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XD232 rough html5 animations, font family changes

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Lou Swing
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I'm struggling to get smooth playback, along with extended load times for more complex playback. I've tested multiple scenarios with simple animations and more complex animations that have been authored using Adobe Edge.

These animations play smooth on Chrome, which is the basis for your playback API if I'm not mistaken. When loaded onto the XD232 they are a bit choppy. I have also experienced the font family being switched. When an animation becomes more complex or has extra code, it can take 4-6 seconds to load, and only loads once it's time to show according to BA; so the still frame "pre-load" idea that is mentioned in your HTML5 guide doesn't seem functional.

So, questions....

Ways to smooth out these animations, or does the XD232 simply lack processing power?

Embed fonts and why are the font families being changed by the XD232?

For a $450 machine it should play back better, and I would hope that I would not have to upgrade to your top of the line $800 machine to get decent results.

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  • 1
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    Lou Swing

    I just did some more testing and can confirm the XD232 does not play even basic HTML5 animations very well. They play choppy, and it's not acceptable for playback. It is odd that it changes the font family also, so I will assume that my embedded font family is not used by the player.

    My testing project is very simple, just a few lines of moving text. The project tests just fine in BrightAuthor using preview; it places smooth and the fonts are fine. Once loaded onto the XD232 it's fairly poor. I would recommend removing the suggestion from your site that it plays "interactive" HTML5. Sure it might play, but it's not really usable.

    I had been told by tech support prior to my purchase that it should play simple animations, it does not. I will look into the 4k sometime possibly, but hate to pay a premium just to run HTML5 that runs fine on my $200 laptop.

    BrightSign XD Players Fast HTML5 engine plays interactive, full screen HTML5 content or a multitude of HTML5 assets layered with high-bandwidth video playback.

  • 0
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    Jean Michel

    You may have better luck with CSS-based animations than those produced by Edge, which uses a rather heavy javascript animation technique, as I recall. AFICT, Edge is also discontinued by Adobe. What font format are you using? The WOFF format seem to be accepted by pretty much all modern browsers now.

    -JM

  • 0
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    Lou Swing

    I was just using the basic web font family "Lucida Sans", not sure why the player didn't like it. Good point on Edge being discontinued recently. I'm still just surprised that it plays so poor on the $450 XD, and plays perfectly smooth in Chrome on my $200 Lenovo laptop.

    Anyhow, yes I will look into some different coding software for the HTML5 animations. It still seems to me the XD player line might be be robust enough to play much animation. I've found it's fine for video and photo displays at least.

  • 0
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    Jean Michel

    I'm not referring to what "font family" you're using, but what format it is. Different browsers like different formats, and some are rather picky. I've had best success with off, if you want to pick one. I'm pretty sure it should work with BS, since it's based on WebKit style technology (well, actually Chromium/Qt WebEngine). See here for more details:

       http://caniuse.com/#feat=woff

    Also, I suggest you look into CSS3 style animations. They're less powerful in terms of what you can do with them. But they also tend to be more performant. Some of them are even hardware accelerated (e.g., the 3D-style transforms, and opacity, usually).

    As for an alternative to Edge, you may want to consider Hype. I don't know how well it performs on BS players (haven't tried it there). But you may want to give it a try and report back. It's rather straightforward to pick up.

       http://tumult.com/hype/

    -JM

  • 1
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    Lou Swing

    Used Hype to create some super simple html5 animations, just text fading and moving. Playback is predictable horrible on the XD232. Just a warning for anyone trying to use this model for html5 animation.

    Videos playback fine, or videos in html5, but the css and javascript animations play rough. Again, these same animations play very smooth in Chrome on a cheap $200 laptop. I assume the XD232 is just short on processing power or the algorithms it uses to process.

    I'm a bit hesitant to spend the money on a 4K model just to be able to run some simple animations.

  • 1
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    Eric

    We have tested the XT243 player which “Delivers the best HTML5 rendering performance available for Enterprise applications.” according to Brightsign site.

    Unfortunately it did not meet our expectations. From complex to simple HTML5 projects we encountered playback issues.

    This is sadly as we had to focus on other less reliable solutions.

  • 0
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    Brandon

    Did you follow the guidelines and apply the optimizations from http://docs.brightsign.biz/display/DOC/Best+Practices ?

    As an appliance-type device, it's important to optimize for the platform as there isn't a great deal of memory/processing "headroom" like on a PC.

    In particular the GPU rasterization and hardware video decoding (HWZ) make huge performance differences.

  • 1
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    Eric

    Thanks for this input!

     

    But it’s all about ‘managing’ expectations.

    In this case we hoped that with the “Enterprise” level support on HTML we could ditch current needed hardware in favor of Brightsign players.

    HTML applications / sites that are shown normally on PC’s / android devices (with other Signage applications or standard browser functionality in Kiosk mode) will do fine on other hardware platforms.

    But to play those on a Brightsign player ‘some’ real extra effort has to be done at the backend / application development.

    It asks then also for severe testing before it can be deployed.

    Our expectation / hope was that the new ‘enterprise’ level finally could do all without limitations.

    In that case it could replace a lot off Nuc’s (Android / Win / SoC’s) setups which can do these tricks out of the box without altering the HTML environment / adjustments to meet current conditions (limitations).

    In most cases (near all) we are not able to influence the build of HTML setups that have been produced by software companies and that have been forwarded to us by clients.

     

    If the player could support these without limitations it would mean a big shift in favor of Brightsign.

    Especially in the retail (!) market.

    By all means we would be more than happy (!) to make this shift as we really endorse the Brightsign hardware!

    But currently we have to stick with less stable and less manageable solutions.

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