Digital Signage - What Do You Want?

[shayward]

Forked from: Digital Signage

Hi All

Ever year I speek at the Toronto Code Camp - the largest Microsoft-focused code camp in Canada. Last year's topic lead me to build an example prototype that became the Self-Serve Media Distribution Kiosk.

(v2 should be available just after new years, by the way)

One of the topics I'm consider this year is the Windows Media SDK. At first glance, I think the Windows Media SDK would lend itself really well to creating a digital signage application that runs on XP and Vista, supporting full-motion video and sound.

Assuming the following...

• PC is Required (With XP or Vista)
• Any Size or Resolution of LCD Will Do
• Media Formats Must Be Supported by Windows Media (Or Be JPG, PNG, BMP, or GIF)

... what kinds of things would be useful for digital signage from a display/plackback perspective?

I'm not sure yet if this will be my topic or my example but it is worth considering.

Thanks
- Shaun

[JHVideoGuy]

For our digital signage we use video clips only. The thing I like about our set up is I can set up a playlist of what clips to loop. And then I can schedule that playlist to play from X o'clock to y o'clock, then play next playlist.

[Gracetech]

What i think would be cool is having a controller monitor with the ability to add multiple display cards and have something different on every one. I have had multiple monitors before(6) but never able to have multiple players running at the same time with discrete audio. It would also be cool to take advantage of the multiple audio outputs of most motherboards to have discrete sound for each visual. Though i think that would be a hard one to pull off. The other way of doing this would be to have a server that controlled multiple computers that just had one display. I've used VLC in this type of setup but it was a lot of trouble. If the later system could be setup to run on a minimalist system with a USB thumb drive with a small linux distro on it that would be cool. OK i'm going to quit now.

crt

[JHVideoGuy]

Hey Chad,
We have an Enseo digital signage server. It has 9 displays. 1 control screen and 8 outputs that feed our screens. I'm sure there are other products out there.

[shayward]

If the later system could be setup to run on a minimalist system with a USB thumb drive with a small linux distro on it that would be cool.

It would be cool!

Unfortunately I'm a total C#/Windows head and I'm looking at using Media Player SDK... which I'm pretty sure doesn't like Penguins or Leopards.

Basic XP Embedded can run on pretty scaled-back hardware, boot from a flash drive, etc. ITX or microATX form factors might fit well.

There are some excellent ideas in there.

My main consideration right now is building something that will work well for a 75-minute code camp talk specifically on multi-media development.

The multi-monitor thing would be a pretty cool thing to show-case if I can make it work.

[Lucas]

I just had a play in VB.Net and I made a quick dodged up program that let's you play a media object on one from while the other form is used for controlling it.

What would be best would be a Simple, but still configurable user interface

[Lucas]

Shayward, feel free to use and edit this quick example I made, if you want.
Just send a email to me if you want the source code

The biggest hurdle I faced was determining where the second screen starts, and how to place the display form on that screen. On the correct aspect ratio and scaling to that aspec ratio.

But it works
Extract it, and run player.exe

[Gracetech]

I think overall what would be the coolest is to set up a playlist that could play different clips on different screens and then hit a playlist item that would actually span all the displays. That would definitely dray the attention.

I still think this would work best off of a single computer as long as the audio issues could be resolved.

crt

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by Gracetech

I think overall what would be the coolest is to set up a playlist that could play different clips on different screens and then hit a playlist item that would actually span all the displays. That would definitely dray the attention.
crt

Cue, Darth Vader

As you wish.

Some buttons do not work, but you can see it being able to use 2 screens, It's rather easy to add more in.

If your PC does not have 3 screens, when you click teh add 3rd screen button, say you don't have a third screen, thenit will enter a "Demo Mode", lest the program crashes

I'm working on the audio now

On my PC it's using under 50mb at any one time, playing 2 different videos

[Gracetech]

This is cool. I'm thinking the audio thing might be tricky since the sample rate would have to be the same for all the outputs to work right. This is possible but would take planning on the content creation part. I don't know if a real-time sample rate conversion exist that could bridge the gap.

Am i just dreaming on this? It's ok to slap me back to reality.

crt

[shayward]

Looks like Lucas might just beat me to the punch!

It would still be a good topic for the code-camp though. It's either that, Introduction to Object Oriented Software Development, or License Management.

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by Gracetech

This is cool. I'm thinking the audio thing might be tricky since the sample rate would have to be the same for all the outputs to work right. This is possible but would take planning on the content creation part. I don't know if a real-time sample rate conversion exist that could bridge the gap.

Am i just dreaming on this? It's ok to slap me back to reality.

crt

Yes, I think you are, I've spent hours on google trying to find even a snippit of code that lets you do this, the problem I see is, Windows Media Player as a application does not allow you to do this.

This is also true for the control I'm using for the video.

That said, I can Pan the audio for each Display, so say, Dispaly 1 can have teh left channel and Display 2 can have the right channel.

It means that you cannot have more than 2 displays coming off one computer, but my trial here at home is my PC doesn't like more than 3 anyway.

A workaround to get more displays would be a client-server type model.

Just sending commads through sockets to each "Server".

Further research is needed on this subject however.

Shaun, Sorry about that, As for Licence Management, that is a horrible subject... we come into teh User Freindlyness area and teh protecting creators work
A fine line

EDIT:
The Media PLayer SDK says

By default, the Player control uses the audio device designated as Default DirectSound Device.
The audio output device cannot be changed programmatically.