Narrowcasting

Update: 09 December 2024 for Release v205

You can display selected events and information. For instance, a page welcoming the guest to your venue, a page that shows the event of that night, followed by a page with information or quotes about that event. Or you can use Narrowcasting to show a page with prices of drinks during intermission.

You can use one or more channels, each showing a different selection of events. Or you can use the same channel on multiple screens.

Channels: for every channel, you will need a computer with an internet connection.

Display: this can be a vertical or horizontal display.

There is no maximum of channels or displays, this is up to you.

More detailed information and examples:

The feed consists of 3 parts:

Channels are used to distinguish what feed you want to show on a certain screen, in other words, where you want your content. You can use the same channel on multiple screens if you want to show the same content on them, or you can make a different channel for each screen if you want to show a different feed on every screen.

Broadcasts define when your content is to show up on the screen. You can add multiple broadcasts to one channel if you want to change between content during the day and at night.

Slideshows determine what you want to show. You can choose between different kinds of elements: a clock, featured events, or custom slides (for a bar menu, for instance). You can also define how long each slide is shown before going to the next slide.

To set up your feed, follow the steps below:

Go to Dashboard > Digital Signage > Narrowcasting

Click on Add channel to add a channel and fill in the desired name for the channel, click Save.

We advise you to give Channels recognisable names according to the place where the screens will be, for instance, foyer/bar/garderobe/ingang, so you later know where the specific channel is shown.

Your Channel is now added to the Channel mixer.

Each Channel comes with its own url you can directly display on your screens.

Go to [yourdomain]/nc to see a list of all your channels. When your website has a multi lingual setup, Narrowcasting offers a separate overview of channels for each language, f.i [yourdomain]/en/nc.

Click on Add slideshow below the Channel mixer.

A window opens where you can input details about the content you want to show.

We advise you to give this slideshow a specific name related to the content that is in it or to the specific event for which you want to show this slideshow (so, for instance, if you want to make a default slideshow to welcome visitors, you can call it Welkom bij theater X, is you're making a special Narrowcasting slideshow for a specific festival, you can call it Festival 2022). This way, you can easily distinguish the different slideshows in the Channel mixer later on.

Find the Slideshow you want to add slides to. Click Add slide. You will get a window where you can choose the Type of slide you want to add.

Click on Add Broadcast, either on top of the screen or directly in the channel.

This opens a new window where you can put in the details of when you want your slideshow to play on the channels (i.e. screens).

Select the correct channel and slideshow, and then you can select what days and hours you want your slideshow to play on that Channel.

Opening the Narrowcasting module, you can find several overviews. We'll discuss how they all work below.

In the Channel mixer, you can see all planned/active broadcasts sorted by channel (blue box).

In the red box, you see the days of the week. You can switch days by clicking on them.

In the yellow box, you can see that there are three slideshows planned for today, starting and ending at different times. If you want to adjust anything about the broadcast for that specific day or for the whole series of that broadcast, please see the chapter How to adjust settings.

Below the Channel mixer, there is an overview of all created Slideshows. Every Slideshow has its own box.

You can see whether there is an end time for this Slideshow (yellow box).

You can see on what Channel that slideshow is Broadcasted (blue box).

You can expand the box showing all slides by clicking on Show slides (red box).

This will show you what slides are in this Slideshow. Some may be inactive, either because there is no automated content to show or because it was manually disabled. You can see whether a slide is active if the little eye in front of it is red.

When you have multiple Broadcasts on one Channel (like the example of the channel mixer before), you can arrange what Broadcast has priority over others. For instance, if you have a default broadcast for welcoming your visitors to the theatre that plays all day and want to show a slideshow for a specific event from 8 pm to 11 pm. You will want to give the event Slideshow priority over the default Slideshow. You can do this by changing the ranks of the slideshow.

When you add a Slideshow to your Narrowcasting module, it will contain a few default slides. But you can customise the Slideshow by adding and removing slides.

Slide Transitions are set in System > Control Panel > Core > Digital Signage.

There are two Transition Types:

You can also adjust the Transition speed (ms.). The default is 500 ms. Note: 1000ms is 1 second.

It is also possible to display suggested events in Narrowcasting. When creating a new slideshow you can determine how many suggestions of the today slide are shown. Keep in mind that you have to manually select suggestions in the event that is showing. The Narrowcasting code cannot take 'random' ones, so they will only work if the event that is happening on a particular day has manually selected suggestions in the Production.

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