User guide

Created by Kristoffer Myhre Nesbak
Last updated: feb. 18, 2021 by magnus.bakken

 

Getting started

 

How to log in

  • Use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari and go to www.prontotv.no

  • Click on “Login” at the top right

  • Click on “Login Web”

 

Log in with your username and password. You can use your email as a username. If you don't have the user login, contact our support +47 22 54 50 60 (Dial 2).

 

If this is the first time you are logging in, you will need to change your password. After changing the password, select the top left menu and choose Schedule.

The Schedule - Manage, create and view content

The schedule is the main view. Here you are able to manage what is playing on all the screens, create new content, and see what is currently playing.

Example of how the schedule can look.

 

The schedule contains different slots and each slot is usually associated with one type of screen. In some cases, multiple slots can be associated with the same screen, either to represent different areas of the screen or to represent a playlist where the slots will be played sequentially.

Each slot consists of one or more articles, and the articles represent the content that will be played on the screens.

Here the first slot “Slot 1” is expanded, and you can see that it consists of 5 articles.

 

The Article - Your content

An article is a representation of content. It can be a picture, a video, content created with a pre-existing template, or a dynamic feed fetching content on board like a video stream.

Select a single article and you will see its details on the right side.

Preview

You can press the “View” button at the bottom of the article to see a preview of how it will look playing on the screens.

Note that you can do changes in the article and use the preview function to see how it will look.

Scheduling an article

Each article can be scheduled with a specific start or end date, as well as being set to only play on certain days or at certain times of the day.

Click on the “Scheduling”-tab of the article to see all options.

 

Here is an example of how to schedule an article to begin playing ahead of time (on August 10th), and also configuring it to only play on weekdays between 08-10 and 16-18.

 

Schedule timeline

You will see the timeline of the schedule (on the very top) updating to reflect that there will be changes in the playlist on August 10th. This way you can see which articles will be playing on which date.

 

Here we will schedule an end date for another article. You will see the schedule updating to show that this article will stop playing on August 9th.

Reordering

The articles will be played in the same sequence as they are scheduled. They can easily be reordered by using drag-and-drop.

 

Distribution

In some cases, you will have the option to schedule an article to one or more locations. This will be done in the “Distribution” tab on the article.

By default, an article is scheduled to play on all available locations. You can include or exclude specific locations. On the bottom of the tab, you will see which locations the article will be played at.

A location can either be a geographic location or it can for instance be a physical location of a screen inside an office. It will depend on your specific configuration.

Here is an example of setting an article to only play at the locations called “Location A” and “Location B”.

 

Save changes

Take note that any changes made are not saved until you press “Save changes” on the top-left.

You will not be able to save if there are errors in an article. This is usually caused by an article missing some required content.

After fixing the errors you will be able to save changes.

Add content

Files

Picture and video files can be added directly to the schedule.

Add content

  • Select the slot you want

  • Click “Add content”

  • Click “Add file to…”

    • The name of the slot will be displayed on the button

  • A file browser will pop up.

  • Select the file you want and double-click to add it

  • If you are adding a picture, you can change the duration

  • Click “Save changes”

 

Drag and drop

You can also drag and drop a file to add it. Simply find the file you want and drag it in.

 

Templates

In addition to adding files directly, you can add content by using any of the available templates. Which templates that are available will vary between slots.

A template is used for adding content into a pre-existing design. Usually, you will just have to fill in the required text, and then all the formatting, font types, font sizes, colors, and logos, etc. will be automatically taken care of.

Template selection

You will see all available templates for a slot by selecting the slot and click “Add content”

Here you can see the template that is available when you select the slot “Slot 1”. If you have more templates available, they will be shown in this list.

Use a template to create an article

  • Select the slot

  • Click “Add content” in the top right

  • Select the template you want

  • Click “Add content” on the template

The template will now show up in the slot as a new article.

 

Depending on the template, you may need to fill in additional information in the template or add media files, before it can be published.

Here we are using the template “Text and Picture”, where we can fill in the following fields:

  • Name

  • Heading

  • Body

  • Picture

  • Duration

 

Name

This is a generic field that is used for almost every type of template, and it represents the name of the article in the system. This is usually not displayed on the screen, but used for management purposes.

This field is marked by an asterisk, which means that it is required to fill out.

Heading

This field is specific to this template and will replace the heading text.

Body

This field is also specific to this template and will replace the body text.

Picture

This is the media file of the picture that will be shown. When you click on this field a file browser will pop up for you to choose the picture. After you select a picture, an edit window will pop up where you can do some basic editing of the picture. In many cases the picture will have a given aspect ration, and you will have to choose a crop of the picture that matches this aspect ratio.

This is how the picture editor looks. Note the aspect selection box that is placed on top of the picture.

Here you can see how the aspect selection box works.

 

Duration

Like the article name, this is also a generic field found in almost every template. This controls how long the article will be displayed on the screen. This is not always needed, for instance, if the template contains a video, the duration will be automatically set to the length of the video.

At any time you can preview how the article will look by clicking the “View” button at the bottom right.

Here is how the whole process looks.

 

 

Archive

All content that you add is also automatically added to the archive. Use the archive to find and reuse content.

The archive is found by choosing “Add content” and selecting the “Archive” tab.

To make it easier to find what you are looking for, you can search or use different filters.

Transcoding

When you add a video file to the schedule, the system will determine if the video file can be used directly, or if it needs to be automatically converted to a different video format first. This process is called transcoding.

Uploading video content that doesn't need to be transcoded saves time and resources, and ensures that the video looks exactly the same as on your own computer.

Video files that need to be transcoded will be marked with this icon in the article details:

Video files that can be used directly will have this icon instead:

Rules

To avoid transcoding, the video file needs to have one of the following formats:

  1. H.264 (AVC), in an MP4 container, using Constant Rate Factor (CRF) encoding, with a minimum value of CRF=18.

  2. H.265 (HEVC), in an MP4 container, using Constant Rate Factor (CRF) encoding, with a minimum value of CRF=20.

We recommend using H.264 when possible. Consider using H.265 when the video has a 4K resolution or higher, and H.264 for videos with lower resolutions.

For details on how to produce files in these formats, consult the documentation for your video production software. The industry standard software for advanced video encoding is FFmpeg.

Other considerations

For video files that don’t conform to the above rules, the following rules will apply:

  • If the total number of pixels (width × height) is greater than 4096x2048x1.1, the video will be transcoded to H.265 with CRF=27, and downscaled such that the the total number of pixels equals 4096x2048x1.1.

  • Otherwise, if either dimension is greater than 2000 pixels and the total number of pixels (width × height) is greater than 1920×1080, the video will be transcoded to H.265 with CRF=27.

  • Otherwise, the video will be transcoded to H.264 with CRF=23.

The default CRF value for H.264 is 23, and for H.265 the default is 28. These values are considered to be a good tradeoff between file size and quality, but if you want better quality you can set a lower CRF yourself.

Videos that will be downscaled will be marked with this icon in the article details:

For PowerPoint content, the content will always be converted to an H.264 video with a resolution of either 1080x1920 or 1920x1080.

Regardless of the format, there’s currently a hard file size limit of 2 GB for all content uploaded through the CMS. Files that exceed this limit will be marked with this icon in the article details:

If you have any questions about transcoding or video formats, please contact our support department.