What do your customers think about your product or service?
Was the restaurant to warm/cold/just right? Should there be more accessories available? Was the waiting time too long? Are the facilities clean? Will you return?
Enable customer feedback – the VideoFlyer is an incredibly cost effective way to poll customers and can combine both information gathering and digital signage type promotion in a single easy to use package. Five straightforward steps:
1) Using any touch screen VideoFlyer (10″ or 15″ display size) or add a button bar to a standard VideoFlyer (10″, 15″ or 21″).
2) Create appropriate videos or still images and organize using DV Studio.
3) Deploy in-store.
4) Collect data.
5) Analyze and report.
Looking at each of these in more detail…
Read more…
LCD panels are a progressive display technology and even though LCD TV’s may accept interlaced video the electronics inside the display have to convert this to progressive. Interlaced originated in the the dark ages of the CRT and low bandwidth. Today bandwidth is available and the display technology is progressive scan. Rather than explain the differences here very good explanations can be found on Wikipedia: Progressive, Interlaced.
The Digital View recommendation is that when creating or encoding video, eg for digital signage, choose progressive. So choose 720p rather than 720i, 1080p rather than 1080i. As mentioned above, interlaced can be used if necessary and Digital View products all do a really excellent job with interlaced video but it is legacy technology support.
As a final note there are considerations for filming in progressive mode that require an understanding of the appropriate techniques, for example panning needs to be either very slow or fast otherwise jerking or image shear can appear. Alternatively tracking an object while panning can be fine as any artifacts in the background will be less noticeable. Filming at 50 or 60fps will likely be better than at lower frame rates. A bit of trial and error quickly illustrates the point.
Train station platforms and airports around the world bear testament to the value of digital signage in transport. The attraction is clearly the shear volume of people even if the demographics are broad. Read more…
We’re very excited about an installation of monitors that Alfacam have built using Digital View technology. Using our powerful LCD Controller board, the SVH-1920, and the HD-2000 and IP-50 accessories, Alfacam have deployed these custom monitors in their OB trucks during the World Cup just as they did at the last Olympics. This is enabling them to drive LCD panels to display the feeds coming in from the games. Read more…
Everyone should be familiar with the video technique of traveling across a map used in movies like Indiana Jones and documentaries similar to the example shown here.
This can be a great way to start a documentary clip for a museum exhibit or other digital signage project such as a promotional video in a travel agency and it is very easy to create. While a couple of software packages such as Road Trip Effects (Mac/PC) from Sol Robots provide dedicated tools the latest version of iMovie (Mac) includes a very simple and intuitive function that was used to create the example above.
To access it in iMovie simply select the Maps and Background browser in the iMovie main page as indicated in the picture here. Select a map style and drag it to the project window. A dialog box may open otherwise double click on the video in the Project window, this will allow you to set the duration and other settings.
Note: Digital View does not endorse, support or guarantee any 3rd party products mentioned on its blog.
Creating video from still images can be very effective, quick and easy. The various techniques available go well beyond simple slide shows and produce results suitable for retail product promotion, real estate agents and museums exhibit type digital signage. The following is a quick introduction to some straightforward methods:
- Many video editing software packages include a ‘pan and scan’ function or as Apple call it the ‘Ken Burns Effect’ (it is available in iMovie). This creates a video showing a portion of the still image, moving around it and zooming in or out. It is easy to implement and used quite extensively, the results can be excellent.
- Another very simple approach is to add scrolling text over a still image background. Most video editing packages enable this as a very straightforward function, often referred to as Titles.
- Some software packages and online services are focused on turning still images into creative videos. An example that seeks to address the professional market is Animoto, a web based SaaS service that also enables the inclusion of a soundtrack. Dedicated software packages include PhotoPresenter (Mac) and FotoMagico (Mac) from Boinx and Pulp Motion (for Mac) from Aquafadas that create animated slide shows that can be exported to video.
- Finally, presentation software such as Keynote for Mac can be used to import still images, add text and effects then export to video.
Then of course there are a considerable number of professional tools such as Adobe CS5, Apple Final Cut Pro and various plug-ins generally requiring a specialist level of expertise and budget.
Note: Digital View does not endorse, support or guarantee any 3rd party products mentioned on its blog.
Integre at SID
At SID last week we put the new Integre chassis on display. This is designed for 32″ to 80″ LCD panels and can be used in landscape or portrait modes. As shown here it brings together a number of Digital View ingredients:
- SVX-1920 LCD interface controller
- RM-DN5 solid-state media player
- Power balancing with fail-over.
- Thermal management
- Airflow management
And what cannot be seen is the monitoring and reporting that is built into all of this enabling remote management and reporting.
All this adds up to a very easy to use package for display system integrators in the digital signage and AV display markets.
Time lapse is that fantastic technique that lets us see plants grow, flowers blooming and clouds move rapidly across the sky, it allows us to see things that otherwise happen too slowly. A similar and very much related technique is ‘stop motion’ which is the technique for creating clay animations such as Wallace & Grommit and model animations such as the many Lego animations that can be seen on YouTube.
Both of these techniques are very easy to setup and use, basically all that is required is a suitable camera and PC/Mac with appropriate software. The software used for capturing the images will export a video and may also offer some editing functions as well.
The only difference between time lapse and stop motion is that time lapse uses a scheduled interval between frames and stop motion uses a manual interval, so an object can be moved. When played back at normal speed such as 25 or 30 frames per second these can make up a smooth video.
Some digital cameras now include software to enable time lapse or stop motion. Otherwise examples of suitable software include Dragon Stop Motion (PC/Mac) which works with a number of digital cameras. iStopMotion (Mac) from Boinx suitable for both stop motion and time lapse. A search on the web will reveal many more.
Note: Digital View does not endorse, support or guarantee any 3rd party products mentioned on its blog.
The Society for Information Displays (SID) held their annual SID conference and exhibition in Seattle, Washington last week. LCD panels have been the star of the show for many years now and this year was no exception – the surprise was the general absence of large OLED panels.
Not surprisingly 3D was very much in evidence both large and small for TV’s (with glasses) and mobile applications (without glasses). Also touch and multi-touch panels were well represented as were displays for e-books, for example E-Ink was showing it latest color electrophoretic displays, ie the technology used in the Amazon Kindle and similar .
A few non-LCD technologies that have been in development for a few years were on show including:
Other than that one novelty was a transparent 46″ LCD display from Samsung. This was being demonstrated for digital signage applications with a mock up retail window display – it was very effective and appeared to draw constant attention.
And Digital View – this year we put our new Integre integrated chassis centre stage. Integre is designed for display system integrators using Samsung LCD displays of 32″ to 82″ providing an easy to use interface, power and monitoring solution, see more details here (press release).
‘Digital signage’ covers a very wide of uses of digital media and is definitely not limited to the professional advertising networks that get most of the publicity. For many of these other uses the cost and time involved in using a professional video production company would be prohibitive.
Fortunately it can be very easy to create and produce video and over the course of future blogs we will look at various accessible and useful techniques. Just as a quick overview some of the issues for consideration include:
- Methods for creating original media such as video, stills and audio
- Using stock media
- Editing and related creative techniques
- Encoding & transcoding
We will also look at how to add various types of interactivity and many of the creative possibilities enabled by Digital View media players.
