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:
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:
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.
Update: Smoovie from Open Planet Software is reported as being easy to use.
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:
We will also look at how to add various types of interactivity and many of the creative possibilities enabled by Digital View media players.
Recently we have been testing Samsung’s 43″ very wide LCD panel. With an aspect ratio of 4:1 and a resolution of 1920×480 this is a great panel for many digital signage applications.
Great for Digital Signage
For the interface we used a Digital View SVX-1920 controller. This is ideally suited to a panel like this and to usage in digital signage installations due to its high reliability and range of relevant features.
For the media player we tested with three models from the Digital View ViewStream range, the soon to be released ViewStream 320, the ViewStream 450 and the ViewStream 500. These all worked very well and are available as stand-alone and networked versions.
It works well, looks good and has a great novelty factor.
In a move that has quickly attracted some 
well known major digital signage companies the Screen launched the Green Screen initiative at ScreenExpo in London on 5 May 2010.
Digital View is a major sponsor of the Screen and I was pleased to be able to introduce one of the ’12 Steps’ (see here for details). As a media player provider for the digital signage market we took to championing Step 6 which states ‘Computing power has been kept to a minimum, lower power computers generating less heat, needing less cooling and lasting longer’.
Whilst Digital View plays an important role in enabling quite a number of the Steps number 6 is very appropriate given the low power solid state ViewStream players. These consume as little as 4.8W when playing video and the ViewStream 500 only consumes 6W when playing full 1080p video. Contrast this with a PC based media player that will likely consume at least 4 times as much and for many systems even more.
I am excited about Green Screen as it is the right time for an initiative like this in the industry and judging by the support it is getting already it seems many would agree with this.
James Henry, CEO
