Loops in general

Loops are the simpler version of contents. Users can create loops of images, videos, or templates with predefined zones where other elements can be included. The size of the toolset benefits from improved performance due to the fact that displaying and moving the elements requires less resources.

Loops are recommended if you want to whip up something quick.

My loop plays slow and choppy, what should I do?

Despite the fact that Loops are designed to perform better than Contents, devices with weak CPU and GPU may load slides slow or have choppy animations. In most cases disabling animations in the loop is the only option to improve performance. Animations are accelerated by GPU, HTML DOM manipulation uses CPU and most devices are weaker on the graphics side. If disabling animations does not help, the device may lack memory or the CPU is not strong enough.

Slides

You can choose from the following slide types:

• Image
• Video
• Folder
• Audio
• Loop
• Layout

Folder slide

Is an image gallery which inherit the animation of the loop and dynamically pulls its content from a folder. If the folder’s content changes the displayer will refresh the slide’s contents in the background and show the latest images.

Loop slide

Loops can be embedded in other loops as long as an embedded loop does not reference one of its parents. Embedded loops will inherit the top parent loop’s settings and behavior.

On the displayer side, embedded loops will be flattened to one loop with the loop slide swapped to its own slides. For example: if you have a loop which have an image slide, a video slide and a loop slide, the loop slide has 5 slides when you original loop is displayed it will be played as one loop with 7 slides.

Layout slide

A layout is a slide with propositioned boxes. Each template have a background box and one or more boxes in the foreground. These boxes can be filled with various elements.

Background

A layout slide can have a background of:

• image
• video
• color
• embedded webpage

Foreground boxes

A box can contain:

• text
• image
• image folder
• loop
• weather
• clock
• video
• HDMI input
• embedded webpage

Animations

Slide animations are the transition between two slides. The first slide never animates in, only out. Each transition lasts 1 second.

You can select the slide animation in the animation dropdown menu.

Note: Some external players does not support animations.

Slide duration

Under each slide you can define the length while you want the slide to show. This duration does not include the transition length while slides animate in and out.

For folder slides you can only set the duration each item will be displayed. The actual duration of the slide will be the sum of all its item’s duration’s including the transition duration between each folder item.

External video players

By default videos in loops are played with the external player of the device if it is available.

Note: External players are either put behind or in front of the content which may block UI elements like the Pause overlay.

Loop settings

The Loop settings tab can be accessed by navigating to the right hand corner of your screen and clicking on the tab titled “Loop”.

Synchronize loop

Separate screens are able to synchronize their time. Screens will communicate with each other, if a screen knows that the current slide should not be played it is going to jump to the expected slide.

Video synchronization will only work on Android and BrightSign screens.

Mute loop

Turning on this option will set every video’s volume to 0.

Start loop paused

Setting this option will have your loop stopped on the first available slide paused. From this state your loop will only start if it gets a resume event. Read more about pausing loop down below in this article.

Note: you can not set multiple-screen synchronization and start your loop paused at the same time.

Use external player

 

Use external player on the device to use its GPU to render and play videos.

Slide settings

Slide setting windows are accessible by clicking the interaction buttons on each slide.

Only play

To restrict when a slide can be played use the Only play setting. You can limit the slide to be played between dates, on specific days of the week, or between hours.

Advertisement

If a slide is advertised it will only play if the advertiser is chargeable.

Advertisers will be immediately charged after the slide transition finishes and the slide starts playing. If the slide stops playing halfway or an event occurs to skip the slide (For example: synchronization decides to jump to another slide) the charge won’t be reverted.

Sensor events

Loops only react to incoming sensor events. So far the only events loops will recognize are pause and resume events.

Pausing loop

Your loop can be paused via sensor events or webhook calls.

Sensor events to pause the loop: PAUSE, IR_PAUSE.
Sensor events to resume the loop: PLAY, IR_PLAY.

Note: Samsung client applications will emit the IR_PAUSE and IR_PLAY events on pushing the buttons pause and play on the remote controller.

Slide statistics

On each slide’s end the actual display time of the slides and the media files shown on the slide are reported to the server’s database.

Embedding loop in a Content widget

Embedding Loops in Contents is possible too. By enabling synchronization in the content loops will inherit the synchronization setting. When the embedded loop changes only the Content widget will refresh.