Frequently Asked Questions

What do you call …?

If you do not understand a precise term concerning our application, you will probably find its definition in our Application word-book. Please have a look and do not hesitate to contact us if something is not clear.

How to connect a display with a MacMini?

The macmini has a DVI port with lots of possible adapters, supplied by Apple. This way, you can connect any display which has an input of the following types:

  • DVI
  • VGA
  • HDMI
  • Video composite
  • S-video

Note that using a good VGA cable is recommended for larger compatibility, whereas DVI or HDMI is better for quality, and that s-video and composite are low quality solutions.

Why must I wait some time before seeing my changes applied?

The application is preparing the players content in advance. This advance is set by the administrator, and can be long from 15 minutes to several days.

This is why you must wait for 15 minutes minimum before seeing any changes on the screens.

Indeed, our web application is using a multi-user environment, allowing the owner of the screens to make profit by selling the possibility to book on it. That means that several users can be concurrently making reservations on the same screen. To allow the system to display every medias booked on a screen, the screen is blocked at least 15 minutes before playing, to let the time necessary to calculate a playlist from all the users bookings and admins filling medias, to send it to the player, and also to send the eventually missing files to the player.

That's why medias cannot be chosen at the very last moment. But the administrator can "synchronize" a player, which means that the bookings are deleted, and the playlists recomputed with all the last settings set. This way, the current playlist and all the next ones can be updated in real time, but any eventual booking is lost.

Rss, WebMedias, and TV channels can be changed in real time, but cannot be booked for the moment.

Why can't I prepare a simple playlist of medias and just set it for a screen?

Our web application is working in a multi-user environment. Creating a simple playlist and making it looping on screens is incompatible with the possibility for users to book medias on your screens in the middle of your playlists. What you can do is using filling medias as random playlists, or using a "synchro" booking: private medias sub-playlists displayed on an entire screen (on all its areas). To be clear, in a synchro you have to define the timing for your medias displayed in each one of the areas of the screen concerned. Thanks to a synchro, you are able to have only your medias playing in a given order, with no interruption, and synchronized on all the areas of an entire screen, but for a given time.

How are files transfered?

FIles are transfered between the server and the players thanks to the FTP protocol, secured by SSL. A player is regularly downloading its playlists and medias, and uploading its acknowledgements when bookings are played. To optimize this, the administrator can set several values, such as the period of the looping processes in charge of launching the transfers.

Globally, the player is downloading the smaller files first, to be able to play them as soon as possible. You can force a file (media or playlist) to be re-sent with the player monitoring menu of the application.

Note that all files are re-sent when a screen is "synchronized" (which force an immediate update of the displayed content).

What is the difference between filling content and bookings?

In our application, the displayed medias can be set from 2 different ways.

  • The filling medias and filling synchros are randomly displayed, automatically, to fill the "empty spaces" when there are no bookings, or not enough. This is a looping content, which means all created playlists are using this content (if needed).
  • The medias and synchros bookings are replacing the filling medias and filling synchros in the playlists, depending on the very specific options that have been set during their creations. Bookings are not played again and again, but only at precise dates and times, and on specific locations.

How are the medias optimized?

All the medias (images and movies) sent to the application are converted to be optimized. This is necessary before sending and playing them on players.

We are converting all images in PNG format, which is a none-destructive format (preserving the entire quality of your original images), at different sizes, to be able to send them as fast as possible on players, and to play them at the highest possible quality.

For the same reasons, we are converting movies in MOV files thanks to the H.264 codec, which is the best way to lower the size of a movie file, but preserving the original quality of it.

In this operation, the frame rate can be changed. indeed, the player does NOT play like a DVD player at a given frame rate. It plays as any computer the maximum frames per second it can be between 10 and 100, to have an idea. Its capabilities are related to the hardware and to the media itself. Therefore there is no real need to stick to 25 or 30 fps for converted medias. 25fps have been preferred to avoid some QuickTime bugs and to limit the converted media size (more fps means also more Mb per movie). Please note that Cinema tapes and Blu Rays are at 24 fps.

NB: in case of real need, converting the medias a different way can be done easily and even on a per client basis without any new software release.

What happens to a media once it is played?

After it is played, a media is kept on the player as long it is needed. Filling media is kept on the player forever or until the administrator changes it.

If the server sees that the media is not needed by the playlist it tell the player to delete it. So, if today is the 1st day of the month and media is needed today and on the 20th day it will be downloaded today and kept until the 20th.

If there are no more bookings for this media after the 20th it will be deleted from player.

Is it possible to connect multiple displays with one MacMini?

We recommend to connect one display per macmini.

But you have the possibility to connect multiple displays via a specific hardware adaptor that would replicate the signal, plugged in the DVI output of the macmini. In this case, the same content will be displayed on all the displays.

What kind of network is necessary?

Your network needs depend on the use of the application. There is no typical usage. It is on a per client basis and should be determined per client.

The internet connection usage depends on the number and size of new medias to be displayed on a given screen. It can be one new media per week or one new media per minute. There are admin defined parameters that defines the minimum time a media has to be sent on player: "close period" minus "media retriever thread loop time" (NB: those parameters also influence some other tasks). If a media downlaod fails, the player will attempt to re-download the media after "media retriever thread loop time".

In short: we can adapt to any kind of internet connection (as soon as it is at least reasonably reliable) but there are some drawbacks (less "reactivity" mainly).

Does a player display content if it disconnects?

If the Internet connection is lost, the player is designed to work (to display its playlists) as long as possible without any network connection.

Everything (playlists and media) is downloaded in advance and all the report information is kept on the player as long as it has not been sent to the server. The important parameter is the playlist close period, that the application administrator can set. This is an example that proves the importance of this parameter. Here are the pros and cons of making this value vary:

  • Short playlist close period:
    A user can book "at the last minute" or to be honest in the best case within the last 15 minutes (i.e. book at 2pm for a playlist starting at 2.15pm)
  • Long playlist close period (let's say 12 hours):
    The player has 12h to succeed in downloading the files necessary to be played. Once the player manages to connect to the server it is ready for 12 hours of playing whatever happens on the network.

If it happens that the network connection is lost, the application administrator receives an email saying the the player did not contact the server. You can also review the "reliability bars" of the players in the Players subsection of the Screen section. Those are tools to realize that the internet connection of a player has been lost and that something might be required to bring it back.

Is a MacMini powerful enough as a player?

The player is calculating frames, area by area, and displaying them as soon as they are ready. Most of the time, a simple MacMini is powerful enough to display everything very smoothly.

But it is true that if the player is close to its maximum hardware (video card) capabilities, you may experience some "lags" (areas will stop refreshing their contents for a very short duration).

What must be done during a player installation?

Any player is configured during its installation, which must be done only once.

You can set some preferences at that moment:

  • the player location description
  • the time slot of the player location
  • the orientation of the player (landscape or portrait)
  • the TV channels list (if the EyeTV is plugged to the player)
  • the network configuration (IP address, router, DNS server, etc.)
  • the possibility to enable VNC, SSH, and ARD, to remotely control the player

What is a playlist made of?

A playlist is made of medias.

You have two types of playlists: movies playlists and images playlists. It means that an image area will play images in playlists, but no movies, whereas a movie area will play movies in playlists, but no images.

Whatever its type, the medias constituting the playlist can have two very different origin:

  1. Administrators must select some "filling content" for each area of each screen. These medias will be used to create all the playlists of the screens areas. The content is mixed so that all the medias are well-balanced while played randomly.
  2. Users can book medias which are added in the playlists, replacing the previous "filling content".

Actually, filling content can be seen as medias dedicated to fill the blanks between the bookings. But a complete system can also be based on filling content only, without any bookings. It is up to the application administrator to decide the most appropriated purpose.

How are playlists managed by the application?

The playlist life can be divided in several steps, explained bellow:

  1. The playlist is created by the application, to allow users to book on it. This is done some days, hours or minutes before the playlist is actually playing. This "open period" is decided by the administrator, and depends on his needs, but also on the server capabilities, because managing a lot of existing playlists requires huge computer resources.
  2. The playlist is closed by the application, stopping the possibility to change its content (bookings are no more available and filling content modifications are no more effective). Once again, the administrator is deciding on this "close period" depending on his needs and the server capabilities.
  3. The closed playlist is calculated in details: the application is selecting the medias order.
  4. The calculated playlist is then sent to the player, to be able to be displayed.
  5. Once completely displayed on the player's screen, the playlist is notified as played.
  6. The played playlist is finally invoiced by the application before being deleted.

How are playlists generated?

The concept of our software is that playlists are computed, shuffled and arranged by the server to save you a lot of tedious work. But to let the server do the job for you, you have to give him some directions!

This is achieved by the following steps:

  1. As the screen network administrator, you have to define your "year policy". As the name implies, it has to be done once a year only. When you do that, you define:
    • when your screen is on / off
    • when content will change (different playlist) during the day ("Time periods")
    • how long will be the playlist for each period ("Dwell time")
  2. As the screen administrator you are in charge to define what the "filling content" will be.
    Those are used to fill the playlist time if there is no booking on that playlist or if the booking do not fill the entire playlist duration.
    Those medias are picked randomly by the system and arranged intelligently (no repetition ...)
    You can define different filling medias for each area, or synchronize them with a "filling synchro".
    As soon as this is done, all the rest is optional. You already have a screen that can display the content you wanted.
  3. Sometimes, the administrator may want to have more precision on what will be displayed and when (eg: a special offer)
    In that case he can use the bookings part. This gives him very precise control of what will be displayed and when. We call it a booking campaign.
    A booking campaign lets you tell the system for example:
    I want to display medias A and B 100 times on screen 1 from monday 1st to wednesday 3rd between 4pm and 6 pm and 250 times on screen 2 and 4 from wednesday 3rd to sunday 7th between 8am and 10 am and between 2pm and 4pm.
    The system will then do all the job for you to compute if it is possible, how to achieve this ... And it will modify the concerned playlists automatically in the background without you having to care about that.
  4. But wait there is more!
    Step 3 can also be accessible if you want to your end customers.
    • You can let then upload their own medias.
    • You can verify if they are appropriate to be displayed on your screens (optional).
    • And then you can let them do their own booking campaign. They will define all their desires about when and where their medias should be displayed.

And again the system will compute by itself if it is possible (maybe in one of the playlists you filled all the time with one of your bookings) and compute the playlists accordingly, mixing your bookings, their bookings and your filling medias.

And on top of that, if you defined non-zero prices for your screens during the year policy creation, those users will get at the end of the month an invoice that takes into account all the medias that have been played.

Eg: customer 1 had his 30s movie played 400 times on a screen that costs $0.5 per minute

He get and invoice of $100 (0.5 x 400 x 0.5) detailing that.

How is the TV displayed on screens?

The TV option (EyeTV from Elgato) have to be installed during the player installation, because EyeTV software is pre-installed on the player, and you need to run channel scan with a TV source (cable, antenna).

Then, everything can be configured remotely, from the web application.

Why is my player not downloading its files?

  1. Connect on the application to see that.
    • All players are online.
    • See that some files are not downloaded.
    • Note that the missings files are the biggest.
  2. See what is happening right now FTP-wise on server using the command ftptop.
  3. Go a little bit further checking the FTP logs which are located in /usr/local/var/proftpd/

Why can't I see medias in synchros as medias (in overviews, etc.)?

Even if a synchro is made from medias, synchros and medias are finally 2 different entities. If someone wants to see medias and synchros bookings together, he can browse the "Overview by screen".

When I set a media as Filling Media, how long does it take to play it on the screen?

It depends on your application parameters (defined in the application parameters page available only for the super-admin), and how your playlists are divided (in your pricing policy).

First, add the value of the application parameter "Playlist Close Period" to the time it was when you set the Media as a Filling Media. Up to this calculated time, all your playlists have already been set, so your media cannot be in them. So, search for the next playlist starting after the previously calculated time. Your media should be in it, and should be played if the upload to the player has finished.

Why is my screen displaying nothing or just a strange message?

This can happen if you have some cable issues. A classical symptom is, for example, when there is not native resolution proposed for the player in the application. To fix this issue:

  • Check that the video cable is correctly connect on the Mac Mini and on the screen
  • Check that your monitor selected the correct input
  • Try with different cables
  • If using DVI or HDMI, try VGA

During maintenance I need to shutdown my player, but it keeps restarting. What should I do?

Do the following quickly enough (if it fails, try again faster)

  • Quit Player Assistant. It will relaunch but this is normal.
  • Quit QCPlayer
  • Require a Shutdown (Player Assistant should quit and the shutdown should be accepted)