Group Settings

There are a number of properties of players which can be controlled by configuring Group settings. All the settings defined here take precedence over player WebUI settings. Here are descriptions of them. 

1. Resolution - Define the resolution for the players associated with the group. The player will reboot and configure it accordingly.

2. Orientation - Define the screen orientation at the hardware level.

• The orientation defined at the playlist layout level works based on CSS and will not work for webpage-type links, logos, emergency message, and clock widgets.
• In portrait mode, there could be a black border(gap) appearing. You can remove the border by adjusting overscan values in the player WebUI.

3. Dual Screen options - Define the screen arrangement in case 2 Displays are connected to your device. [ Note: Only available for  Raspberry Pi 4 running player version 4.7.2+ ] 

• Mirror screens: Content displayed on the Primary display will be mirrored onto the Secondary display.
• Enable 4K: The display connected to the HDMI-1 interface will operate in 4K mode.
• Tile Horizontal: The displays are connected one next to the other horizontally.
• Tile Vertical: The displays are connected one above the other vertically.
• Reverse Order: Toggling this will interchange the content shown on the Primary and Secondary display.

4. Animation - You can select an SVG-based animation for the image and notice transitions. Since Pi has limited processing power, animations may not be at their best.

5. Screen Background - You can select a CSS color code to define the screen background. The default is black.

6. Display Logo - You can display a png image as a logo at the selected position on top of the signage content.

7. Clock widget - You can display the clock widget either in 24-hour or 12-hour format on the top-right or bottom-right corner.

8. URL caching and Reloading - Depending on your use case you can enable the cache for the URL by selecting "Keep webpages in memory" or reload each time by selecting the "Reload link URLs each time" option.

9. Stretch Image to full screen - Select this option so that the image is stretched to fullscreen, otherwise, it will be shown based on the aspect ratio and size.

10. Stretch Video to full screen - Select this option so that the video is shown in fullscreen, otherwise, it will be shown based on the aspect ratio and size.

11. Volume - Select the Video and Audio volume in terms of percentage (default is 100%)

12. Stop video to show adverts - You can stop the video after a programmed number of seconds to show adverts and then continue.

13.  Schedule TV ON and OFF -  To schedule TV ON and OFF every day select the enable option. There may be a delay of up to 5 minutes.

For finer upto-minute accuracy and more scheduling options use TV_OFF playlist scheduling under Group instead of this.

14. Deploy Daily: This option can be enabled if the "Deploy" message has to be sent by the server daily at a particular time.

15. Reboot Players Daily: [optional and not needed] Set a time at which the Player is required to reboot daily.

16. Kiosk Menu: Show a Webpage when the Mouse connected to the player is clicked when this is Enabled.

• URL: URL of the webpage that has to be shown
• Inactivity timeout: The time after the last Mouse click after which the player starts playing the scheduled playlist. ( example use case: If the end user does not interact with the webpage using the mouse after 5mins, then the Default/Scheduled playlist will resume)

17. Video Player: Choose the Video player

• Default: Player version 4.x.x, the default Video player is Chromium Browser. In the rest, it is Omxplayer
• MPV: Can be Enabled to play YouTube streams overriding the default player.
• VLC: [Experimental] Can be used to play 4K videos in players with version 4.x.x 

Group settings in the new interface

In the new interface open Groups, click the group, choose the Settings tab and pick a section from the row of buttons under it. The settings above are spread over these sections; a few new ones are noted below. Click Save Changes after editing and Deploy to send the settings to the players.

Group Details

New: the group name, an optional description and a group colour used to mark the group's screens in the Screens list.

Displays

Resolution (Auto, 1080p or 720p), Orientation (Landscape, Portrait Right, Portrait Left, Vertical Flip, Horizontal Flip) and the Dual screen options (points 1 to 3 above).

Transitions

Replaces Animation (point 4): Disable, Slide right, Slide left, Slide up, Slide down or Blend, with a preview on the right.

Appearance

Screen background, logo and clock (points 5 to 7). New: the clock can also show the date and sits at the top or bottom of the screen, and the logo position is set with X and Y values.

URL Reload

URL caching and reloading (point 8).

Fit to Screen

Replaces Stretch Image and Stretch Video (points 9 and 10): images can be Letterbox, Stretched or Actual size; videos Letterbox or Stretched.

Break Videos

Stop video to show adverts (point 12).

Volume

Video and audio volume (point 11).

Schedules

Schedule TV ON and OFF and the daily reboot (points 13 and 15). Deploy Daily (point 14) is now the Schedule Daily Deploy button at the top of the group page.

Kiosk Mode

Kiosk Menu (point 16) lets visitors interact with a web page on the screen while the signage keeps playing the rest of the time. Typical uses are a menu or product catalogue, a wayfinding map, a visitor sign-in form or a survey page.

1. Switch on Enable kiosk mode.
2. Enter the URL for interactions: the full https address of the page to show, for example a page on your own website. The player must be able to reach it over its network.
3. Set Switch back to my regularly scheduled playlists and content after to the number of seconds of inactivity before the signage resumes. 30 to 120 seconds suits most installations.
4. Click Save Changes, then Deploy.

How it works on the player: the scheduled playlists play as usual. As soon as somebody clicks a connected mouse or taps a touch screen, playback stops and the kiosk page comes to the front in a full-screen browser. Every further click or tap restarts the inactivity timer. When there has been no input for the set number of seconds, the browser is hidden, the scheduled playlist resumes and the kiosk page is reloaded from the start, so the next visitor begins on the home page again.

• USB mice and touch screens (DSI and USB HDMI panels) both work. On Raspberry Pi OS with the labwc desktop an on-screen keyboard appears when the page focuses a text field.
• On Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 the kiosk browser is kept ready in the background, so the page appears immediately. On Pi Zero 2 and Pi 3 it is started on the first click to save memory, so allow a few seconds for the first appearance.
• Playback in all zones stops and the ticker, logo and clock widgets are hidden while the kiosk page is shown; they return when the playlist resumes.

Video Player

Video Player (point 17) chooses the engine that plays video files for the players in the group. Which engine is used also depends on the player version and the board, as the UI help text next to the buttons is older than the current players.

• Default - the Chromium browser plays videos along with images, web pages and widgets, which gives smooth transitions and the best web-content support. It is used on Raspberry Pi 4, Pi 5 and other boards with more than 1 GB of memory and plays 1080p H.264 video. 
•  
• MPV/piplayer - on older players MPV media player, which plays videos back to back without a gap and handles YouTube streams. On players 5.5 and later it selects pi-player, a GStreamer based engine built for the Raspberry Pi that renders videos and images directly on the display. 
• Native media player - VLC. Choose it for 4K video on Raspberry Pi 4 and Pi 5 (H.264 and H.265), for .mkv files, and for RTSP camera streams. For 4K playback also select Enable 4K under Displays, upload the videos as mp4 or m4v with H.264 or H.265 encoding and turn on Bypass video conversion in Settings so the server does not re-encode them to 1080p.

Whatever is selected, the player switches to VLC on its own for .mkv files and for RTSP and YouTube streams, and to the browser on boards where the chosen engine is not available. After changing the player click Save Changes and Deploy; 

Player Settings

New: disable the player's Wi-Fi access point, disable the player webUI, hide the power and temperature warnings, draw widgets (logo, clock, QR code, emergency message) in the browser only, and enable GPIO media control.

Custom Template

New: the default custom template from Template Designer for the players in this group.