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if then statements for english/spanish switch

John Peel

September 30, 2011 23:09

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We are working on a kiosk that will play a couple of videos. Each will have an English version and a Spanish one. The player will start with a home screen then go to the appropriate file upon gpio input. Simple enough. Rather than have a button for each file, the client would rather have an English/Spanish toggle. Could that be tied to an input? I'm seeing a script with an if/then statement. So track one would be button 0 pressed but conditional on button 1. 1 open =play file a,English, closed = play file 2, Spanish. track 2 would be button 2 pressed but conditional on button1, 1 open =file c, English 1 closed =play file d, Spanish. Does this make sense? Is there a way to do this with Bright Author or do I need to generate a custom script Will the HD410 units operate in this manner, with an input either on or off rather than used as a momentary contact? The other option is to use an external controller and send the play commands via rs232 but I'd like to keep it all in the HD410 if possible. Thanks John Peel

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9 comments

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  RokuLyndon October 02, 2011 22:46

  
  
  Yes, you can do it with a script.
  
  I think you can do it with brightauthor as well, if we modify the brightauthor autorun to accept button presses and button releases the same.
  
  You would have two menus, the same file listed twice in  your project. If button 1 is pressed the screen goes to the second menu file, identical to the first. If button 1 is released, it goes back to the original menu.
  
  Then, from menu 1, pushing your buttons would play file 1 or file2, and from menu2, the same buttons would play the alternative language version. This assumes you're not trying to use buttons 0 and 2 while the video is playing since I've now set presses and releases to be seen as button inputs.
  
  Here's the custom autorun for ba 2.2.
  
  Here's a screenshot of what the project would look like:
  
  
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  John Peel October 04, 2011 23:13

  
  
  Thank you.  
  I'll try this out shortly
  
  John
  
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  John Peel February 14, 2012 01:47

  
  
  As these things go, we just installed the kiosks last week.  The switch works perfectly but we noticed that the videos stutter just a bit when they first open.  I attributed this to a very high bitrate but after reading through the specs, I feel like the bitrate should be ok.  Those files were cbr 25 mpeg2 ts.  The install location is of course in another city so I'm going to mock up the controls and try with a lower bitrate, cbr 15?  The sd cards are class 10 so that shouldn't be a factor.  Do you have any thoughts on this?  I didn't know if there was anything in the custom autorun that would account for that.
  
  Thanks,
  John
  
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  RokuLyndon February 14, 2012 01:51

  
  
  Nothing in the autorun should affect how the video plays. We just start and stop. This didn't happen when you tested the videos before? It could be the cards themselves, or the encoding on the content. I've seen highly rated cards that didn't perform up to spec.
  
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  John Peel February 14, 2012 02:27

  
  
  They delivered the content less than 24 hours prior to the installation.  They were H264.mov files and huge (a 6 minute clip was 3.5 gbs)  I exported from Premier to the mpeg2 ts as I could not get them to play as they were.  I just got a black screen even though I could see the player reading. I don't remember a stutter during the first tests albeit it was early am prior to hitting the road!  
  
  It will be this evening before I can test further.
  
  thanks
  
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  John Peel February 17, 2012 21:00

  
  
  The playback issues ended up being due to the encoding.  I reworked the files and they work great now.  
  
  Now that the program has been in place and different people have been using it, a different issue has come up.  In your project, there is no change in state associated with our language switch while the videos are playing.  What happens is that folks will flip the switch during playback.  Since the state change is not assigned to anything, the player returns to the initial menu even though the switch now is pointing to the alternate.
  
  Instead of 6 minute videos, I did a quick project using jpegs to test this out.  
  
  What I think we can do is to go ahead and link button 1 state changes to each of the video files as well so that if someone hits the switch during playback, it will take them to the alternate language file.  It seems that button 1 has to be linked to each state for the player to correctly read which language it is set to.
  
  I tried this as well and it worked only partially.  I could switch from english to spanish, but not back from spanish to english.  Can you take a look and see if I've made an obvious error?  I can email you the project file or a screen grab.  I'm not sure how to insert photos here
  
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  RokuLyndon February 18, 2012 00:18

  
  
  yes, send your project to support at brightsign . biz.
  
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  John Peel February 18, 2012 03:16

  
  
  I've submitted the files.
  
  
  thanks
  
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  John Peel February 20, 2012 05:03

  
  
  I solved the issue by linking the switch as described above.  I added a single slide at boot that instructs the user to make sure the switch is set to English then press a button.  It is only displayed once and makes sure that the switch is in the correct position.  From there, the switch is linked to each state and the player always knows where it is.
  
  It's working well  now.