Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mzavakos]

    I have a museum client who wants to be able to utilize a PC for media playback (movies, .mp4) to their theater.  They would like to be able to have 5 movies playing back in a sequence that is also controlled by a schedule (simple on at "x" time and off at "x" time).  At any time they would like the staff to be able to interrupt the current movie and jump to another using an iPad or similar device.  When this movie is done with playback they would like the software to go back to playing the movies in the predetermined order.  We would also like to have the ability to control this functionality via an AMX system so a well documented API would be necessary as well.

    Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt

[JohnT]

Not sure if MC can do everything you asked, but a few thoughts...

- You can certainly create a playlist of 5 movies and there is a "Scheduler" module that can be set to start playing the playlist at a particular date and time.

- MC can be controlled by an iPad using a web interface ("Panel") or a tablet/mobile app called JRemote.  So the staff could start a movie playing from there and it would interrupt whatever had been playing.

- MC has a very capable web service API which is how the above mentioned Panel and JRemote programs control the program.  I know nothing about the AMX system, but if it can be configured to issue control commands via an arbitrary API, it might be feasible.

[mzavakos]

JohnT,
   Thank you for the response.   Is there anyway to actually talk to someone about this solution?  I would like to actually talk with someone about the API with my AMX programmer. 
    I would also love a recommendation for a PC to run the software and serve the movies.  Are there any "white papers" on the specs for a "Theater PC"....

Thanks,

Matt

[JimH]

Ask your developer to look at the DevZone page here:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DevZone

and especially the MCWS interface. He or she could ask questions here if needed.

[B4Unyu]

you'll find what you're looking for (and more,), google Digital Signage. there's both software and hardware solutions.

i still believe jriver should add digital signage solutions to their product ... if only for money. they already have the hardware & software, it's a matter of adapting some.

DS is all about Video, Audio, and still Images. sounds familiar.

[mzavakos]

We already have BrightSign digital signage installed in the museum.  The problem comes down to file size allowable on the players.  They are still stuck on FAT32. 

[mzavakos]

and ease of adding a new movie...this has to be easy for the client.

[B4Unyu]

years ago, when looking looking around for this stuff i think Sony had a robust software solution... it may have become their current Sony.pro software product for 4k. ought to check into it.

many products like it too.

google digital signage software schedule OR scheduling

[JimH]

you'll find what you're looking for (and more,), google Digital Signage. there's both software and hardware solutions.

i still believe jriver should add digital signage solutions to their product ... if only for money. they already have the hardware & software, it's a matter of adapting some.

DS is all about Video, Audio, and still Images. sounds familiar.

Could you start a thread on that?  Specific things missing?

Thanks.

[RoderickGI]

Interesting.

Making transitions between content in a planned playlist and ad-hoc videos look professional, and automation to make the process as simple as possible for staff operating the process would be the major issues.

[JimH]

Zones and ZoneSwitch might work.

We might add a default playlist that always played when nothing else was playing.

[RoderickGI]

A default playlist would certainly fill a potential gap in the solution. Or just having the ability to turn off all Theatre View menu items with a keyboard shortcut or better a remote command available through MCWS. That way a background Theme slideshow would play when nothing else was playing. Maybe just editing a skin to make all menu text 0% opaque would be another solution.

I would also use Zones, because you would want the Playing Now list, created by the video Playlist, to remain intact while you switched to an ad-hoc video. But I think it would work best if the Playlist Zone could be paused rather than stopped, and then an ad-hoc movie started in a second Zone, and then the user switches to the second Zone. But if the first Zone is paused, and if it used an Exclusive mode for audio, audio won't work in the second Zone.

I would expect a Theatre would want to use WASAPI or ASIO Exclusive Mode for the best audio, so that would leave having to stop playback in Zone One, and then switch to Zone Two and start playback (or start playback in Zone Two and then switch to it, my preference.)

But if the Theatre View menu items could be hidden, then a user could Stop playback in Zone One and drop back to the Theme background slideshow, switch to Zone Two, and then start playback in Zone Two, which would probably look pretty good.

That could probably all be done with an existing remote solution, or using any external control application which can send MCWS commands. But it may need some additional automation so that a user could just play a playlist, then at any time select an ad-hoc video and play that, then when that finishes or is stopped, switch back to the playlist and start playback where it left off.


Like I said, interesting.

[JimH]

It might help if you could tag each file with a specific zone to play to. Untagged files woul use the default zone.

[RoderickGI]

It might help if you could tag each file with a specific zone to play to. Untagged files would use the default zone.

Is that possible now? If so, I'm not aware of it. But the [Playback Info] tag holds a lot of stuff sometimes, and I assume that is where a file specific Zone would be set. It would probably need a right-click, set Zone function rather than editing that tag directly.

Of course, everything in the video Playlist would have to use the same Zone for that to work. But that is just procedural.)

[Hendrik]

Its not possible out of the box, but you could create a custom field and custom zoneswitch rules to pull that off.

[RoderickGI]

Or maybe rather than create a new field, which someone would have to populate, if the Playlist name started with "Main" or similar, a Zoneswitch rule could be set up to use that.

Sounds like the OP's requirements could be done, not out of the box but with some work. How flexible is MC?!