is synchronized by a Cloud storage service for Internet based deployment or the drive letter of an USB flash drive or an SD memory card for offline deployment Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Working with the Application 31 6 4 1 LAN based Deployment In this scenario each player PC is connected to a local area network LAN A network share is created on every player PC that provides access to the so called content update folder a local folder on the player PC which has to be specified when the FrontFace Player Application is launched for the first time The Display Assistant which is installed on a separate computer then copies the updated content during the deployment process to the player PC into the Content Update Folder which must be accessible as a network share The FrontFace Player Application will then automatically pick up the updated content once the deployment process has succeeded In case you have
112. ting a Print2Screen content in the Display Assistant 5 Finally you can set the desired stretching method the display duration of a single page for multi page printouts and a background color The background color is also used to replace the background color of the paper which is usually white So it is no problem if you create a printout that has a white border because the color of the paper is automatically substituted with the defined background color by FrontFace during playback In order to update an existing Print2Screen content proceed as described before After the Print2Screen content has been received by the Display Assistant click on the Edit button of a container with an existing Print2Screen object and click on the Update button in the content properties dialog to replace the old content with the new one Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG o FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 8 1 Custom Paper Formats Normal paper formats such DIN A4 or Legal do not fit 100 on a typical 16 9 screen Therefore it can be useful to configure custom virtual paper formats for the Print2Screen printer that perfectly match with the actual screen size or the size of the content container on a playlist page Together with the Print2Screen printer driver a special paper form named Display 16 9 is installed This fits exactly for 16 9 full screen content You can select this page format in any applicati
113. tion 5 Add a new page to your playlist the in the Display Assistant and add a new AV Source content In the settings dialog of the content enter the name of the AV source that you have configured in the previous step Live TV 6 Publish the playlist as usual to the player PC Once the page with the AV sources appears the video signal of the AV source will be shown Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features at It is also possible to configure multiple AV sources e g Live TV and Web Cam for use within your playlists Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG e FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual 9 10 2 TV Channels with Live TV Plugin The Live TV Plugin that is available separately allows the integration of live TV channels into FrontFace playlists The open source software MediaPortal is used as TV server in this setup MediaPortal is actually intended for the use with HTPCs home theater PC It supports most common TV tuner cards and can also cope with HD channels and encrypted programs such as pay TV channels on Windows based computers A free trial version of the Live TV Plugin which allows the integration of MediaPortal is available on the FrontFace for Public Displays product Website in the download area The package also includes a detailed step by step guide the explains how to set up and use the Live TV Plugin and MediaPortal Copyright 201
114. ts tab of the Scheduling menu of the Display Assistant which uses the Calendar event source plugin The welcome playlist is then assigned to this event source By hitting the Configure Event Source button you can now open up the calendar which is used to store the appointments that define when a visitor is expected For every appointment you can define a start end date time as well as the actual value for the placeholder which is in this case the name of the visitor that is expected After publishing the project the FrontFace Player Application will show the default playlist and whenever an appointment from the calendar is due the welcome playlist with the name of the Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 59 specific visitor filled in 9 9 2 Using Exchange and Lotus Notes Calendars Instead of the built in calendar of FrontFace you can also integrate existing Exchange or Lotus Notes calendars with appropriate Event Source Plugins available separately Exchange Calender The Exchange Calendar event source plugin allows the integration of Microsoft Exchange calendars using EWS Exchange Web Services to start playlists based on appointments in the calendar Furthermore you can also use appointments to assign text placeholders in your playlists This makes the Exchange Calendar plugin a perfect choice for implementing a convenient time controlled welcome board for visitors where th
115. ts a dynamic element While static elements remain all the same while the page is shown the dynamic parts show a playlist with transition effects and multiple pages This allows you to create great looking presentations on the screen Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG 43 FrontFace for Public Displays User Manual Title or Logo static e g Weather static Other Playlist dynamic Page Layout 2 Linking different playlists If you want to link playlists with each other e g display a playlist A followed by a playlist B etc you normally have to do this by defining schedules for the different playlists This can be quite complicated though The easier approach is to define an extra playlist C which contains full screen pages which show the other playlists If you now play playlist C the first page is shown which actually runs playlist A After the next page of playlist C is shown which displays playlist B So playlist C is continuously showing playlist A and B one after the other Playlist A Playlist C Playlist B 3 Simplifying the content update workflow In some cases a display presentation might contain content that is shown all the time e g general information and other content that changes from time to time e g latest news that need to be constantly updated Instead of maintaining all content in one big playlist that might be difficult to manage you can split the pla
116. ue the file truncated automatically and older log entries are dropped LogFile PROGRAMDATA Path to the log file where the mirabyte FrontFace Player Application logs FrontFace for error and warning messages as Public Displays well as diagnostic information FrontFace log txt ClearBrowserCacheOnStartu True If this option is set the cache of p the Web browser engine is cleared every time the FrontFace Player Application starts Otherwise the existing cache will be reused EnableRemoteControlService Change the value of this option to True if you want to use the Remote Control Service RemoteControlServicePort Defines the port on which the Remote Control Service is listening RemoteControlServiceHostna localhost Defines the host name of the me Remote Control Service By default this option should always be set to localhost Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Settings 93 10 6 Error Log The FrontFace Player Application is able to log any errors or malfunctions in a log file This is especially helpful in case the reason for an error or a problem cannot be found right away The log file is located in c ProgramData mirabyte FrontFace for Public Displays FrontFace log txt You can adjust the level of details of the log file by setting the option lt level value LEVEL gt inthe FrontFace Player exe config file You can set one of the following values as LEVEL e
117. uration option InteractiveScreen Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 9 16 Remotely Controlled Onscreen Notifications FrontFace for Public Displays is able to show ad hoc text notifications on a display while the regular playlist continues to run in the background This feature can be used to implement either a welcome message for visitors or a call up system that informs patients or applicants that are waiting for an appointment Mr Petterson please proceed to room B235 10s DLA this roster was created with Excel using Print2Screen 11 24 bate Nigeria attack toll soars past 200 Iraq killings M Fig Notification message as overlay Notifications can be shown as semi transparent overlay in the upper third of the screen or as full screen message e g for fire alerts or emergencies Additionally you can also play an acoustic signal when a notification is shown In the installation folder of FrontFace for Public Displays you find the be11 wav file which can either be replaced with a custom wave audio file of your choice or which can be deleted in case you do not want an acoustic signal for notifications The on screen notification feature is part of the Remote Control Plugin which is available separately Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG FrontFace for Public Displays User
118. ws e g to show a specific staff roster based on the ID card of the employee who stands in front of the screen FrontFace comes with the Calendar event source plugin that provides a calendar for managing appointments which trigger playlists e g for a personalized welcome message on a welcome board How to install and use a Plugin In order to use a plugin please copy the plug in file DLL and any other files that belong to the plugin into a new folder in the Plugins folder of your project folder this is the folder where the pdx file resides that you open with the Display Assistant After that you can select the plugin in the Displays Assistant when assigning a new Plugin content to an empty container of a playlist page Furthermore you can also add initialization parameters for the plugin if required You can also create a separate sub folder with a custom name for each plugin in the Plugins folder for a better overview in case you are using many plugins in your project Event source plugins need to be installed in the Plugins Event Sources folder or a sub folder of this in order to be available in a project Use the tab Events in the menu Scheduling of the Display Assistant to use an event source plugin Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 55 Add new Content eb PDF XPS a Flash Silverlight Streaming Video Copyright 2011 2015 by mira
119. y other content images video text etc You only need to provide the URL of the Web page you would like to display Additionally a zoom factor can be defined for every Web page you integrate which makes sense in case the Web page has not been optimized for being displayed on a large format screen You can also define if the Website should be interactive mouse and keyboard may be used to interact with the page or not Apart from normal Web pages that are referenced by Web URLs you can also integrate offline HTML pages The browser engine of FrontFace supports modern Web standards such as HTML5 CSS3 JavaScript and also browser plugins such as Flash or Silverlight Here is an overview of the supported features https html5te st e41 ffe258 705c6f6 In case you run your player PC behind a proxy server there might be some additional configurations changes you have to apply in order to make any Web pages appear on the screen If you need to integrate Web pages that use Basic Authentication you can enter login and password for every Web page as well Please keep in mind that since these credentials are stored encrypted in the playlist file this still is a potentials security risk FrontFace does also support transparent Web pages Web pages that have a transparent background color If combined with Overlay page layouts you can create really interesting visual effects In order to display a Web page with a transparent background you
120. yer PC Publish Location Playlists D idii SS Player PC Content update folder of the player PC network share or USB flash drive letter Last Published f n a d lt PC Name gt FrontFace Player l Ca Scheduling A Publish Updating via network share LAN WLAN The player PC is updated when you click on the Publish button in the Putlish menu Please provide the folder on the player PC which has been configured as content update folder In most cases you need to provide a network share in order to be able to acce s the content update folder on the player PC remotely Updating via USB flash drive offline If you want to update the player PC using an USB flash drive please enter tre local drive Add edit or letter of the USB flash drive or SD card here e g EN remove player PCs Updating via Web server Internet If you use a Web server to update the player PC select the folder on your Web server that is mapped to the URL which is periodically queried by the player PC Y Advanced Publishing Options A player PC is a computer on which the FrontFace Player application is For more details please refer to the User Manual installed A player PC controls one or multiple screens The content update folder is the folder location Content update from where the player receives i updates content Usually a network folder location share is be specified here which is linked with the local content update folder on the
121. ylist up into two different playlists which are linked to each other Now you only need to update one of these playlists while the other one can remain the same all the time This simplifies the workflow and helps you to maintain a better overview of your display project In case your superordinate playlist only consists of a single page please make sure that you have read the special notes about Playlists with a Single Page Copyright 2011 2015 by mirabyte GmbH amp Co KG Advanced Features 49 9 4 Playlists with a Single Page Playlists that only have a single page have a special behavior Usually the pages of a playlist are shown as an infinite loop But if the playlist only contains a single page this page is shown permanently and it is not running in a loop This means that the content on that page is only loaded once and then shown forever This allows creating static pages very easily that are supposed to show the same content all the time If this single page contains a video a slide show a Web page or an embedded playlist the video or the playlist are only shown once whereas a Web page will only be loaded once In order to make also playlists with one single page to loop reloading simply create a copy of the playlist page so that the playlist then contains two identical pages When you now set the page duration to a rather high value like e g 60 minutes the playlist page and also its content gets reloaded

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