Digital View Blog

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).

With a new series of VideoFlyer digital posters hitting the market, it’s time to look at some of the features. Most notably networking. Read more…

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:

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.

Digital screens and interactive digital posters can still present the public at large with a challenge when it comes to using them. It can be tempting to think that ‘If you build it, they will come’, but that’s simply not the case. Read more…

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.

A couple of our blog posts recently have mentioned making video out of still images so I was interested to see this approach being used by two popular local restaurants:

First there is the local Thai restaurant, they have a large LCD display integrated into the wall at one end of the restaurant. The content comprises still images made into a video using Ken Burns effect and a selection of subtle transitions. The photos are a combination of food, pictures of the menu and a diverse selection of scenes from Thailand – including the highly recognizable Songkran festival. It is not intrusive and works well.

Next is a modern cafe. It has 5 large LCD displays high on the wall behind the main counter used as menu boards. These change for breakfast, lunch and dinner. On some of the displays they had the standard menu which didn’t change – easy to read and choose from. Then on the middle display there were a couple of specials and these did change. In all cases the menu items were in a ‘window’ with a relevant food background made from still images using, you guessed it, the Ken Burns effect so there was movement.

Both these establishments made excellent use of easy to achieve digital signage. The approaches were very different but entirely suitable and matching to their respective styles.

We mentioned the Animoto web-based video creation system in a blog back in a 16 June 2010 but I thought it worth a further mention in order to draw attention to a few of their application examples, namely for Hotels, Real-Estate, Pro-Photography and a Winery. These are shown on their showcase page here. These are all good digital signage applications.

Three of the examples show a mix of still photography, video and audio. For some digital signage users photographs may be as far as they can go without professional assistance which is fine – the winery example is all made from photos. Audio is part of the Animoto offering but very many digital signage deployments do not involve audio in any case.

Animoto is the only example I am aware of an online video creation service and for anyone struggling with video editors it may be worth a try.

Stock video can be an incredible resource for creating digital signage content. There is a lot of it, it is easy to access and easy to use – prices vary. A quick search on the web for stock video websites produces many results but one we use regularly is iStockPhoto which offers both stills and video.

So if for example the requirement is to make a menu board for a restaurant there is a huge selection of relevant video clips available, this is quickly apparent with a search of a couple of sites using the word ‘food’: Artbeats gave 1,601 clips as a result and iStockPhoto gave 11,401. A purchased clip can be used to create a video background with either a fixed or changing menu display in the foreground – this is an easy exercise in video editing software.

There are certainly many topics covered by stock video, for example searches for video on topics such as dinosaurs or 17th century gave a respectable number of results for each.

One final point – always check the usage license. Even royalty free video is likely to have usage conditions.