Inscriber Digital Signage

Inscriber - Infocaster Digital Signage

Inscriber InfoCaster is a cost-effective, out-of-the-box solution for Digital Signage and Cable Broadcasting. Quickly create attractive multi-zone layouts for immediate digital display to any sized audience, locally or world wide. InfoCaster can be easily scaled to your needs. Make A Strong First Impression.

InfoCaster And Network Manager 1.2 Enhancements

InfoCasts - One of the major additions to InfoCaster 1.2 is an InfoCast. An InfoCast is a project that contains several InfoCaster pages and all of their respective scheduling. A useful example of an InfoCast may be a customer who creates a weekly schedule of several InfoCaster pages, where several pages change on different days of the week. InfoCasts greatly enhance the scheduling capabilities of InfoCaster, and significantly reduce the amount of human interaction required to trigger different InfoCaster pages on any given day.


There have been several UI changes to allow the operator to see every InfoCaster page that is part of an InfoCast. You can import or export individual pages to and from an InfoCast.


General enhancements


Overlapped regions: This new feature completely transforms the creation capabilities of InfoCaster. You can now stack regions on top of one another, and use the Tree view to change the Z ordering of each region via drag and drop. Overlapped regions have made the background region redundant, all you have to do now is create a full-page region and send it to the back.


Display a still image between page loading: This allows a default still image to be displayed when InfoCaster is loading from page to page. The default is set to black.


Improved Video scaler: A new scaling engine has been implemented to improve the quality of scaled video clips or live video in. It should be noted the new scaler uses more system resources and requires a top of the line PC. However, there is an option to use the old scaler should performance be a concern.


Date based scheduling: This enhanced scheduling feature will allow the user to set start and end times for specific items in a sequence. This enables the user to create an expiring event for a specific date and time.


Weekly scheduling: Set specific days of the week on which you want particular sequences to play back. You could easily set up a sequence to play a certain set of items Monday to Friday, and switch to a different sequence of items on Saturday and Sunday.


End item before sequence change toggle: When scheduling different sequences at specific times of the day, there is an optional toggle to allow a sequence to finish playing the current item before switching to a new sequence when its designated play back time is reached. By default it will wait for the previous item to finish, but if set to "off", it will cut off whatever is playing and start the new sequence immediately upon reaching the designated time.


Improved tree view: The Tree View now displays all pages in the current InfoCast. It is also possible to change the layering order of each item in an InfoCaster project using a drag and drop UI within the Tree View section.


Show full screen video: This optional check box will playback the video source full screen. You can use this feature to create the illusions of a full screen video squeeze back to a smaller region.


Plasma Display control: It is now possible to turn on/off certain plasma monitors remotely. The Plasma display control panel allows you to choose the type of Plasma you are using, and to set a schedule when the plasma should be turned on or off.


Maintain aspect ratio in layout editor: Using a modifier key will allow regions to be drawn while maintaining 4:3 aspect ratio.


Reverse rolls and crawls: The ability to play back rolls and crawls in both directions


Global Audio disable: This allows the audio to be disabled globally when audio is not needed. It improves performance since it disables certain unnecessary audio files.


Page Resolution warnings: InfoCaster now alerts you when you load a layout that was designed at a different resolution then the currently selected output device.


Additional Import/Export options


Multiple CD burn: allowing large InfoCast projects to be burned across several CDs.

Auto load from CD-Rom: This feature has several options: Auto load: InfoCast is automatically saved to the hard disk of the system Auto load + Schedule: Will load the InfoCast and start playing it at a specified time Auto load + Run: The InfoCast will load and start playing immediately

Additional Quick Editor functionality

New UI with Tabs: Quick editors now have tabs, one tab for content creation, and the other for formatting.

Larger Preview stamp: The preview stamp in the quick editors is now larger and allows for a better preview of what you are working on.

Graphics importer monitoring original file: This allows InfoCaster to monitor the original file location of an imported still graphic. If the file is changed, it will automatically update without having to import the new file.

Adjust Audio levels: Audio levels of each audio file can be adjusted from (0-99)

Data sourced text files via http: Allows a text file to be posted to an HTTP server, and each InfoCaster player can link to the same text file.

Speed change on push transition: The speed of pushes has been limited to only produce good push transitions. Previously, some of the speeds caused undesirable results.

Font Widths: It is now possible to adjust the width of fonts from the Quick Editor windows.

Logos from database: The ability to extract and display logo information in addition to text from external data sources for applications such as weather forecasts. The logo can be stored on your LAN or on an HTTP server.

Clocks improvements: Clocks now support the native language of the OS when listing the day of the week. Clocks can also be right, center and left justified, and there is now an optional opacity for clocks.

Safe Title Area: It is now possible to set a % safe title area. Previously it was limited to entering numeric values for each border.

Output/input

Rotated displays (output): The ability to create and output for a vertical/portrait display. This feature is supported in progressive scan (VGA) display mode on NVIDIA and ATI dual head video cards.

Higher VGA resolutions (output): supports up to 1024x768 on NVIDIA and ATI dual head video cards.

3rd party TV Tuner support (input): This allows a different channel to be selected for live play back in a sequence.

Scaled Live video in on PCI-100: Live video can now be scaled in a region using the PCI-100 card.

ICConfigUtiltity.exe

This utility allows several items to be customized for InfoCaster. See below for items that can be customized.

Improved Logging utility for support: Using an improved icconfigutility.exe utility, it is now very easy for users to set up logs for trouble shooting InfoCaster problems. These logs can then be sent Inscriber tech support from the simple click of a button in the utility.

External Data Handling: Again using the ICConfig utility, it is now possible to set conditions on error handling when dealing with ODBC data sources. This feature provides options on how to handle the data being displayed when the ODBC link is broken during playback.

Player Threading Priorities: This option allows certain regions of a layout to be given PC resource priorities to improved performance of the given regions when working at higher VGA resolutions. Threading should not be changed unless you are trying to correct a playback problem.

Network Manager Improvements

Remote Software updates: When using a Network Manager, it will be possible to remotely update software versions of players in the field.

Confidence preview display for players: Allows the preview of a still frame of is playing on the currently selected player.

Improved support tools for players: 4 new buttons in the Network manager
Start/Stop selected player
Clear Player Queue: Clears all pending commands on/to the selected player
Reboot player: Forces a reboot of the selected player machine
Reset player: Restarts all services and .exe files associated with an InfoCaster player

Player connection status: The connection status of a player can now be monitored using the InfoCaster player monitor. This allows a system integrator to verify that the player is connected to the network manager from the player location.