Digital Workshop

Hi

I was wondering if any Opus users out there were using Opus in the 'Digital Signage' arena. I have been asked a couple of times recently if I could design and construct a short (2-10 minutes) presentation that will be displayed on a large screen TV and which would loop continually throughout the day, so as to catch as many peoples's attention as possible.

The presentation itself is not a problem, I was just writing to get people's thoughts and practices on how such a presentation should be delivered.

Most of what I have created before has been as an Opus Professional publication that has been created as an .exe file and burnt to CD. This works great but does not have the ability to loop.

The other day for the first time I connected my computer up to my TV by running an S-Video cable from my computers graphic card S-Video out to the S-Video in of my TV set and when I clicked on the 'Preview Publication'
button in the main toolbar of the publication I was working on at the time, it displayed on the monitor as usual and on the TV. The picture quality from the TV was not as good as that from the monitor however.

I then went on to create an Opus DVD publication, and played that in my set-top DVD player onto the TV, the Picture again was good but a long way short of the quality displayed by the monitor. Both monitor and TV are approximately 2 years old.

So I got to thinking about how the finished presentation would be feed to the large screen TV to achieve the loopable presentation, and at this moment in time what seems best to me is that the presentation runs from within 'Opus' itself, by means of the 'Preview Publication' button that is all set up to loop and leaves the computer by means of an S-Video cable like my set-up (or possibly a DVI to DVI setup or even a HDMI to HDMI setup) but instead of showing on a large screen TV shows on a large screen computer monitor (which are readily available today) .

That surely would be the best way in terms of quality and speed, the only drawback would be that the people showing the publication would need a copy of 'Opus' to make this work.

Any contributions from anyone would be most appreciated.

Regards

V Crew

V --

I've run a number of projects into plasma/HD TVs (16x9). If most of what I want to show is videos and photos with some overlays, then I use a video editing program to make a DVD. Most DVD players and computers have the ability to loop. Once you've pressed that button, it will run forever (almost).

If I need an OPUS presentation, then I set my Chapter Property Page size to a 16x9 ratio. A standard DVD is only 720x540. If you select other sizes, the TV will alter it to fit, which may cause distortion. TVs don't display as full an image as a computer monitor, so if you're using a TV, don't run text to the full edge of a Page. It might look OK on your computer, but it will be clipped on the TV.

I'm not sure what you meant when you said an OPUS Pub Mine always has been able to loop. On your last OPUS Page, go into Page Properties and in the General Tab tick the timer option and after so many minutes:second have OPUS go to the first Page in your Pub. That will loop your Pub forever.

Hope those ideas/comments help. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!