Digital View Blog

Over the last few days the LCD controller support pages on the Digital View website have been updated with a posting of all relevant Application Notes for each of the controller models listed. This, however, is not the end of it as the Application Notes themselves as well as other files are all being reviewed and progressively updated as appropriate.

The controller support pages are at www.digitalview.com/support/lcd-controllers-support, if you have any comments of suggestions please let us know.

The Digital View View CSG (Controller Solution Generator) is designed to assist with matching controllers with LCD panels, however behind the system is a very significant LCD panel database. With well over 1,750 larger graphic type LCD panels listed it is probably the most comprehensive collection available.

Today more than 30 LCD panels were added to the database and it is expected that another 50 or more will be added in the coming days. The CSG itself is accesible at www.digitalview.com/csg and the panel data is currently available at www.panelx.com.

As I write this our UK office are exhibiting at the In-Store show in London showing a comprehensive selection of display solutions for retail marketing together with numerous interactive options. One of our exhibits in particular caught my attention because of how cost effectively we are able to produce it.

The demonstration as pictured here shows a video of a car rotating so the user can see a 360 degree view. The nearby touch pad with various colors is, as you might expect, a color selector for the car. While this would normally require a costly PC and touch screen we have used a 15″ VideoFlyer and our own touch solution mounted in a separate frame. The user touches the color of choice and immediately the video changes to show a view of the car in the color selected.

Very easy to put together, cost effective and reliable.

The first 5 months of 2011 have been action packed for Digital View with formalization of the signage division under Bob Michaels, numerous trade shows in the USA and around Europe as well as many new products, most significant of which is a whole line-up of great new monitors from 10″ through to 46″ that will be featured at Infocomm in a couple of weeks. On top that we have been involved in many great display and media projects in transport, leisure, retail and government.

The DV marketing team based in UK are hard at work preparing a major change to the website to reflect the two main Digital View operating divisions, namely signage and display system solutions. This is very much a marketing activity intended to make navigation easier for visitors to our website, there are no structural changes and we remain a closely integrated group.

Recently I saw a signage company suggesting that supporting a wide range of file formats was a positive feature. I feel they are wrong with this – good signage is about good content and this is going to be at risk if there is little or no control over the the media file formats.

As such the way to ensure good quality results is to set and maintain standards for the media formats being used. By all means provide tools to make it easier to convert video to the required formats.

Digital View used to promote a flexible approach to file formats and technically this is still possible, but given the overriding requirement to ensure quality we switched to focus on a limited range of formats and provided transcoder tools to make it easy for customers – this is called DV Media Converter (http://www.digitalview.com/dv-media-converter).

A lot of digital signage applications do not use audio and indeed very many of the systems Digital View as asked for do not have audio as part of the specification. However when audio is suitable the issue is where to get it from, this is certainly a challenge for me. I quite like stock audio such as from iStockphoto and playing around with programs like Garageband (Mac only) but it seems there are other options.

One product I found that makes it about as easy as it can get is Abaltat Muse (Mac & PC), this generates audio to go with a video based on the duration of the video and the colors. Shown here is an example of a video (from iStockphoto) that I ran through Abaltat Muse:

Over the past few weeks I have increasingly written about LCD and display related issues in the new PanelX blog rather than here in the DV blog. The idea of the PanelX website, which is currently fully sponsored by Digital View, is to provide a number of resources for anyone using LCD panels to build display systems. It is early days and we will keep developing these however to begin with we have LCD panel database, this is derived from the extensive information in the DV Controller Solution Generator, the LCD panel manufacturers directory and the blog.

So this leaves this blog which will increasingly be used for more digital media related topics such as content creation as well as some applications discussion.

Just to be clear, I am not recommending the following as a solution for digital signage content – however I do think it strongly hints at things to come…

Xtranormal.com is a web based service that makes it easy to author  video, extremely easy. The site provides templates with actors and action that you combine with audio via their text to speech engine to create videos for sharing on sites like YouTube. With a bit of effort it seems significant customization is possible covering actors, scenes and many of the attributes. There is also a downloadable Windows based version for offline authoring.

So I couldn’t resist trying it out – here it is using the text above.

Could this approach to creating content ever be good enough to create content for digital signage? The answer has to be yes – it may be some development generations away from being good enough and of course not suitable for all content or all types of content, but some, definitely.

As a final note, having made the video I see that there is a high quality download option, I haven’t received this but when I do I will note the resolution.

Update: The HQ (High Quality) rendering for download was quite quick, the resolution is 640×480 and the format is MP4.

I have often heard people dismiss the use of presentation software for digital signage content but Apple’s Keynote looks entirely suitable for some applications. For a start it is very easy to use for text, graphics and video as well as creating animation, then rendering out as video. When you start up Keynote it asks for the slide size so for example a size of 1280×720 for 720p video or 1024×768 for 4:3 video are good choices.

So to consider an application example, video for a real-estate display, suitable steps would be:

• Collect the photos and text details to be used
• Create the slides as with a normal presentation
• Add animation to make the display more active but don’t overdo it and make sure details are left on screen long enough for viewers to be able to see them
• Select Share / Export then QuickTime with Playback Uses: Manual Advance and Formats: Full Quality, Large with audio if you added any.

That is it, a high definition video suitable for a Digital View VideoStream or VideoFlyer media player.

First a quick definition re ‘professional’, I am using it to refer to anyone who creates video for digital signage as a significant part of their employment and has appropriate expertise.

Video may be created either by filming then editing or by working solely on a computer so we will consider both of these.

Filming: Professional video shoots are fascinating exercises in organization. Even seemingly simple shoots can involve scripts, storyboard, director, film crew, the equipment (camera, lights, audio, dollies, cranes, cabling), actors, models, extras. And that is before it gets to the editing suite. Very often, possibly most often some or all of the equipment will be rented.

Computer Creation: At a simple level this will involve authoring and editing and the usual software are any of:

• Adobe Creative Suite: Amongst these After Effects is very popular and seems to be an essential part of the toolkit.
• Apple Final Cut Studio.
• Avid Media Composer

These software packages not only cram in significant functionality but also support plug-ins from companies providing specialist tools. In addition to these there are software packages for 3D modeling and rendering.

I find that some lower cost software provides a subset of the functionality of these professional software systems but is not always easier to use. In this blog we will be looking for software and systems that are easy to use.

Update: Here is an example of an After Effects plug-in, also suitable for Final Cut Pro, this allows speeding up or slowing down of video using interpolation when slowing down: Twixtor.