The Following is the Media Format Information Sheet for Media Distribution of slide ad audio on DIGITAL.

Planet X Studios parent company Digitall Pty Ltd, has supplied a Digital Media Playback System to be used for Digital playback of slides in the Moonlight Projects Cinema advertising network.

This system can be used for AUDIO ONLY, simulating a MINI-DISK player, or full DIGITAL slide/full motion presentations.

This system is based in PC hardware. We can supply you a turn key certified hardware/software or uncertified software only for utilisation on your own hardware.

Atlab supplied Digital playback equipment is certified.

Digital Media Playback System

The software has the following features.

• Can be updated via USB, CD or NETWROK. For moonlight CD based Updates are supplied.
• Can playback pull motion E-Cinema to D-cinema quality pictures.
• Supports Full motion playback on OLD equipment such as the initial Atlab Digital Slide Hardware (1.5GHz P4) Note; Atlab software cannot support full motion playback on this hardware.
• Supports full HD (High Definition) 1920x1080 at 25mbit on 3GHz systems. The more powerful CPU the higher the bitrate/quality possible. As such support for higher quality playback up to 50mbit will be possible with new extreme multi core CPUs when available.
• Has a sophisticated scripting language allowing it to facilitate unlimited events (Ie unlimited different shows.) and external triggers.
• Can be triggered by SERIAL, Keyboard, TCP-Socket. (Ie from automation)
• Can be programmed to talk to any external serial device. For example. your Digital projector On/Off.
• Supported formats include WAV, JPG, MPEG (All levels, All Profiles, 420, 422), VOB files (converted from a DVD).
• Can be programmed to resize the image to a sub portion of the screen. For example, if you have a lens that is not suitable, you can shrink the image appropriately.
• 5.1 Dolby Digital Capable if you playback system supports 5.1 audio.

How To Update the System

When supplied with an update, you will receive a single CD-R with programming for all digital playback systems.

Place the CD into the CDROM drive. It will automatically detect the CD and update files on the system.

After the update, do a dry run of the presentation, ensuring the slides match up with your printed schedule supplied with the CD.

How do I deal with Problems or on the spot changes

If you have any problems, please contact and report.

If you need to make a change on the spot, see the following description of the files and playlist. This can be modified.

The file structure and playlist

On the Player Hard Drive, you will find a directory called "channel".

This directory consists of 4 directories. "bin", "media:, "logs" and "playlist"

bin

This directory contains the executable and more importantly the XML configuration file for that screen. "mediasettings.xml". This file is where you configure which screen the player is on. The following lines are of importance.

  <machinename>JAM_Screen07</machinename>
  <name>Screen07</name>
  <position left="0" top="0" right="1024" bottom="768"></position>
  <playlist>..\playlist\JamFactory.ply</playlist> 

These must be set to the appropriate value. NOTES

• The utilisation of the screen can be changed to squeeze the image if the lens is not appropriate.
• The playlist parameter should point at the playlist for for your cinema.
  

media

This directory contains all media required by the player. This will include WAV, JPG, SWF and MPG files.

log

This directory contains a log of the activity of the player. Log files will be created for each day. Review these files if problems occur as it may give you an indication of the error.

These log files can also be used to generate reports on exactly the activity of the media player over time and what Slides where played and when.

playlist

This directory contains the playlist for the player. The playlist is a sophisticated scripting language that allows for complex programming, however, we will only go over what you need to understand to modify the playlist.

In the playlist you will find an EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND readable language similar to the old BASIC programming.

If you look close, you will see that the "s" and "x" keys on the keyboard can be used to simulate the event of start presentation from the automation system. The player simulates a Minidisk player, taking the "Play command" to start and sending "End of Disk" command back to the automation when finished.

Each screen will be listed. Based on the screen name, as programmed in the mediasetting.xml file, the player will jump to the appropriate programming.

The script lists MEDIA files to play, for slides, the JPG then WAV files are listed on a single line. For MPG, the MPEG file is listed. They must include the path to the file relative to the playlist. This is simply "..\media\file.MPG", meaning the media directory.

Simply delete/add these lines to remove/include a slide from a playlist.

Media Player Maintenance

To ensure error free running of the Media Player, we recommend rebooting them at least once per month. Especially if Windows 98. Once rebooted, do a test run.

We also recommend a 6 month system maintenance in which all old files are cleaned up/deleted from the media and log file directories.

What Else Can the Media Player Do

A common need for cinemas installing E-Cinema, D-Cinema equipment is the need to do presentations, utilising DVD content, or even TV.

DVD's can be converted to a media player compatible single file. For example, you can store a clients DVD movie on the system. This will then utilise the higher quality video power of the computer for display on the Digital Projector.

Digital TV tuner cards (HD and Standard Definition) can also be supported. For example, telling the Player to come on and switch to channel 2 via automation.

Support for these formats allows you to tie in the playback of DVD type material and TV via Automation events.

If you have any questions, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .