Video, working with

Overview

Video comes in a variety of formats and containers, and it's common that, as a digital signage producer, you are expected to be able to display video from all kinds of sources, such as internet video streams, DVDs, DV cameras, and so on. Sometimes it can be difficult to select the best format for a certain purpose. Below are some of the most common video sources you may want to input in your DISE system.

TV signal

A TV signal can be received with a tuner card on the manager/player. In the DISE Movie, insert a Capture Object that reference the capture device. An alternative to directly receiving the signal is streaming the TV signal from a central location with the tuner card out to all players.

DVD

In order to play a DVD movie in DISE, you have two options:

You can stream the DVD in a quality depending on your network, then add a network stream in DISE.
You can rip the DVD to a file which DISE Replay can handle.

If your system is large I recommend the first option, while the second is good for smaller installations.

Ripping

Ripping is the process of copying the audio and video from a DVD disc to file. There can be found a number of softwares that allow you to rip DVDs.

Note: Please consult your country's copyright laws before ripping/copying any video content.

VOB files are a format commonly produced from DVDs. It has an MPEG-2 encoding which DISE Replay can playback natively. The VOB files tend to be very large (> 1 GiB each), so if you plan to use them unchanged, please make sure you have sufficient storage and bandwidth. To compress the files we can encode the files using lossy compression.

Video streaming

Main article: Video Streaming

If you have the bandwidth you can stream video from a central location over the network. In DISE Composer insert a Video Object and enter the URL to the streaming server.

YouTube

To insert a video from YouTube, you have two options:

Insert a Flash Object.
1. In the URL field, enter the URL to the video where you do the following:
2. Replace "/watch?v=" with "/v/"
3. Add ?version=3&autoplay=1&showinfo=0&controls=0 to the end of the URL.
4. This makes the following URL: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkpRaRxZ9V8" into "https://www.youtube.com/v/wkpRaRxZ9V8?version=3&autoplay=1&showinfo=0&controls=0"
5. Please remember that you may have to set the duration of the flash object manually.
Download the YouTube video using a third party application, then insert the video using a Video Object.

Transcoding a video file

Some formats are not supported out-of-the-box in DISE. Of course given the right codec DISE can be made to play almost any kind of format, but we recommend that you try out a single or a couple of formats that work well with your hardware and overall system and stick to it. In this case, the media has to be transcoded into the correct format. To transcode a video file we need a video conversion software.

The target formats we recommend initially for stability are Windows Media Format or Quicktime video. In this example, I will be using Microsoft Expression Encoder to compress a VOB file produced from a DVD into a Windows Media File.

In the startup dialog, select the Transcoding Project option.

Click the Import button to add the file(s) to be transcoded.

In the panel to the right, select the Encode tab.
In the Size Mode list box, you can select to have the resulting file be the same size as the source file by seleting Source.

Finally, click Start to begin transcoding.

DISE NoBorders

In a DISE Pro multi-screen system (DISE NoBorders), there are a few things to consider when putting video over several screens.

Synchronized playback of video files require more CPU/GPU power than playback of video on non-NoBorders systems. This is caused by the need of more exact playback, and that the video needs to playback with a very short buffer.
Due to how video is handled internally by the graphic card, simply stretching a video out over a number of screens may lead to performance degradation and loss of synchonization.

This since the graphic card still has to render the entire texture even though only a small portion of the video is in fact visible.

Therefore we recommend splitting (large) video up into pieces prior to putting them in a DISE NoBorders content.

There are a number of tools available online to split video. In addition, we can provide scripts to simplify the process. Please contact support if you want access to the video splitting scripts.

Streamed video will not sync well since the buffering time can not be predetermined and may vary greatly between players.

Video, working with

From DISE KnowledgeBase

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