Adding Content to Four Winds Digital Signs

Following these steps to add content to BGSU digital signs:

1. Open the Four Winds CMS content manager desktop application. 
2. Expand the location/department.
3. Select and expand the sign or playlist to edit.
4. Select the Template Tab on the bottom and expand the Template Category. 
   • Learn more about templates.
5. Drag-and-drop the template, you wish to use for the content, into the sign/display in the Network Overview section of the interface. Within the newly placed template are the Regions where you will add your content. 
   • Organization of templates determine the order in which the content will be displayed.
   • Usage of playlists can also impact this order. 
6. To add content to the system within your department/area in the content window at the bottom of the screen:
   1. Right-click on the chosen folder.
   2. Hover over the New Content in the Category [Folder Selected].
   3. Select Content Type.
7. In dialog box, select the URL button that looks like a black folder with ellipses (...).
   1. In the dialog box using the Insert from URL page, select the ellipses (...).
   2. Navigate to the item you would like to use and select Open. 
      • Verify you are using the Digital_Signage shared folder for your area.
      • Do not use the upload icon as permission is blocked.
   3. Verify that the appropriate Deployment Behavior is set.
   4. Select OK. 
8. Adjust the Image Properties as needed and select OK.
   • Content Name.
   • Recurrence: default is set to run all day, every day from the time the content was created.
   • Duration: default is set to 30 seconds.
   • Scale mode: default is set to Center and Fit-to-Container.
   • Metadata including height, width and duration is available in the advanced tab.
9. Drag and Drop the Content Items into the desired Region.
   • Regions can be identified by a small yellow square next to the Region Name in the Network Overview window.
   • The Content Tab can be sorted by selecting the Column Titles in the Content Area.
   • The Content Items in each Region create your playlist.
10. Organize items in your playlist by dragging and dropping them in the appropriate order/sequence. 
    • Review this article for playlist best practices.
11. Save and Refresh.
    1. To Save, navigate to  File in the top left corner of the content manager and select Save to save your changes.
    2. To Refresh, select the option above Save labeled Refresh.
       • This refreshes all content that you see in your Content Manager with any new changes that other people may be making simultaneously.
12. After finalizing your playlist(s), select the sign or the entire location.  Right-click and select Deploy… to deploy the latest changes to your sign(s).
    • If deployment is successful, the signs deployed will list in the bottom section and the top box will turn green.
    • If deployment fails, the sign name and the failed details will appear in the upper player list section and the top status color will be yellow.
      • Ignore the issue will allow the sign to deploy but the issue item may not display as needed. If Ignore is acceptable, select Resolve.
      • If ignore is not acceptable, select Cancel and correct the item and redeploy.

Typical screen size for digital signs 1920x1080 pixels. Exceeding this screen size may cause issues such as:

• Black or white screens.
• Slow load time for large videos (often related to file size).
• Display data incorrectly.
• If content is being consistently cutoff please review the advice from TV Safe Zone research, specifically page 8. This notes outer 3.5% and 5% of the display size, which are guidelines for displayed text.
• Content being skipped in the playlist rotation.
• Freezing or locking of the sign.

Content managers must save digital sign content on their areas digital signage shared drive located at - R:\Digital_Signage\[Your Area]\content\[Desired Folder] - in order for the Content Player to access the files.

• Do not store content in the R:\Digital_Signage\[Your Area]\content\ folder. This folder contains alphanumeric files used for pre-processing the content to be displayed on the sign.

Please keep the following in mind when using Four Winds templates:

• A Four Winds template is the layout used to organize content for display on digital signs.
• Templates named with 1080p are the simplest to use, with just one image (one region) that fills the entire screen.
• More advanced templates with multiple, customizable fields, can be created for you upon request using the Four Winds form. Common advanced templates include:
  • Weather display.
  • Date/time.
  • RSS feed scrolling content.
  • Weather, date/time, RSS feed combination. 

*Please Note: The Weather widget and others, if used directly in a 1080p template could corrupt your template. 

The Scale Mode Center and Shrink-to-Container is the default setting in the Four Winds content manager. This mode is intended to adjust oversized images and documents so that they still display properly (in the majority of cases).  However, this does not resolve all of the deployment file size issues that may occur when loading oversized images.

In addition, there are a few cases where images that are correctly sized 1920 x 1080 are still shrunk so be sure to use the Preview feature to verify correct appearance.

Other Scale Mode options for images that do not take up the entire region include:

• Center and Fit-to-Container scales the image while maintaining the ratio
• Stretch-to-Fill Container scales the image ignoring the ratio