Amx Is Spx 1000 1300 Users Manual InspiredSignage XPress Programming Guide

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Programming Guide

Inspired Signage
XPress
IS-SPX-1000/1300

Inspired Signage

Last Revised: 11/20/2013

AMX DOMESTIC CHANNEL PARTNER and END CUSTOMER LIMITED
WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER AND LICENSE
(Excerpt from CHANNEL PARTNER TERMS AND CONDITIONS Versions 11.17.2011 with updates for previous version
8.25.2010 [sections 6.1 (a), (b) and (f)])
Definitions
“End Customer” means an authorized end customer with direct in warranty privileges from AMX. Within this limited warranty,
disclaimer and license document, “End Customer” shall have the same meaning as “Channel Partner” with the noted exceptions
of Sections 6.5 through 6.9 which are not applicable or available to End Customer’s directly from AMX. Offerings described in
Sections 6.5 through 6.9 are available to End Customer only through their selected authorized AMX Channel Partner.

6. LIMITED WARRANTY; RETURN, REPAIR AND REPLACEMENT
6.1 AMX warrants the Products to be free of material defects in materials and workmanship under normal use for three (3)
years from the Shipping Date (or such other period as may be specified below), subject to the following limitations and
exceptions (“Limited Warranty”). For any Product, “Warranty Period” means the period during which the Limited Warranty
is in effect, as set forth herein.
(a) LCD and LED panels are warranted for three (3) years from the Shipping Date, except for the display and touch
overlay components, which are warranted for a period of one (1) year from the Shipping Date.
(b) Disk drive mechanisms, pan/tilt heads and external power supplies are warranted for a period of one (1) year from the
Shipping Date.
(c) AMX lighting Products are warranted to switch on and off any load that is properly connected to our lighting Products,
as long as the AMX lighting Products are under warranty. AMX also warrants the control of dimmable loads that are
properly connected to our lighting Products. The dimming performance or quality thereof is not warranted, due to the
random combinations of dimmers, lamps and ballasts or transformers.
(d) AMX software and firmware included in the Products is warranted for a period of ninety (90) days from the Shipping
Date.
(e) Batteries and incandescent lamps are not covered under the Limited Warranty.
(f) The Warranty Period for AMX AutoPatch EPICA, Enova DGX, Modula, Modula Series 4, Modula Cat Pro Series and
8Y-3000 Product models will continue for the original installation until five (5) years after the issuance of a PDN with
respect to termination of the applicable Product model. However, if the Product is moved from its original installation
to a different installation, the Warranty Period will automatically become three (3) years from the Shipping Date and, if
more than three (3) years have elapsed since the Shipping Date, the Warranty Period will automatically expire.
DLI-6293353v1

Note: Refer to www.amx.com to view/download the latest complete AMX Warranty and Return Policies.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Inspired Signage XPress Programming ...............................................................1
Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1
What Can You Do With XPress? ...................................................................................... 1
When to use XPress Authoring Features? ....................................................................... 1

Installation ................................................................................................................ 1
Installing Inspired Signage XPress for the First Time ...................................................... 1
Minimum Recommended PC Requirements .................................................................... 2
Installation Location ........................................................................................................ 3
XPress Removal ............................................................................................................... 3

Inspired Signage XPress UI ....................................................................................... 3
Learning XPress Authoring Features ............................................................................... 4

XPress Projects ......................................................................................................... 4
Creating a New Project ................................................................................................... 5

Browsing Panel ......................................................................................................... 6
Importing Multi-Media Files...................................................................................... 7
Importing Images ............................................................................................................ 7
Importing Video .............................................................................................................. 7
Importing PowerPoint Presentations............................................................................... 8
Importing Flash (SWF) Files ............................................................................................. 8

Creating and Editing SVG Files................................................................................. 8
Editing an Existing SVG Document ................................................................................. 9
Edit a Media Property ................................................................................................... 10

Interactive Editing .................................................................................................. 11
Interactively Editing SVG Files ...................................................................................... 11

Editing Media Elements Layout .............................................................................. 12
Editing Media Links ................................................................................................ 13
Editing Text ............................................................................................................ 13
Multi-Layered SVG Templates................................................................................. 14
Composing a Scene ....................................................................................................... 14
Customizing a Multi-Layer SVG Document.................................................................... 14
Example: Editing ........................................................................................................... 15
Playlist Template ........................................................................................................... 15
Composing a playlist SVG document ........................................................................................ 16

How to Customize a Playlist SVG Document ................................................................. 16

Special News Templates ......................................................................................... 18
Composing a Live News Document ............................................................................... 18
Customizing a News SVG Document............................................................................. 19
news.svg........................................................................................................................ 19

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news_ticker.svg ............................................................................................................. 19
news_crawler.svg .......................................................................................................... 19

Using Format Helpers ............................................................................................. 20
bouncing_text.svg ......................................................................................................... 20
fit_text.svg .................................................................................................................... 20
date_time.svg................................................................................................................ 20
switch.svg...................................................................................................................... 20

Scalable Content and Aspect Ratio of Your Display................................................ 21
Multimedia Effects .................................................................................................. 23
Adding Effects............................................................................................................... 23
Configuring Effects........................................................................................................ 23

Previewing .............................................................................................................. 24
Preview XPress Content ................................................................................................ 24

Publishing ............................................................................................................... 25
Using Quick Publish....................................................................................................... 25

Monitoring .............................................................................................................. 26
Manually Add Devices to XPress ................................................................................... 26
Check the Status of the Devices.................................................................................... 27
Open a Device............................................................................................................... 27

Scheduling .............................................................................................................. 27
Scheduling the Content Displayed by an IS-SPX Player ................................................ 27
Create a New Schedule ................................................................................................. 28
Open a Schedule ........................................................................................................... 28
Add Events To a Schedule............................................................................................. 29
Modify the Scheduling Properties of an Event .............................................................. 30

Define Default Events and Recurrences .................................................................. 30
Define a Default Animation ........................................................................................... 30
Define Recurring Events ................................................................................................ 31
Preview Scheduled Content .......................................................................................... 32

Data Polling Rates................................................................................................... 32

Remote Control ................................................................................................33
Overview ................................................................................................................ 33
Remote Control of Content .................................................................................... 33
When To Use Remote Control ....................................................................................... 33
How To Use Remote Control......................................................................................... 33
Triggering a Content Switch Over IP............................................................................. 35
Example: Testing ........................................................................................................... 36
Switching Content With the Serial Port......................................................................... 37
Switching Content With a USB HID Device ................................................................... 37
Switching Content From Another Device ...................................................................... 38

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Remote Control of Playback ................................................................................... 39
When To Use Remote Control of Playback.................................................................... 39
How To Use Remote Control of Playback...................................................................... 39
Interactive Pause/Resume Over TCP ............................................................................. 40
Interactive Pause/Resume Using HTTP GET .................................................................. 40
GET Embedded In an HTML Page ................................................................................. 41
Interactive Pause/Resume From a Device...................................................................... 41
Timed pause/seek/resume............................................................................................. 41
Getting Feedback On the Playback Progress ................................................................ 42
Knowing the Current Position With Extra Accuracy ...................................................... 42

Remote Triggers ..................................................................................................... 43
Triggering a Text or Image Overlay .............................................................................. 43
Triggering an Alternative Content ................................................................................ 43
Triggering of SVG Animations....................................................................................... 44

Synchronized Content ......................................................................................45
Overview ................................................................................................................ 45
Application Examples ............................................................................................. 45
Multiscreen Displays ............................................................................................... 45
Designing Basic Projects for Multiscreen Layouts ................................................... 45
Creating a Configurable Multiscreen Project .......................................................... 46
Creating a Multiscreen Project from Templates ............................................................ 48

Editing Multiscreen Content ................................................................................... 50
Configuring XPress and the IS-SPX Player .............................................................. 51
Create a Virtual Device.................................................................................................. 51
Configure the Multiscreen ID ........................................................................................ 51
Publish Your Project To Your Device ............................................................................. 52

Synchronization....................................................................................................... 52
Synchronizing Devices ................................................................................................... 52
Configure NTP Through the HTTP Interface.................................................................. 53

Advanced Configuration ......................................................................................... 54
Using an IS-SPX Player as an NTP Server ...................................................................... 54
Configuration ................................................................................................................ 54
Configuration of the IS-SPX Players Acting As Slaves............................................................... 54
Configuration of the IS-SPX Player Acting as Master................................................................ 55

Master/Server Architecture Examples ........................................................................... 55

Syntax for Multiscreen Synchronized Content ........................................................ 56
Canvas and Viewbox Concepts ..................................................................................... 56
Multiscreen Elements .................................................................................................... 56

Synchronization Elements ....................................................................................... 56
The iCalendar (.ics) File.................................................................................................. 56
The spx:begin Element.................................................................................................. 57

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Additional Syntax for Multiscreen Content ................................................................... 57
Extension of the SVG  Element ....................................................................... 57
Extension of JavaScript ................................................................................................. 58
Example: Screen Layout With Six Screens ..................................................................... 58
Example: Screen Layout With an Empty Border Between the Screens ......................... 58
Example: Screen Layout With “Spread Displays” .......................................................... 59
Example:  SVG Element .................................................................................. 59
Example: JavaScript ...................................................................................................... 60

Troubleshooting...................................................................................................... 60
NTP Synchronization ..................................................................................................... 60
Project Creation ............................................................................................................ 60
Internal Clock Calibration .............................................................................................. 60

Interactivity .......................................................................................................63
Overview ................................................................................................................ 63
Creating Interactive Content .................................................................................. 63
Interactivity Template Files..................................................................................... 63
Creating a Touch Screen Menu ............................................................................... 64
Creating Buttons ........................................................................................................... 64

Controlling Media ................................................................................................... 65
Testing the Project.................................................................................................. 66
Creating a Keyboard Menu..................................................................................... 67
Creating the Menu ........................................................................................................ 67
Configuring the menu ................................................................................................... 68
Controlling the Menu .................................................................................................... 70
Keystrokes..................................................................................................................... 71
Controlling Media ......................................................................................................... 72
Testing the Project ........................................................................................................ 73
Suggestions for Further Projects ................................................................................... 73

Playback Projects .................................................................................................... 73
Playback Template ........................................................................................................ 74
Controlling the Media ................................................................................................... 75
Playback Position .......................................................................................................... 75
Example: Media player.................................................................................................. 75

IS-SPX Player Configuration.................................................................................... 78
Calibration For Touch Screens ................................................................................ 79
Calibration of a Touchscreen Through the IS-SPX Player .............................................. 79
Manual Calibration Procedure ....................................................................................... 80
Troubleshooting ............................................................................................................ 80

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Serial Protocol File Editor .................................................................................81
Overview ................................................................................................................ 81
Adding a List Variable............................................................................................. 81
Adding a Range Variable ........................................................................................ 82
Exporting the Finished File ..................................................................................... 83

Shared Variables ...............................................................................................85
Overview ................................................................................................................ 85
Concepts Behind Shared Variables ......................................................................... 85
Javascript API ......................................................................................................... 85
Interface ........................................................................................................................ 85

Sample Code .......................................................................................................... 86
Setting the Variable ...................................................................................................... 86
Reading the Variable ..................................................................................................... 86

Network API ........................................................................................................... 86
Framing ......................................................................................................................... 86
List of Commands.......................................................................................................... 87
UPDATE .................................................................................................................................
EVENT ....................................................................................................................................
SUBSCRIBE.............................................................................................................................
UNSUBSCRIBE........................................................................................................................

87
87
87
87

Enabling the Network API ............................................................................................. 88
API Emulation................................................................................................................ 89

Appendix ..........................................................................................................91
Serial Control .......................................................................................................... 91
Serial Control From Within an Existing Inspired Signage Project .................................. 91
Gathering Display Serial Protocol Commands ............................................................... 91
Creating a Serial Protocol File .................................................................................................. 92
Creating the Power variable: .................................................................................................... 92

Uploading the Serial Protocol File................................................................................. 96
Creating New Templates............................................................................................... 97
Creating and updating a new calendar file.................................................................... 98
Serial Control From NetLinx ........................................................................................ 100

Adding Additional Templates to Inspired Signage XPress.................................... 100
Commonly Used Terms ......................................................................................... 101
FSM ............................................................................................................................. 101
SVG ............................................................................................................................. 101
URI............................................................................................................................... 101

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Inspired Signage XPress Programming

Inspired Signage XPress Programming
Introduction
The Inspired Signage XPress media content developer (referred to hereafter as “XPress”) allows users of the
IS-SPX-1000 and IS-SPX-1300 IS-SPX Players to manage media elements in a digital signage application. Its purpose is
to combine and customize media elements created in different applications in order to build digital signage content of
professional quality.

What Can You Do With XPress?
Combine an image background with text, videos, animations, and graphics.
Interactively customize imported media elements, such as controlling positions in the scene, font properties,

color, opacity and transparency.
Interactively add and edit text with sophisticated layout.
Change the relative order of each media element in the scene to create depth effects.
Apply animation effects on most media appearance properties.
Create ordered playlists of media elements of different nature.
Due to the size of the internal storage space in the IS-SPX Player, the IS-SPX Player
cannot display files larger than 2 gigabytes in size if these are loaded into the
device’s memory. However, larger files and projects may be displayed if these are
stored in an attached USB storage device, such as a portable hard drive or USB
thumb drive.

When to use XPress Authoring Features?
You are managing the digital signage of a restaurant. You already have the pictures of your special menus,

your logo and a few advertising video clips. XPress lets you import and position all of these media on the
same slide. You can then type your menu list, customizing fonts and colors. In a few clicks, you have created
or updated your menu of the day.
You are managing the digital signage of a pharmacy. You already have the pictures of your products and the
corresponding advertising clips. XPress lets you import and position these media on the same slide. It lets you
also create a playlist of all the products you want to highlight.
You are managing the digital signage of a hotel resort. You already have advertising videos and images of
your establishment and your services. You have created power point presentations welcoming special guests
or presenting the upcoming events organized in your resort, and you have high quality images of the major
city spots. XPress lets you import all of these individual media and order them into a single playlist. It is very
easy to further reinforce your graphical identity by adding your logo, your slogan, a background, or a
graphical layout on each slide of the playlist. In a few clicks and without special graphics skills, you can
author your personalized and updated content and you can schedule its distribution on the right display and at
the right time.
You are a graphical professional, and you are using a particular software solution to author new media files.
These can be exported as images, videos, vector graphics content, or animations. You will be able to import
them later in XPress, combine them with additional elements and customize the final canvas for a specific
application.

Installation
Installing Inspired Signage XPress for the First Time
The 30-day trial of Inspired Signage XPress is available from www.amx.com. A license for the full version of either
XPress Standard or XPress Pro may be purchased from AMX at any time before or after the expiration of the trial
version.
XPress Standard allows control of up to 10 IS-SPX Players at one time.
XPress Pro is intended to allow control of up to 100 IS-SPX Players at one time.
If you need control of more than 100 IS-SPX Players at one time, please contact AMX for more information.

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Minimum Recommended PC Requirements
IS-XPress will operate on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit) PCs that support of DirectX 9.0c
and SSE2 instructions. For best performance, AMX recommends a minimum of a Pentium D processor with separate
graphics card. IS-XPress may operate on older PC platforms, but less responsively. Also, please note that other software
applications can also degrade the responsiveness of IS-XPress.
Due to potential issues with license validation, Inspired Signage XPress should not
be installed on a virtual machine.

Both the Standard and the Pro Licenses only apply to one computer installation of the
software at a time. If the software is installed on a second computer, a new license
must be purchased for that computer.
After installing the software, open XPress. This opens the Software License Validation window (FIG. 1).

FIG. 1 Software License Validation window

A purchase of either an XPress Standard or a Pro license comes with the product activation key. Click the Enter Product
Key button to open the Online Product Activation window (FIG. 2). In the provided fields, enter the key to complete the
activation.

FIG. 2 Online Product Activation window

XPress must be restarted to complete the activation.
If you choose not to purchase a license at this time, click the Get 30-Day trial button, and restart the

application.
If you have installed a previous version of XPress with a product activation key, click the Re-activate button

to use the previously used key to activate this version. If the correct key is entered, the application will note
that the re-activation was successful.

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Installation Location
When installed, XPress is accessible from the Windows Start menu in the Programs/AMX Control Disc directory, and
this directory will be created if it does not already exist. Open the Inspired Signage directory (FIG. 3) to run XPress.

FIG. 3 AMX Control Disk directory with XPress

XPress Removal
If XPress needs to be removed from a computer for any reason, it must be removed via the Uninstall AMX products
utility. In particular, any upgrade to a new version of XPress requires that the previous version be uninstalled. In the
Programs/AMX Control Disc/Inspired Signage directory (FIG. 3), select Uninstall AMX products to remove the
application from the computer.
If you intend to update to the latest version (v2.2.6) of XPress, you need to upgrade
all IS-SPX Players in your network simultaneously with firmware v2.2.6. Content
created with XPress 2.2.6 may not be compatible with previous firmware versions. If
you upgrade devices containing an already existing installation, AMX recommends
testing your content first on a updated test device.

Inspired Signage XPress UI
The Inspired Signage XPress main interface (FIG. 4) presents a default animation of the AMX logo and the files
available in the Workspace area. The controls include time controls, test animation controls, and options to save and
revert changes.

Time Settings

Capture snapshot button
Enable interactive mode
New text layer
Switch edit mode on/off
Multiscreen layout

Animation controls

Edit Mode tools

Workspace scrollbar

Edit Mode
Workspace

Refresh
Workspace area
Quick Publish
Workspace tabs
Workspace folders

Switch View Mode

FIG. 4 XPress - Main interface

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XPress Main Interface
Time Settings:

The Time Settings controls set the date and time at which a project will run. Click the
Lock icon to lock the time to the internal clock in the IS-SPX Player.

Animation Controls:

The Animation Controls determine the direction in which an animation test will run.
Click the Play button to run a project and the Pause button to stop it: the Restart button
will return the project to its beginning in either Play or Pause mode.

Capture Snapshot button:

Click the Capture Snapshot button to save an image of the currently displayed
animation.

Enable Interactive Mode button: Turns the Interactive Mode on the main viewing pane on and off. This allows you to test
any interactive content on which you may be working.
New Text Layer button:

Adds a new text layer on the currently viewed project.

Switch Edit Mode icon:

Turns the Edit Mode on the main viewing pane on and off.

Multiscreen Layout button:

Displays multiple panes for projects that utilize layout displayed on multiple screens.

Edit Mode Tools buttons:

These buttons (Back, Save, Revert, Apply, and Close) are only functional when the
main viewing pane features an item being displayed in Edit Mode.

Workspace Scrollbar:

The Workspace Scrollbar displays the currently running project. Click the arrow to the
left of the scrollbar to return to the previously opened project and click the arrow to the
right of the scrollbar to show the last opened projects.

Refresh button:

This button refreshes all of the current content in the chosen project tab.

Quick Publish button:

This button allows the currently selected project to be published directly to a selected
IS-SPX Player.

Switch View Mode icon:

The dropdown menu to the right of the icon allows the content in the currently selected
project to be displayed as icons (Icons) or with details on the file content such as size,
type, and date last modified displayed (Details).

Workspace Tabs:

These tabs display the projects or other content already open. To open a new project,
click the folder icon to the right of the last open project.

Workspace Area:

This is the main area used to display content within a project or Template. Drag and
drop icons or details from the Workspace area onto the main viewing pane.

Learning XPress Authoring Features
The first step towards using XPress authoring features is to understand the concept of an XPress project. Read the section
devoted to this subject in the XPress Projects on page 4.
On these projects, you may experiment the main authoring functionalities such as:
Operations on files and collections
Creating new documents
Editing a document
Editing a multi-layer document
Editing a playlist
Managing the aspect ratio

XPress Projects
A Project is any collection of author and preview content intended to be published later on IS-SPX Players. A project is
a special folder that contains a master file (index.svg) and all the media elements (e.g. video clips, images, texts,
animations, scripts, etc.) that are composed together to create the XPress presentation. Note that not all media elements
need to be copied inside a project, and IS-SPX Player can be instructed to access remote locations and retrieve content on
the fly by using PHP scripts. This structure is very similar to a web page with an index.html file and all the media
elements that will appear when the user browses the web site.
By default, XPress regroups all the projects under My Projects, a folder automatically created on your hard drive while
installing XPress under \\My Documents\AMX\Xpress\My Projects\. The folder My Projects appears in the browsing
area when you select the default Workspace view.
When you open the My Projects folder (FIG. 5), you can access a number of actions by right-clicking the browsing area.
In particular you can:
Create new projects.
 Create new collections of projects so as to organize your projects in functional groups.

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FIG. 5 My Projects folder

The notion of a project as introduced by XPress has several advantages. In particular:
 The user can create projects offline, preview them and keep modifying them without affecting the actual
presentations displayed by an IS-SPX Player. When the project is finalized, it is easy to publish it on the
target device.
 The user can apply conventional backup systems on the My Projects folder to reduce the risk of losing data.
 A single project can be published on a single player or multiple players, which reduces the effort required to
manage the same content on different displays.
 When the network connection between the PC and the IS-SPX Players is slow or temporarily unavailable,
XPress offers an offline solution to edit the project content.
You can open multiple views and navigate inside each of them: each view will be displayed as a different tab.

Creating a New Project
To create a new project:

1. Right-click in the Workspace under the My Projects tab. This opens the New Project window (FIG. 6).

FIG. 6 New Project dialog - Name

2. Choose a name for the project and enter it in the Name field.
3. Enter a particular format from the Format dropdown menu (FIG. 7).

FIG. 7 New Project dialog - Format

The Multiscreen format uses the configurable.svg file from the Multiscreen template
folder. For more information on multiscreen formats, please refer to the Synchronized
Content section on page 45.

4. Select either IS-SPX-1000 (default) or IS-SPX-1300 as the target device for the project, from the Target dropdown
menu. This selection ensures that created or imported content for this project is within specification for the selected
Player (FIG. 8):

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FIG. 8 New Project dialog - Target

5. Click OK to create the new project folder.

Browsing Panel
The browsing panel provides a few basic file operations through a pop-up menu that appears when right-clicking your
mouse. The available operations change depending upon the area clicked:
If you right-click directly in the browsing panel of a specific view (make sure that no file or folder is currently selected),
the following functions appear whose actions apply directly to the specific view currently opened:
• New SVG file:

Create a new SVG multilayer file. Select the aspect ratio of the new document from 16:9, 4:3,
16:10, 9:16, 3:4, or 10:16.

• New Playlist:

Create a new Playlist file.

• New Schedule:

Create a new scheduling file (with extension .ics).

• New Collection:

Create a new folder.

• Upload...:

Upload a document from your hard drive. Alternatively, files may be uploaded by draggingand-dropping it from a Windows Explorer window.

If you right-click a specific file (or you right-click the browsing panel while a file has been selected), the following
functions appear whose actions apply directly to the selected file:
• Open:

Opens the file in the preview panel.

• Delete:

Deletes the file without confirmation (short cut: shift+delete)

• Rename:

Renames the file.

• Update metadata:

Updates the icon of the file according to its content.

• View source:

View source code if allowed on the specific file. If not this will be disabled

• New SVG:

Create a New SVG file

• New Playlist:

Create New Playlist

• New Schedule:

Create new Schedule

• Upload:

Upload a file to the project.

• Cut / Copy / Paste
• Up:

Up a folder level

• Refresh:

Refresh the current view.

If you right-click a Collection (Collections are equivalent to Folders in Microsoft Windows and can be used to arrange
your media in a hierarchical manner) in addition to the above functions, you can access the Set type menu. This menu
allows you to specify what type of collection you want (FIG. 9).

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FIG. 9 Set Type menu

Changing the type of a Collection modifies the behavior of XPress when opening the Collection.
The browsing panel allows the user to copy files and folders with intuitive drag and drop operations. For example
copying a file from its position to a new destination can be done as follows:

1. Open a browsing view where your original file is located. To locate the original file, you can navigate the directory
path from an existing view or directly type the URL in the address area of the browsing panel.

2. Open a new browsing view where your copy destination is located.
3. Drag and drop the file from the original position to the new view. Pressing shift during the copy will move the
element instead of copying it.
The same mechanism applies for collections and groups of files and collections.

Importing Multi-Media Files
XPress lets the user import many types of media files into an XPress project (or other folders) from a standard Microsoft
Windows Explorer window. The operation is as simple as a drag-and-drop from the Explorer window to the target
XPress browsing area. You can also use the special upload... command, accessible by right-clicking the browsing area of
XPress.
The advantage of importing media using the above procedures is that XPress can modify or transform the media
automatically so as to guarantee its content will be easily displayed easily displayed within the boundaries of the
IS-SPX-1000 or IS-SPX-1300 Player. Whenever possible, use the above procedures when building your XPress project.

Importing Images
Importing images into XPress will ensure that they can be properly displayed by the IS-SPX Player.
Images too large will be resized.
Images in formats not supported by the IS-SPX Player (such as .bmp) will automatically be converted to PNG
images. If an image called example.bmp is uploaded, it will be renamed to example.bmp.png.

Importing Video
Video can be imported into XPress. During the import process, XPress will check that the imported video can be played
by the IS-SPX-1000 or IS-SPX-1300 Player. Otherwise, XPress will not import the video, and a message will be
displayed to inform the user. In this case, check that the CODEC used to encode your video are supported by the IS-SPX
Player, and that the video resolution is within the IS-SPX Player specification.
Please see the IS-SPX-1000 & IS-SPX-1300 Operation Reference Guide for
information on encoding videos.
Once the video has been imported, you can preview it directly using XPress, by double-clicking on the video. By default,
the preview of the video corresponds to the first frame of the imported video. You can change the preview of the video in
the browsing area by using the Capture Snapshot button (see FIG. 4 on page 3).

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Importing PowerPoint Presentations
While the IS-SPX Player doesn't support direct display of PowerPoint presentations (PPT). it does provide import
functionality for a PPT, so that when a PPT is imported into an XPress project, it is immediately converted to video
(without audio).
Microsoft Office 2010 is not used by the import mechanism. If you have pre-installed
Microsoft Office 2010 then you must manually install PowerPoint viewer 2007.
When a PPT file is imported to XPress, the conversion status is displayed in an new dialog. Depending on your
presentation, this conversion can take up to the duration of the presentation. At the end of the conversion the resulting
video will contain all PPT slides with all animations.
PPT files are converted using a ppt2svg.exe program.This conversion removes the
audio.
For the conversion to work properly, the PPT file should contain automatic timings to control slide transitions.
The speed and the quality of the importing process can be modified using the Settings menu. The import quality lets you
choose between the following:
720p: HD-ready quality at 15 fps. Use this settings when converting a presentation with small amount of
animations.
High: SD resolution at 30 fps. This mode provides improved quality for small size text. If your presentation
includes fonts smaller than 24 pt and many animations, it is recommended to use the high quality mode.
Fastest: SD resolution (480p at 30fps for either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4)

Importing Flash (SWF) Files
The IS-SPX Player doesn't support the direct display of flash files (SWF). it does provides import functionality for SWF
files. When an SWF is imported into an XPress project, it is directly converted to video.
You need to have the Flash 9 or 10 ActiveX control installed on your PC for this
conversion to work. If this is not the case, please install it from Adobe’s web site.

Creating and Editing SVG Files
The simplest way to create an SVG document is to right-click the browsing panel and select the action New SVG file with
the desired aspect ratio. XPress creates a new SVG multilayer document new.svg in the current browsing view with the
selected aspect ratio (FIG. 10).

FIG. 10 Creating a new SVG file

Having installed XPress, you can also benefit from a set of pre-defined SVG documents called templates. You can find
these templates under the collection My Templates in the default Workspace view. Provided templates include:
Multilayer templates with different aspect ratios
Text templates
Playlists templates
Animated Clocks (analog and digital) templates
Templates for displaying RSS data from a web site

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Other templates will be provided in future releases of XPress. For more information, please refer to the Adding
Additional Templates to Inspired Signage XPress on page 100.
To create a new SVG document based on one of these templates, simply copy (or drag and drop) the one you have
selected from the My Templates collection to your target project.

Editing an Existing SVG Document
The first step required to edit an SVG document is to open it: either right-click the document and select Open, or simply
double-click the file.
If possible, XPress will start previewing the content of the document in the Preview panel, and the Editing panel will
change according to the content of the document you have open. In fact, XPress can recognize specific tags and activate
appropriate editing interfaces to help the user customize the document without any knowledge of SVG syntax.
If the document you have opened was not designed to activate special editing interfaces, then the editing panel
will show only the XML Tree and WebDAV tabs. You can still edit the document content using the XML Tree
tab interface, but you need to have an understanding of XML structure and SVG syntax.
If the document you have opened was designed to activate special editing interfaces then an additional
Properties tab will appear. This tab gives access to a number of parameters that can be customized directly
from the Properties tab. Changing these parameters will directly modify the XML Tree structure of the
document, but you do not need to know SVG syntax to do it.
Each template document can expose one or multiple parameters. Parameters can be of the following types:
Value: The user can type some values to modify the layout of the document. Generally those are durations,
sizes or number of items to display.
Text: Modify some text shown on the screen. The user can also select the fonts and size of the text.
Color: Choose the color of an element, like the background for instance.
Choice: Choose between a set of values for the property.
Edit Media: Select a media. The media can be modified by dragging any media from the browsing panel.
Additionally, properties such as duration, number of repetitions of the media, and URL can be edited by
pressing the “...” button at the bottom right of the property.
Edit Text: Edit a text box. Additionally the user can add a background or a border.
Groups: Any of the above properties can be grouped. Groups might be opened or closed by default. Pressing
on the arrow, will close or open the group depending on its current state.

FIG. 11 Template Document Parameters

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Edit a Media Property
The Media property allows you to control the display properties of the media linked to the current document. This
property is used by many templates, i.e. multi-layers and playlists. The media property shows the following information
to the user:
The media URL. (e.g. video.avi or the absolute URL) If the media is located in the same project as the
document, the URL is relative.
The media type. (e.g. image/spectral) Indicate the type of media as detected by XPress.
The total playing time of the media. A looping symbol is added to the bottom right of the column if the media
loops at least once.
The starting time. A timer clock with the delay value is displayed if the media starting time is different than
zero.
A star. This indicates that multimedia effects are applied to this media.
The properties of the media can be edited using the “...” at the bottom right of the media property. This will open the
media description dialog (FIG. 12).

FIG. 12 Media Description window

The media description dialog lets you change:
• URI:

The URL of the media. You can type a relative URL (for addressing those media inside your project) or
an absolute URL for those media located in remote servers. (For more information on the difference
between a URI and a URL, please refer to Commonly Used Terms on page 101.)

• Begin:

The begin time of the media relative to the beginning (the opening) of the document. By default all
media begin as soon as the master document is opened.

• Duration: The duration of the media. You can choose either to enter an absolute duration (enter a time in the
following form hours:minutes:seconds) or to select Media to force the player to use the duration of
the media itself, or to select indefinite to force the media to play for an indefinite period of time. If
XPress is able to compute the duration of the media, it will pre-set the absolute duration.
Note: If you specify an indefinite duration for your media, it will NOT repeat. If you want your media to
repeat forever, you should check Repeat with a Count of 0 and an indefinite maximum duration. If both
a Count and a Max duration are specified, the media will repeat until the minimum of the two is
reached.
• Opacity:

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The opacity of the media. A value equal to 1, means that the media is opaque. A value equal to 0,
means that the media is completely transparent.

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By default the following parameters are not shown. To make them visible, expand the More... item.
• Lock mouse editing:

When selected the interactive editing for this media is disabled.

• Mime type:

The media type. This should be detected correctly by XPress and should not need to be
modified.

• Preserve aspect ratio
check box:

Controls if the aspect ratio of the media should be preserved when included into the
master document.

• Tag for accounting:

When checked, the opening and closing time of this media will be logged in the
accounting log files.

• Initial visibility:

When checked, the media will be visible (but not animated) before the beginning of the
animation.

• Freeze last frame:

When checked, the media will be visible (but frozen) after the end of the animation.

• Repeat:

If you want your media to be displayed more than once, select this check box. You can
then specify:
Count: The number of time the media should be repeated or
Max dur: The duration of the repetition in seconds.

• Width and Height:

Lets you control the size of the media.

Interactive Editing
The preview panel has two main functionalities:
 Preview IS-SPX content and multi media content. The preview panel emulates in software the display
capabilities of the IS-SPX Player. Moreover it offers the user the possibility to interactively pause and seek
the content using the timeline at the top of the preview panel itself.
 Interactively edit XPress content. XPress content is described with the SVG language (see W3C
specification). SVG language follows the XML document structure and thus can be easily edited by hand or
with other software applications. To simplify the editing task: XPress offers an intuitive graphical user
interface directly through the Preview panel. The user can interact with media elements in the scene by
changing their style properties, positions, sizes, rotations, etc... and XPress automatically changes the
corresponding SVG document to reflect the changes. This is done in real time, while the XPress content is
previewed resulting in an intuitive and powerful SVG editing console.

Interactively Editing SVG Files
Some SVG files have editable properties. This is the case with all the templates (found under My Templates), and new
documents created by XPress.
Having editable properties means that the SVG document can be interactively customized using XPress. When opened
with XPress, these special SVG files will instruct the GUI to open a property Tab in the editing panel. The property tab
includes all the fields that have been defined as interactively editable by the author of the SVG document. These fields
may be text, media elements or parameters.

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Editing Media Elements Layout
Media elements can be declared as transformable in SVG templates. If a media is transformable, then its layout can be
edited directly in the preview area. Such elements appear in the preview panel highlighted by a black and yellow border.
Simply move your mouse cursor on a media element to check if it can be transformed.

FIG. 13 Demonstration of Media Elements

When you select a media element by clicking it, four arrows appear on the corners of the selected media. You may now
do the following interactive operations on this media directly with your mouse:
 Move: Click on the element to move it using the mouse.
 Zoom: Click on one of the arrows to modify the dimension of the element using the mouse.
 Resize: Click on one of the arrows and press CTRL to change the size of the element.
 Rotate: Click once on the element, the arrows will be modified. Click on the arrow on the corner to rotate the
element
 Skew: Click once on the element, the arrows will be modified. Click on the top, or side arrows to skew the
element
The difference between the zoom and the resize action depends on the elements.
 Text area: Zoom will change the size of the text. Resize will modify the text area, thus enabling to write more
text.
 Media (image, video, animation): Zoom will change the size of the media. Resize will change the size of the
media area, thus the aspect ratio of the media will not be modified.
 Rectangles: Zoom will change the size of rectangle including the border. Resize will change the size of the
rectangle, but not the border.
The image below shows an example of the effect of the Zoom and Resize operation on the different elements.

FIG. 14 Effects of Zoom and Resize on Media Elements

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The right-click on an element opens a popup menu with the following shortcuts:
 Full Screen: Zooms the element so that it occupies the entire document.
 Rotate Right: Rotates the element by 90 degree clockwise.
 Rotate Left: Rotates the element by 90 degree counter-clockwise.
 Flip Vertical: Flips the element upside-down.
 Flip Horizontal: Flips the element left-right.
 Reset Transform: Removes all zoom, rotation and skew on the element.
The other options are related to multilayer documents and are described in more detail in the Multi-Layered SVG
Templates on page 14 and the Multimedia Effects on page 23.

Editing Media Links
Media links can be declared as editable in SVG templates. When a media from the browsing panel is dragged to the
preview panel, editable media link are highlighted in green and a magnet icon is shown on top of the media. When the
media is moved on top of an editable link, the highlight is changed to red, and the magnet logo is modified. Dropping a
file from the browsing area of such an element will modify the content currently displayed by the player (FIG. 15).

FIG. 15 Editing Media links

On some documents, such as the multilayer template, dropping a file, with the CTRL key pressed, will not replace the
media. This will instead create a new media in the current documents. This action is symbolized by a plus on the mouse
cursor.

Editing Text
Text might also be declared as editable. In this case, it is possible to edit its content directly by double clicking its
element in the preview panel: a cursor will appear. The menu on the top of the preview panel will let you modify the font
style, color and size (FIG. 16).

FIG. 16 Editing Text Elements

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Multi-Layered SVG Templates
By default, each time you create a new SVG document by right-clicking the browsing panel, selecting New SVG, and
choosing your aspect ratio, XPress creates a new file based on the multi-layer SVG template. The Multi-layer SVG
template simplifies the task of composing a scene using XPress. With this template, you can interactively add, position,
scale, skew and rotate several media elements such as video clips, images, texts and animations on the same scene.

FIG. 17 Modifying the Document Parameters

Composing a Scene
1. Right-click in the main viewing pane and select New SVG to create a new_[AR].svg file. You can rename it if you
wish. Double-click on the file to open it with XPress.

2. Add new media, or text to your scene, using one of the following options:
Drag and drop the media into the Layers tab of the Editing panel
Drag and drop the media into the Preview panel. If the cursor doesn't show the + sign, press the CTRL key

while dropping the media.
Press the icon on top of the Preview panel to create a new text layer.

3. Modify the media:
Modify the depth position moving the media up or down in the list of media appearing in the Layers tab (Use

keyboard shortcuts: Crtl-up/Ctrl-down).
Use the Preview panel to interactively position, scale, skew and rotate the new media (for more information,

please refer to the Interactive Editing on page 11.)
Add entry and exit effects to your media.

4. Save your document.
Customizing a Multi-Layer SVG Document
For each new multi-layer SVG document, you can configure the following properties:
Title: an informative title for the document
Description: an informative description of the document
Duration: the duration of the document. If set to indefinite the document will not loop. If set to media, the
duration of the document will be computed automatically and the document will loop at the end of the
playing time. It is also possible to set an explicit duration to a given number of seconds.
Document: group for the document properties.
Canvas Size: the size of the document in the following syntax:
origin x, origin y, width, height.
The ratio between the width (3rd number) and the height (4th number) determines the aspect ratio of the
document.
The first 2 numbers describe the origin of the document and should be left at 0.
New Layer: group for the default properties of all new layers
Default Width: the width of a new layer. By default, the new layer occupies the whole document and thus
this has the same width of the Canvas.
Default Height: the height of a new layer. By default, the new layer occupies the whole document and thus
this has the same height of the Canvas.

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Default Position: position of the top-left corner of the new layer. By default the new layer is located at the

top-left of the screen (0,0).
Default Aspect Ratio: you can choose if you want a new layer to keep its aspect ratio (xMidYMid) or to be

scaled (none) when inserted into the document.
You can change the above parameters at any time. In particular if you want to add
new media to your document with different sizes and default positions, you can
modify the document parameters accordingly for each new media that you add.
In addition to the Properties tab, the multi-layer document activates a Layers tab in the editing panel.
The Layers tab allows you to add or remove layers of media into your document. The following operations are possible:
Add a new media layer by dragging-and-dropping any media to the Layers tab of the Editing panel. The new
media will be linked automatically to your document.
Add a new text layer using the icon in the Preview panel, or using the pop-up menu.
Delete an existing layer (using the pop-up menu or the delete key)
Change the order of the layer by using keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+up/Ctrl+down), or by manually dragging
and dropping the list).
Position, scale, skew and rotate the new media by interacting with it in the Preview panel.
Each layer position and size can be edited on the Preview panel as described in the Interactive Editing on page 11.
Multimedia effects can be added to any media as described in the Multimedia Effects on page 23.

Example: Editing
A typical document will be composed of a background image (the first layer), and a combination of media to create the
complete scene.

FIG. 18 Layers in a sample document

For instance the following example is composed of 4 layers:
A background image.
A video on the left.
Some text on the bottom.
Background music. (This layer is not visible, as it contains only audio).

Playlist Template
The user can create a scene using the multi-layer SVG document. To compose an entire presentation, it is necessary to
display one scene after another, possibly over several scenes, using a playlist. The simplest way to create a new playlist is
by right-clicking the browsing panel and selecting New Playlist.
The playlist template allows you to create a temporal sequence of media files: videos, images, texts, multi-layer
documents, etc. Each media will be played one after the other in the order determined by the user.

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Composing a playlist SVG document

1. Right-click in the browsing area and select New Playlist to create a new_playlist.svg file. You can rename it
whatever you wish.

2. Open the newly created SVG file. In addition to the XML Tree and WebDAV tabs, the editing panel will open the
Properties and the Playlist tabs.

3. In the Properties tab, you can customize some of settings of the playlist, such as the maximum slide duration, the
document size, and the transition between slides.

4. In the Playlist tab, you see the default elements of the playlist. These elements contain some instructions on how to
use the SVG document with XPress that you can directly read in the Preview panel.

5. To compose your playlist, simply drag and drop single files or groups of files (any media file: video, images, SVG,
etc.) from the browsing area into the Playlist tab. The files will be listed in the Playlist tab.

6. Customize your playlist by changing the order of the files in the Playlist tab and by changing the duration of
individual media using the “...” icon. Apply your changes to preview them in the Preview area.

7. Save the final playlist.
How to Customize a Playlist SVG Document
The playlists created using the New Playlist menu (or using the My Templates/new_playlist.svg file) allow the user to
select a set of predefined transitions between the slides. This playlist template instructs XPress to expose the following
parameters in the Properties tab (FIG. 19):

FIG. 19 Properties Tab
• Background
Fill:

Specifies the color of the background. Can be set to 'none' to indicate a transparent
background.

• Max Slide
Duration:

Specifies the maximum duration of one slide (media). If a media is longer than this duration, it
will be truncated. This option is very useful for playlist of images, as images have no duration.

• Default Slide
Duration:

Specifies the default duration of one slide (media) if the media doesn't have a duration (like
images).

• Enable Looping: Specifies whether the playlist should loop or not when reaching the last media file from the list.
• Inter Slide
Duration:

Specifies the interval between the display of two media files. If set to a value different than zero,
the background will be shown during this amount of time at the end of every media.

• Default
Transition:

Groups the transition settings of the playlist

• Type:

Type of transition between the slides. The following transitions can be selected:
• none: No transition between each media. This is equivalent to a scene cut.
• fade: The new slide fades in while the old slide fades out.
• fly: The new slide flies in, while the old slide flies out, according to the direction set by the
user.
• wipe: The new slide is wiped on top of the old slide, according to the direction set by the
user.
• random: Select a different random transition for each slide.

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• Direction:

For the fly and wipe transition, select the direction of the effect.

• Duration:

The duration of the transition effect.

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In addition to the Properties tab, playlist SVG documents instruct XPress to open a Playlist tab in the editing panel. This
tab lets you compose the playlist and the order in which media elements will be played.
The following interactions are possible from the Playlist tab:
Add a new media. You may use different ways to add a new media:
Drag-and-drop any media to the Playlist tab of editing panel. If the new media is dropped on top of an
existing media, it will replace it. Otherwise it will be inserted where it was dropped.
Click on the “...” at the bottom right of the table. This will open the Media dialog, and allows you to type the
URL of your media. This is useful if you want to add media from remote sites.
Use the pop-up menu and choose Insert. This will insert an empty media at the selected position. The empty
media can then be edited using the “...” at the bottom right of the line.
Delete an existing media. Use the pop-up menu or the Delete key.
Change the order of the media. Using the pop-up menu, or using the ctrl+up/down keys.
It is not only possible to create a playlist of media files, but also a playlist of text boxes
if needed. Media and text boxes can also be used in the same playlist.
It is possible to control the duration of each media and the number of times it will be repeated (if needed). The Playlist
tables shows for each media:
The media URL.
The media type.
The total playing time of the media. A looping symbol is added to the bottom right of the column if the media
will loop at least once (FIG. 20).

FIG. 20 Playlist Tab

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Special News Templates
To simplify the creation of dynamic content, XPress is provided with a set of active templates that can be customized by
the user and that perform specific actions. The active templates use JavaScript for dynamic creation of SVG documents
with specific graphical layouts and up-to-date content.
In this section, we discuss a number of active templates we have developed to retrieve RSS content. We call these
templates news templates.
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and
podcasts. RSS documents are XML documents with specific structures and tags which can be retrieved from the Internet
or other network locations.
The news templates instruct the IS-SPX Player to extract from remote RSS files the “content” and apply a customizable
graphical layout which may include the text positions in the scene, the font properties, the background image and the
animation of each element of the scene.

The same template can also use XML, Text, CSV or iCalendar files as data source.
A few examples of templates are suggested that display the text on the screen according to predefined graphical layouts.
All the templates can be found under the My Templates/ folder after XPress installation. The templates are split into two
categories: The Layout Templates and the Format Helpers.
Layout Templates
Template Name

Description

news.svg

Display news from RSS, XML, Text, CSV or iCalendar in a formatted manner.
Supports single or multiple items per page.

news_ticker.svg

Display news text in a scrolling banner (left/right or top/bottom).

news_crawler.svg

Display formatted news using scrolling (left/right or top/bottom). Can be used to display logo/
media in a ticker or multi-line tickers.

Format Helpers
Helper Name

Description

bouncing_text.svg

Text too large to be displayed will 'bounce' left to right or top to bottom

fit_text.svg

Text size will adapt to the area available.

date_time.svg

Display a date/time in a formatted manner.

switch.svg

Display different media depending on the item content.

Composing a Live News Document
To compose a live news document:

1. Copy the news template SVG file from My Templates/News into your project.
2. Open a new exploring tab of your current project in the browsing panel.
3. Open an additional exploring tab located in My Templates/News.
4. Drag and drop the template file you have chosen from the news tab into your current project tab.
5. Open the newly created SVG file. Select your news source using the RSS Feed Source entry. Type the URL of the
RSS news to use an external news feed.

6. Customize the display of your news source:
Press the Edit button.
Move or resize the text/media box in the preview panel as desired.
Edit the text box content. The [SPX][title] and [SPX][description] will be replaced by the content of the RSS

news.
Add news text or media boxes using the Layer tab.

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7. Customize the settings of your news source using the Properties tab. The Feed Type lets you select the type of your
input data. The Feed Update Policy lets you control when the feeds should be updated. Additional settings can be
found depending on the templates.

8. Save the final document.
Customizing a News SVG Document
All the templates SVG files provided in My Templates/News let you customize their layout using a different set of
parameters:

news.svg
This template should be used when you want to display one or more news feeds on a single page. Each new feeds is
shown one after the other, like a slide show. The following features can be configured:
Supports entry and exit effects to add movement to the displayed news feed.
Supports one or multiple news items per page.
You can control:
Item Duration: The duration of each pages.
Document: The size of the document.
Multiple Items Per Page: The number of items per page and the location of each new item. You can also add
an offset between the display of the news feeds on the same page.

news_ticker.svg
This template should be used when you want to display a scrolling text coming from an external source. The size of the
scrolling text will automatically adapt to the size of the document. The following features can be configured:
Layout: Layout of the text. Use [SPX][title] and [SPX][description] to display respectively the title and the
description.
Direction: Support horizontal and vertical scrolling.
Crawling speed: Crawling speed expressed as a percentage of the height of the characters.
Spacing: Spacing between two news items.
Background: Background color and opacity.
Advanced: Number of lines of text shown simultaneously (in case of vertical scrolling).
Baseline: Vertical position of the characters. Increase this value if no characters are shown.

news_crawler.svg
This template should be used when you want to display scrolling text and a logo, or when you want to have more control
over the layout of the displayed news. This template combines the features of the news.svg and the news_ticker.svg
templates.

Effects cannot be used in this template.

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Using Format Helpers
The Format Helpers are a set of files which can be added as a multimedia layer in the news.svg and news_crawler.svg
file to simplify the construction of the layout.
To use the bouncing text or the fit text helper:

1. Drag and drop it on your document like any multimedia file.
2. Open it
3. Change the Text to [SPX][title] or [SPX][description] to display respectively the title or the description of your
news.

4. Press Apply or Save to see the result.

FIG. 21 Adding a Format Helper

bouncing_text.svg
If the text is too large to be displayed in the text box area, then the text will bounce from left to right (or top to bottom,
depending on the configuration). When using top to bottom bouncing, you can configure the number of displayed lines.

fit_text.svg
The text size will be automatically adapted to the text box area, ensuring that all the text is always displayed.

date_time.svg
This helper can be used to display any date or time in a formatted manner. You can configure the 'source' for the date
using the Date source entry (pubDate for the publication date of the RSS news for instance). The helper uses the PHP
syntax for controlling the date format. You can also use any language for printing the date by filling up the entry under
the Names group. By default, English, French, Spanish, Italian and German examples are provided in the template.

switch.svg
This helper lets you configure different media to be displayed depending on the value of a news item. This can be used to
display an up/down arrow for stock quotes for instance.

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Scalable Content and Aspect Ratio of Your Display
The IS-SPX Player natively supports the SVG graphic language. This language is scalable: that means that the graphics
are rendered on the fly according to the resolution supported by the display. This guarantees a perfect rendering for texts
and graphics, regardless of the resolution of the display. (Note that the scalable property does not apply on images or
video content encoded with other formats and included in a SVG document.)
When authoring scalable content, the user should pay attention to the aspect ratio (the ratio between the horizontal and
vertical size) of the display. To avoid aspect ratio distortions or black borders, the user should author the content with the
same aspect ratio as the target display.
Digital displays may offer different aspect ratios: the most common are 4:3 and 16:9. The first are those typically seen in
computer monitors: the ratio between the width and height is in 4:3 proportions. The second is common in recent TV sets
where the horizontal size is almost the double of the vertical one (landscape).
To simplify the authoring with the right aspect ratio, XPress comes with two sets of templates: one created for 4:3 aspect
ratios and one for 16:9. We have also created intermediate aspect ratios such as 16:10 which are less common. When
possible choose the aspect ratio corresponding to your displays.
Example of 16:9 content:

FIG. 22 Example of 16:9 content

Example of 4:3 content:

FIG. 23 Example of 4:3 content

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It may happen that the same content will be displayed on monitors with different aspect ratios. In this case the following
will happen:
If you use 16:9 templates, the content will be displayed using black borders on the top and bottom when
shown on a 4:3 screen.

FIG. 24 16:9 templates as shows on a 4:3 screen
If you use 4:3 templates, the content will be displayed using black borders on the left and right when shown

on a 16:9 screen.

FIG. 25 4:3 templates as shown on a 16:9 screen
If you use “fit” templates, the content will be scaled to fit the whole screen, regardless of its aspect ratio. This

will introduce distortions that may be noticed according to the nature of the content.
Example of content with a real aspect ratio of 16:9 when fitted to a 4:3 display:

FIG. 26 Real Aspect 16:9 content fitted to a 4:3 display

Example of content with a real aspect ratio of 4:3 when fitted to a 16:9 display

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FIG. 27 Real Aspect 4:3 content fitted to a 4:3 display

Note that in XPress, you may change the aspect ratio of the preview panel by sliding its horizontal and vertical
dimensions. When previewing SVG content, XPress will do exactly as the IS-SPX Player will do on real displays with
the same aspect ratios.

Multimedia Effects
Adding Effects
The XPress software installation comes with a number of default media transition effects files. These may be found in
the Effects folder under My Templates. These effects files can be applied to media elements such as images, video or
animations. Effects will animate how the media will appear in the scene (entry effects) and eventually how it will
disappear (exit effects). XPress offers an intuitive user interface to apply effects to media elements:
 Open a document that contains a media element such as an image. The preview panel will display the entire
scene.
 Drag and drop one of the effects files directly into the preview panel on the media element you want to
animate.
In the case of overlap in the media you want to animate, leading to difficulty in dragging-and-dropping media onto the
Preview pane, then drop the effect file directly on the media property in the Editing panel.
Once an effect has been added to a media, it can be configured using the Media Editing dialog. The editing panel shows
a star icon next to the “…” of the media property to indicate that effects have been added to the media.
To remove the effect, use the popup menu on the media element, and select Remove Effect ….
Two kinds of effects are available:
 Entry effects: these effects are triggered by the beginning of the multimedia file. These are also know as
input or entry effects.
 Exit effects: these effects are triggered by the end of the multimedia file. These are also know as output or
exit effects.
These transition effects are based on SVG syntax and may be customized. This makes it easy to design a new set of
effects using the SVG animation syntax.

Configuring Effects
Once effects have been added to a media file, the Media Description dialog will appear (FIG. 28).

FIG. 28 Media Description dialog

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The Effect list allows you to remove or to customize effects. It is possible to modify the following parameters:
Trigger: Select if the effect starts at the beginning or at the end of the media file. This parameter is
automatically set by XPress when dropping an effect file unto a media element.
Offset: The offset between the beginning/end of the media and the beginning of the effect. For exit effects,
the offset is generally equal to the negative value of the effect duration, so that the effect finishes with the
media.
Dur: The duration of the effect. This parameter let the user control the speed of the effect.
Color: Some effects have a configurable color, which can be controlled using this parameter.
Selecting an effect and pressing the trashcan icon will remove the effect.

Previewing
From the My Projects folder, you can access all the projects that are currently defined. To explore and preview a specific
XPress project, simply double click its icon. This will open a new view in the browsing area of XPress. The name of the
view is the name of the project.
You can preview the selected XPress project directly with XPress by opening the index.svg file. The content will start
playing in the Preview area of XPress. You can pause the presentation at any time and interactively navigate with a time
ladder.
In addition to the index.svg file, other folders may be found that contain media content, scripts, etc... The index file is
used to concatenate all these media elements and to schedule when they will be played. You can also individually open
the other media elements. The preview and editing panel will change according to the document you have opened.
In this example, the project Demo720p has been opened in the browsing panel and XPress has created a new view tab:
Demo720p (FIG. 29).

FIG. 29 Demo720p Folder

Preview XPress Content
The XPress content previewed in XPress will look exactly the same as it will be played on the IS-SPX Player. You can
use the preview feature of XPress to check the look of your project before it is played on the device.
There is however one difference between images previewed through XPress and those previewed through the IS-SPX
Player. Backgrounds that are transparent will be represented by a checkerboard on XPress (FIG. 30), whereas they will
be displayed as black on the IS-SPX Player (FIG. 31).

FIG. 30 Transparent background as shown in XPress

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FIG. 31 Transparent background as shown on the IS-SPX Player

Publishing
To publish a project manually to a device, do the following:

1. Open My Devices in a first tab. Identify the IS-SPX Player on which you want to publish. For more information,
please refer to the Monitoring on page 26.

2. Open My Projects in a second tab.
3. Drag and drop the project you want to copy to the device you want to update.
The above procedure will copy the entire project into the targeted IS-SPX Player. All the modified files will be updated
with the new version, all the new files will be added, and all the files already on the IS-SPX Player but no longer in the
project will be deleted.

FIG. 32 Copying the project into the IS-SPX Player

The publishing might take some time, depending on the size of your project and the
speed of the network. Once the project has been published, do not unplug the device
without a proper shutdown, or part of the content might not be properly saved on the
IS-SPX Player. For safe shutdown of the device, use the http configuration interface.

Using Quick Publish
Once a project has been published manually to the device, it can be published again using the Quick Publish button. The
Quick Publish button is located on the address bar (FIG. 33) and is activated whenever a project is open.

FIG. 33 The Quick Publish button on the address bar

To use Quick Publish:

1. Open your project.
2. Press the Quick Publish button.
3. All modifications done on your project will be copied onto the IS-SPX Player.

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Monitoring
XPress keeps a list of the devices available in the network using the My Devices folder in the workspace view.
The My Device view allows you to:
Monitor the devices connected to your network.
Automatically scan devices connected to your network.
Provide details on the status of each device.
Open a device to browse its content.
Manually add a device for monitoring.
It is possible to arrange your devices into folders (collections) in order to group devices according to your criteria. It is
also possible to rename devices to identify them in a more human readable manner. By default, XPress used the serial
number as the name of all devices.

FIG. 34 My Devices tab

Manually Add Devices to XPress
To manually add a device to the My Devices tab, do the following:

1. Open the My Devices tab.
2. Right click on the Workspace panel and select New Device...

FIG. 35 New Device dialog

3. The New Device dialog (FIG. 35) appears and asks you to enter a number of details concerning the new device you
wish to add:
Serial Number: If you do not have the serial number of the player you want to add, you can enter here another
name here. However, the player you add will not be automatically recognized by the Discover devices command as
being already defined. You may have two device icons pointing to the same player.
IP address: Enter the IP address (or the host name) of the device you want to add. This information is necessary to
add the device.
Type: The Type of the device. Currently, only IS-SPX Players are supported by XPress.

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Security: You can also directly add user names and passwords for protected devices. If you do not enter a password
in this dialog, XPress will ask you to authenticate yourself when trying to publish content to a protected device.

4. The new device is added to the current folder.
5. Once added, you may change the name of the new device from the browsing panel at any time.
Check the Status of the Devices
XPress checks the status of the devices available in My Devices each time the refresh button is pressed. If the content
server is reachable, it displays a green check on top of the device icon. If the content server cannot be reached, a red cross
is displayed instead.

FIG. 36 Device availability

This check mechanism does not inform you on the status of the player. It only states whether or not the player can be
reached. To get more feedback about an IS-SPX Player, you should use the IS-SPX Player Web-Based Configuration
Page navigation bar section in the IS-SPX-1000 & IS-SPX-1300 Operation Reference Guide, available at
www.amx.com.
Right-click on an IS-SPX Player and select the Manage... command from the pop-up menu. This will directly open your
preferred web browser on the HTTP server of the selected device.
For the proper management of the status of multiple devices, a SNMP client should be used. The IS-SPX Player is given
a product OID of 1.3.6.1.4.1.8942.1.1

Open a Device
To view the content server of a device (access to all the files and folders that have been published on the device), doubleclick on a device. This will open the content server in the browsing panel and the property page of the device in the
editing panel.
The property view shows you information about your device. Do not modify this information, as this might prevent
XPress from communicating properly with the device.
By pressing on the Preview icon (the camera) it is possible to get a snapshot of what is currently being displayed by the
device. The preview is automatically updated every 30 seconds.
You can use the content server to upload content to the device. You can also directly edit the content on the device using
XPress. However, it is recommended to use projects to edit the content and then upload the project to the device.

Scheduling
XPress offers an intuitive interface that allows the user to associate to any type of XPress content a schedule in the
iCalendar format. Using this feature, the user can plan in advance when the content shall be displayed on a specific ISSPX Player.
The scheduling interface implemented by XPress is very similar to the one implemented by electronic agendas such as
that in Microsoft Outlook: each event you add on the agenda (like when you add a meeting in your Outlook) is associated
to a starting date/time and a duration (or an end date/time). In addition, it is possible to associate to an event recurring
rules so as to schedule a media to be displayed twice per week on Monday and Friday between 9:00AM and 10:00AM.
Once the planning of the day, week, month or year is finalized, XPress exports the results into a standard iCalendar file.
This schedule file has the extension .ics and can be used as any other media to compose your content. The flexibility
obtained with such an approach allows the user to schedule full screen content, but also specific elements in the scene
(such as different backgrounds, logos, source of information, etc.)

Scheduling the Content Displayed by an IS-SPX Player
When you have created or imported a XPress project (for more information, please refer to the XPress Projects on
page 4) you have a master file index.svg in your project. The following steps explain how you can define when the
project will be displayed once you have published it to a specific IS-SPX Player.

1.

Create a new schedule document in your project. Simply right-click the browsing area in your project and select
New Schedule from the pop-up menu. A new.ics file will be created in your project.

2.

Open the new.ics file. XPress will display a calendar view in the Editing panel, where you can select the current
day, week, or month.

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3.

Drag and drop from the browsing panel of your XPress project any individual media you want to schedule into the
calendar view in the Editing panel. Define the start duration of each media and its recurrence pattern, if desired.

4.

Repeat the previous step for each media you want to schedule and save your changes.

5.

Open the index.svg file of your XPress project. Drag and drop the new.ics file as a new layer into your index.svg
file.

6.

Save your changes.
The file index.svg may already contain layers. You may decide to remove the existing layers and leave a single one
associated to the new.ics. In this case when you publish your project to a IS-SPX Player, the content will be played
according to your schedule. You may also decide to combine your schedule with a background image, which would be
an additional layer in your index.svg. This choice would guarantee that at least the background image will be displayed
for those time periods when you have not planned any content. Multiple layers may also be combined with multiple
schedules.

Create a New Schedule
To create a new schedule in XPress:

1.

Open the project where the schedule needs to be added.

2.

Use the right-click pop-up menu to create a New Schedule (FIG. 37).

3.

A new file new.ics will be created. This is the scheduler.

4.

Rename the scheduler to an appropriate name for your project.
The scheduler can be dropped into a multilayer document or a playlist as any other media.

FIG. 37 Schedule menu

Open a Schedule
Double-click the schedule document (*.ics) to open the Calendar view in the Editing panel.

The Calendar view uses the local time settings of your PC.
The Calendar view is organized into 4 zones (FIG. 36). Each zone has been highlighted with a different color.
 Management options: Allow you to change the time frame that will be shown in the Editing zone. You can
choose between day, week, month and year, or create a new empty event.
 Calendar: Allows you to select which day will be visible in the Editing zone.
 Event Options: This allows you to control the start and duration of an event and eventually its recurrence.
 Editing zone: This allows you to view and edit the events in your schedule. Different time scales can be
selected from the Management zone. Use the day and week scales to change positions and the durations of
the events. Use the month and year view to have an overview of your schedule.

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Management Options

Calendar

Event Options

Editing Zone

FIG. 38 Calendar view

Add Events To a Schedule
To add an event to a schedule:

1.

Open your schedule

2.

Select the day or week view from the Management zone.

3.

Drag and drop the media you want to schedule into the editing zone of your calendar.

4.

A new event will be added where the media was dropped.

5.

You can change the start and the duration of the event by enlarging the event and moving its position in the
calendar:
 Clicking on the event allows you to move it.
 Clicking on the top or bottom of your event allows you to change its duration.

6.

The Event zone lets you fine-tune the recurrence properties of your event if needed.
Any type of media (animation, video, or image) may be used in a calendar.
If you select multiple files in the browsing panel, then all the files will be added one after the other in the
calendar according to their default duration (FIG. 39).

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FIG. 39 Adding an event to the schedule

Modify the Scheduling Properties of an Event
You can edit the properties of an event using the Event zone (FIG. 40).

FIG. 40 Scheduling properties of an event

The following properties can be edited:
• URL of the event:

Link to the scheduled media. This is automatically modified when you drop any media on
the event.

•

Summary:

Title for this event. By default, it is the same as the filename of the media, but it can be
modified to any suitable name.

•

From, To:

The start and end date of the event. This can be used to fine-tune the duration of the
event.

•

Priority:

In case two events occur at the same time, only the event with the higher priority will be
displayed.

•

Repeat and Pattern: Allows you to specify repeating patterns for your media.

•

Time zone:

Allows you to choose the time zone for your event.

•

Category:

Used for improving the visual interface and choosing colors for the different events. This
has no impact on the displayed content.

Define Default Events and Recurrences
Define a Default Animation
The scheduler allows you to specify a default animation to be displayed when no events have been scheduled to a given
date/hour. If no events have been specified, the scheduler tries to open the SVG file calendar_default.svg. If the file is
available, then it will be displayed.
To create and manage calendar_default.svg:

30

1.

Create a new document using the right-click pop-up menu on the preview panel.

2.

Rename it to “calendar_default.svg”.

3.

Open it.

4.

Drag and drop you default media (video, animation or image) into the preview panel.

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Define Recurring Events
Events can be scheduled as a single-time event or as a series of repeating events. By default, all new events are singletime events. To transform an event into a repeating event, you need to check the Repeat check box in the Event zone. By
default, the event will repeat every day indefinitely.
Depending on the version of XPress, it might be necessary to click the Pattern button
and then the OK button to confirm this repetition.
To change the rule for a repeating event, press the Pattern button, which opens the recurrence rule dialog (FIG. 41). This
dialog allows you to create fairly complicated recurrence rules.

FIG. 41 Edit recurrence rule

Creating a basic recurrence (such as every day, every 2 hours or every week) is fairly straightforward. For instance:
 For an event repeating every day, select “Pattern repeat every 1 Day”. You have the option of selecting a
number of repetitions or the date of the last repetition.
 For an event repeating every 2 hours, select “Pattern repeat every 2 Hour”.
 For an event repeating every Monday, select “Pattern repeat every 1 Week”. Make sure your initial event was
occurring on a Monday.
 For an event repeating the first day of every month, select “Pattern repeat every 1 Month”. Make sure your
initial event was occurring the first day of the current month.
 For more complex rules, you need to use the second part of the dialog. For instance:
For an event repeating every week day, select “Pattern repeat every 1 Week”, and check “Weekday is”. Then
check all the days from Monday to Friday.
For an event repeating at 10h and 15h every day, select “Pattern repeat every 1 Day”, and select “Hour is
10,15”.

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Preview Scheduled Content
XPress allows the user to preview scheduled content at a specific date or time. This is useful to validate in advance what
will be displayed in the future.
To preview scheduled content at a specific date or time, use the control on the top of the preview panel (FIG. 42).

FIG. 42 Preview scheduled content

It is possible to change the time and the date being displayed in XPress using either the clock or the calendar control.
When the date is modified, the locked-clock icon is highlighted, indicating that the document currently shown
in the preview area is not using the local time.
If you open another document, XPress will open it as if the local date and time is the one you have set. Click
the locked-time icon to change the time back to the real local hour.

Data Polling Rates
When configuring a signage project that polls external server feeds, being aware of sample rates is extremely important.
Content providers can and will throttle, temporarily block, or even permanently block client requests if their servers are
flooded with requests. This is extremely easy to do with a large-scale project. For example, one player requesting an
update on a stock source every ten seconds is probably safe. However, since most servers don't update their data that
often, best practice is to send as few requests as necessary to satisfy client needs. A good starting point would be twenty
or thirty minutes between updates.
One request every ten seconds may not create a red flag for the provider if the requests come from one player, but
consider the project increasing in scale to one hundred players, all running the same project. This now leads to one
hundred players all requesting an update every ten seconds. Even if these were evenly dispersed, this still leads to ten to
one hundred players per second requesting an update. This is likely to be viewed by the content provider or local IT staff
as a denial of service attack and they would be justified to take protective action if satisfying IS-SPX Player requests is
putting undue strain on their resources. As an alternative, consider increasing the interval between update requests, or
introduce an aggregate server on your own network to serve up the data retrieved from the original provider. The
aggregate would be one request every ten seconds to the original content provider and it would handle the subsequent
requests from your own network. RSS feed sources will often include a max-age set in the XML to advise how often the
content cache should request an update from the server.
It should also be noted that if an aggregation server is employed, it is the user's responsibility to ensure that such an
aggregation of that data matches the style and format of any given data request precisely.

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Remote Control
Overview
The IS-SPX Player has powerful remote control capabilities. You can use the serial port or the IP connection to control
the content source, control the playback of animations, video, or audio, and display messages or contextual animations
on an external event.
Three main methods can be used to control the IS-SPX Player:
Network control. This may be done from a PC, a URL to the this player or from another IS-SPX Player.
The serial port of the IS-SPX Player. A dedicated protocol file must be written to translate RS232
commands to a series of actions to be performed by the IS-SPX Player.
The USB port of the IS-SPX Player. Human Interface Devices (HID), such as a keyboard and mouse, can be
used to control the IS-SPX Player.
Remotely controlling the IS-SPX Player lets you change the content displayed on the screen or pause a video based on
the user input.
This guide covers the multiple aspects of remotely controlling the IS-SPX Player, using the templates that come with the
installer and those available at www.amx.com. We'll also see how to write your own JavaScript code for more advanced
uses.
All examples follow the same structure:
For IP control, the commands will be sent over TCP with the telnet utility from the command line or from
sample client-side scripts in HTML pages.
The serial port examples assume a simple protocol where each command is a single character, so it can be
exercised easily by connecting a PC to the serial port and sending the right keys.

Remote Control of Content
The simplest solution to write content that can be switched remotely is to use the menu_media.svg template in the
Interactivity folder in the My Templates Workspace pane. The menu_media.svg file lets you control which media is
currently being displayed, depending on the value of a shared variable. (For more information on shared variables, refer
to Shared Variables on page 85.) This same template, used together with the menu_buttons.svg, can be used to create
menus on the IS-SPX Player.

When To Use Remote Control
The menu_media.svg template offers a menu blueprint that can:
Replace the current content temporarily for a predetermined time on an external event.
Replace the current content indefinitely on an external event.
Replace only part of the content temporarily or indefinitely, using the menu media as one of the layers in a
multilayer document.
Replace the content on external events, with the insertion of a short transition sequence dependent on the
trigger event.

How To Use Remote Control
The first step is to define a table of all the possible media contents and associate a page ID to each one of them (FIG. 43).

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FIG. 43 Page ID table

Next, associate the menu document with a variable name. This configuration is done in the Properties section of the
XML Tree tab of the template (FIG. 44).

FIG. 44 Properties section of the XML Tree tab

Whenever the content of this variable is changed by a network or serial port command, the menu will switch to display
the media with a matching ID. By default, the first content of the list is displayed.
Using the Properties tab, you can select the default transition when switching content. You can also select the duration of
the transition, and the duration of the pause between two items, if needed. (For more information, please refer to the How
to Customize a Playlist SVG Document on page 16.)
To decide whether to play the new content indefinitely or only for a predetermined time, you can adjust the media
duration using the media property dialog. If the media has a finite duration, it will switch to another of the media files if
you have entered a media ID in the next page column. This lets you trigger a small playlist if needed (FIG. 45). If you
leave the next page field blank, the action taken depends on the Next page by default option. You can chose to switch
back to the first page (the default), to go to the next page or to play the same content again.

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FIG. 45 Playlist

Finally, some values have predefined functions. By default, these are:
NEXT: move to the next page
PREVIOUS: move to the previous page
PAUSE: pause playing interactively
PLAY: resume playing after a pause
You can change the names for those special values in the Interactive Controls property group in the Properties tab
(FIG. 46).

FIG. 46 Interactive Controls property group

Triggering a Content Switch Over IP
Modifying the media is done using shared variables. For more information on shared variables, please refer to Shared
Variables on page 85.
To change the current media id over IP, you have to send a string like the one below to TCP port 1234 on the IS-SPX
Player. The network API must be enabled on the Network Settings page for the IS-SPX Player to accept the connection.
The port number can be changed on this page as well. (For more information, please refer to Enabling the Network API
on page 88.)
UPDATE "menu" "P1"\r\n

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If you do not have an IS-SPX Player at hand, you can still test the remote control protocol with content running in the
XPress application on your PC. For this, check the Enable Network API box in the Settings menu (FIG. 47).

FIG. 47 Settings menu - Enable Network API

When enabling the network API via XPress, the TCP port number is also 1234.
This assumes that the control variable is the default name (“menu”) and you want to switch the content to one with the
ID equal to “P1”. \r\n means you send the characters with ASCII code 13 (CR) and 10 (LF) to terminate the command.
This can be tested with the telnet utility, which sends this sequence when you press Enter.
The network API also supports setting shared variables via an HTTP GET request. This method does not allow persistent
connections, but it is easier to access from a client scripting language supporting the XMLHttpRequest API, such as
JavaScript in web browsers.
To generate a command equivalent to the one above, enter the following URL in a web browser:
http://[is-spx-1000_address]:[port]/update?menu=P1

Example: Testing
To test, publish the menu_media.svg template file to an IS-SPX Player without modifying it. If you have not already
done so, enable the network API on the device.
For more information on enabling the network API, please refer to the IS-SPX-1000 &
IS-SPX-1300 Operation Reference Guide, available at www.amx.com.
While on the configuration home page (status), note the IP address. Assuming the IP address of the IS-SPX Player is
192.168.1.10, type in: “telnet 192.168.1.10 1234" on the PC, then the switch command, then Ctrl+] and “quit” to
terminate the connection. This should look like this:
telnet 192.168.1.10 1234
Trying 192.168.1.10...
Connected to spx-1000-001d500000fa.amx.local (192.168.1.10).
Escape character is '^]'.
UPDATE "menu" "P1"
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.

As soon as you hit enter after the update command, the display should switch for 5 seconds, then revert to the default
page.
To test the HTTP GET method with the previous example, enter the following URL in a web browser:
http://192.168.1.10:1234/update?menu=P1

The GET method can also be embedded in an HTML page. The example below will let you switch the document each
time you click on the button.

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Click




Switching Content With the Serial Port
To change the current media via the serial port, you need to do the following:
Create a protocol file (.fsm format) describing the actions to be performed depending on the input on the serial
port.
Upload the protocol file to the IS-SPX Player using the Serial Port page of the HTTP configuration interface.
Enable the protocol file by selecting it in the protocols drop box.
The protocol file should trigger an  action on the variable when matching the input on the serial port.
For instance, the sample below will trigger an update of the menu variable when an '1' or a '2' is received on the serial
port.












Switching Content With a USB HID Device
You can change the current media with a USB keyboard, or any USB device of the HID class that emulates one,
including IR remote controls. The keystroke.svg template lets you associate keystrokes with a request to update the value
of the shared variable that controls the current media.
You should have only one keystroke.svg template in each project, preferably as the background layer of the top index.svg.
If you have multiple layers which accept keyboard events, you have to make sure the correct one gets the focus. This
template has no displayable content and is fully transparent.
Specify the mapping from key to value in the Key Identifiers tab in the keystroke.svg file (FIG. 48). Key identifiers may
be augmented with “modifiers”, so as to match on the key stroke only if some other control key is down at the same time.
The valid modifiers are Ctrl, Alt, Shift, AltGr. and Meta. For instance, to match a stroke on “A” while the holding the
Control key down, the key identifier is “Ctrl+A”.

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FIG. 48 Key Identifiers tab

In the example (FIG. 49), a mapping is made for the key codes sent by common USB remote controls used for
PowerPoint presentations, while Ctrl+A trigger the alternate content of the sample.

FIG. 49 Key code example

Switching Content From Another Device
It is possible to change a variable remotely from another device simply by creating a shared variable object with the
name of the control variable suffixed by the @ sign and the hostname or IP address of the target device, and if not using
the default port, followed by a colon and the port number. For instance for the control variable “menu” on the device
“target”, the variable name is “menu@target”.
To generate this command you can use the menu_buttons.svg template located in the Interactivity folder. (For more
information on the Interactivity folder, please refer to Interactivity Template Files on page 63.). This template let you
configure 'buttons' and associate each button with a given action. This template can be used to control local or remote
shared variables depending on the presence of the @ sign in the variable name.
The example below shows the configuration of the file to control the value of the variable 'menu' located on the remote
192.168.1.10 host (FIG. 50).

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FIG. 50 Controlling the value of the variable

It is also possible to use JavaScript directly to control the value of the shared variables. The sample code below assumes
that we want to control the content on 192.168.1.10 by clicking on a rectangle.



Remote Control of Playback
The playback.svg template in the Interactivity template folder acts as a transparent container for a single media file and
lets you control its playback. Using this template, you can pause and restart any type of document including animations,
playlists and videos.

When To Use Remote Control of Playback
You can use it to control the main document or for individual media files. It supports the following operations:
Pausing and resuming playback.
Changing the current time position.
Synchronized control of the same media on multiple screens.
Control from multiple clients over the network and/or serial port.

How To Use Remote Control of Playback
The control is based on a shared variable, the default name of which is “playback”. In its basic usage, it takes two values:
“PLAY” or “PAUSE”.
For playback control on multiple screens or better resilience, an optional timestamp can follow the PLAY or PAUSE
string (FIG. 51). It is defined as the time position in seconds where playback should pause or resume. This extra
parameter enables unambiguous control over the timeline.
If the variable is stored in a central server, this lets you control the playing (or pause) time, even if the target device was
off or has restarted in between two commands. It also enables frame accurate synchronization of playback on multiple
targets, as well as control over the current time position.

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FIG. 51 Playback control properties

The timestamp can also be specified as a relative percentage of the total duration of the media if followed by a percent
sign. For instance, to jump to the middle of the media, the value is: PLAY 50%.

Interactive Pause/Resume Over TCP
To test the remote control, create a project based on the playback.svg template and drop a video media inside, setting it to
repeat indefinitely.
To pause the media, send the following command over TCP:
UPDATE "playback" "PAUSE"

To resume play back, send the following command:
UPDATE "playback" "PLAY"

Playback will pause, respectively resume, at the time the command is sent. Because of latency, the media may appear to
step back in time a fraction of seconds when pausing. This can be avoided entirely by specifying a timestamp in the
future for the variable update.

Interactive Pause/Resume Using HTTP GET
You can control the published project directly from a browser using the HTTP GET interface. The following example
assumes that the device is using the 192.168.1.10 IP address and the default port (1234) for the network port.
To interactively pause the media, type the following command in your browser:
http://192.168.1.10:1234/update?playback=PAUSE

To resume playback, send the following command:
http://192.168.1.10:1234/update?playback=PLAY

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GET Embedded In an HTML Page
The playback GET method can also be embedded in an HTML page. The example below will let you play and pause the
media from a remote web page.
You will need to make sure that the web page is stored on a 'trusted' web site.
Otherwise, the security settings of many Web browsers might prevent you from using
the XML HttpRequest().




Play
Pause




Interactive Pause/Resume From a Device
Alternatively, you can control the playback of your document using the template menu_buttons.svg. The document can
be used both on the player of the media file or on remote devices.
To use the menu_buttons.svg file to control the playback, you need to configure the name of the shared variable to
'playback' or 'playback@hostname' (FIG. 52). You then need to configure the action related to the button to trigger the
PLAY and PAUSE commands.

FIG. 52 Configuring the shared variable name

Timed pause/seek/resume
To change the time position of the media, you can change the playback variable at any time and set it to “PLAY” with a
time position. For instance, to seek at 6.5 seconds from the start of the media, send the following command:
UPDATE "playback" "PLAY 6.5"

To pause playback at a precise position, say at 7 seconds, you would send the following command:
UPDATE "playback" "PAUSE 7"

This is equivalent to a seek to position plus pause operation.
If you wish to resume playback, just send a PLAY command with the same position as the last PAUSE.
It is also possible to use a relative position depending on the content duration to control the pause and play time. In this
case, the position should be specified in percentages. For instance, to start play at 10% from the start of the media, send
the following command:
UPDATE "playback" "PLAY 10%"

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Getting Feedback On the Playback Progress
It is possible to activate optional reports that will be sent periodically via shared variables. To do so, open the Optional
reports property group and set the Send updates property to “on” (FIG. 53).

FIG. 53 Optional Reports properties

You can control the periodicity of the updates as well as the name of the variables that receive them. Feedback is sent by
default via the following shared variables:
playbackProgress: Relative progress as a percentage of the media duration
playbackTimePosition: Absolute time position
playbackMediaDuration: Reports the duration of the media
For more information on how to access the content of these variable over the network, refer to Shared Variables on
page 85.
If the controlled media is set to loop, the progress percentage resets to zero when the
media loops, while the absolute time position does not.

Knowing the Current Position With Extra Accuracy
The IS-SPX Player is precisely synchronized. This feature is used to generate multiscreen content, as it lets you easily
infer the time position of the controlled media. The time position is known with better than one-frame precision based on
the difference between the time you send the PLAY command and the current time.
Make sure that all IS-SPX Players in a network are configured with an NTP time
server so they synchronize with UTC.
In order to use the play/pause command with time position, you need to infer the current position as well as when to send
the pause command. You can simply copy it from the current value of the playback variable when sending a play
command to resume playback.

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Remote Triggers
Remote triggers let you display some text, video or animation on the IS-SPX Player controlled from a remote server. For
instance printing a message on all the IS-SPX Player of a building or a “GOAL!” message on the screen of the stadium.
The same procedure can be used to control which image of video to display from a remote server. There are a choice of
techniques to remotely trigger the display of a message, in the form of text, animation, image or video.

Triggering a Text or Image Overlay
The best way to trigger the temporary display of a text or image overlay is to use the news.svg template in the News
directory. In order to configure the new template for this use, follow the steps below:

1. Select a name of a shared variable which you'll use to set the text message.
2. Enter this name in the RSS Feed Source property. Append @localhost to the variable name so it is recognized as a
variable.

3. Select TXT for the Feed Type property.
4. Set how long you want the message to display in the Item Duration property.
5. Set the Looping property to off.
6. Switch to edit mode and draw a single text area with [SPX][title] as the content at the location where you want the
message to appear.

7. Drop a suitable transition, such as a fade-in on the text area (optional).
8. Insert the template as a new layer in the main document.
The template will remain transparent until you set some text for the chosen variable. Whenever you update the content of
this variable, your message will show for the configured duration.
You can follow the same method to display an image, video or animation instead of text. If the image is known in
advance you can ignore the content of the variable, just using it as a trigger. To trigger a fixed video or image based on a
trigger:
1. Use the news template together with a shared variable as in the previous example.
2. Switch to the edit mode and create your layout using your videos or images. Note that as you are not interested in
the content of the shared variable, you don't need to use [SPX][title] tag in your document. If you plan to play a
video, make sure that the duration of the slide is longer than the duration of the video.

3. The videos or images will be displayed for the duration of the slide each time the trigger is received.
Alternatively, you can use the content of the variable as a filename or URL for the image:
1. Use the news template together with a shared variable as for the previous example.
2. Go to the Layers tab and insert a new media.
3. Open the Media Properties dialog (press the [...]).
4. In the URI property, type [SPX][title]. This means that the content of the shared variable will be used as the address
of the file to be opened.

5. Using any of the network API methods, you can change the shared variable to the address of the file you want to
display. You can use a relative path or a complete URL.
The new_ticker.svg template may be used alternatively if you want the message to scroll through the screen when
triggered.
Note that the method presented here can also be applied to permanent content, such as a score overlay on sports content
by giving a large enough duration for the slide. Effects can be used in this case to render the transition visible, or
removed to make a silent change.

Triggering an Alternative Content
It is possible to temporarily replace the current content by an alternative one based on the user input. The input might be
based on a local (serial port or USB) or remote trigger.
To create such content, start with the procedure found in the Remote Control of Content on page 33. In most cases, set
the normal content as the default media (the first one on the list). Each additional ID will be associated to each one of the
alternative contents with their duration.
To trigger the display of an alternative content, set the control variable (default name is “menu”) to the corresponding ID.
Once the media has been played, the content will revert to the normal media, which will play again from the beginning.

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It might be desirable for the main media not to start over each time it is reopened. In this case, two scenarios are possible:
The main media resume its playback, as if paused during the alternative content.
The main media continue playing, as if playing in the background during the alternative content.
The first scenario can be controlled using the Resume where left parameters of the menu_media.svg template. Settings
this parameter to 'on' will prevent the main media from restarting each time it is opened. For the second scenario, the
main media must be placed in a schedule file. It is also possible to use the spx:begin attribute on the