The Library in Digital Signage is where all your assets (Files) are kept, you can use these files when designing slides, adding background music, etc. Files can be either uploaded directly to the cloud, by pasting a web URL of the file, using a local storage file server, or even Google Drive. You can also create folders to organize the files better.
How to use the Library in Digital Signage
Check out the video to find out all you need about the Library in Digital Signage.
.png (Portable Network Graphics) – Recommended file format for computer-generated graphics, supports transparency.
.jpg .jpeg .jfif (Joint Photographic Experts Group) – Recommended file format for photos.
.gif (Graphics Interchange Format) – Animated GIFs are supported! If you don’t use animation, we recommend using .png or .jpg files instead as .gif files can only have up to 265 colors, therefore their quality is not as good.
.webp (WebP) – is an image format developed by Google to supersede png and animated gif files with better compression. Most browsers have supported WebP files for several years with Safari finally adding support in version 14 in Big Sur.
.avif(AV1 Image File) – is the latest file format for images based on open-source AV1 video file format. As the format is quite new, browser support has not caught up yet, therefore .avif files are converted to .webp
.heic .heif (High-Efficiency Image File Format) – Starting IOS 11 Apple is using heic as the default format for pictures, we’ll automatically convert .heic and .heif files to .webp
.tif .tiff (Tag Image File Format) – Files are automatically converted to .jpg.
.svg (Scalable Vector Graphics) – Recommended file format for vector graphics as they don’t lose quality when enlarged. JavaScript and CSS keyframe animations inside SVG files are not supported.
.eps (Encapsulated PostScript) – files are automatically converted to .png, and transparency is maintained.
.ai (Adobe Illustrator) – Modern Illustrator files are automatically converted to .png files.
Video
.mp4 .m4v – Recommended file format (h.264 or h.265 encoding recommended). If the video bit rate is more than 8Mbit/s, the video is automatically converted to a lower bit rate. A video with a bit-rate of 8Mbit has 1 Megabyte (1 byte = 8 bits) per running second of video, so a 10-second clip is 10 Megabytes, and so on. Your videos should take up less space than 1 Megabyte per running second. NB! 4K videos are not converted to a lower bit rate.
.ppt .pptx .key .odp – Each slide in the presentation is converted to a .png image at 1920 x 1080 resolution (1080 x 1920 for portrait presentations). Unfortunately, animation effects are lost because our software is not a PowerPoint playback tool and we can’t have the support for proprietary functionality these tools have. If you design the slides in our editor, you can animate elements as well.
Presentations hosted in a storage solution (Google Drive, Dropbox, HTTP server) can be embedded with our web plugin directly using web-based file viewers – see the guide.
Fonts
.woff / .woff2 (Web Open Font Format)– Recommended file format for fonts.
.ttf (True Type Font)
.otf (Open Type Font)
Audio
.mp3 – Recommended file format for audio.
.ogg
.m4a
.wav (Waveform Audio File Format)
.flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
Portable Document Format (PDF)
.pdf – Each page in the file is converted to a .png image at 1080 x 1920 resolution (1920 x 1080 for landscape documents). You can also use a website plugin to display the file directly from a web URL.
Documents (Word, Pages, LibreOffice Writer)
.doc .docx .pages .odt – Each page in the file is converted to a .png image at 1080 x 1920 resolution (1920 x 1080 for landscape documents).
Documents hosted in a storage solution (Google Drive, Dropbox, HTTP server) can be embedded with our web plugin directly using web-based file viewers – see the guide.
Spreadsheets (Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice Calc)
.xls .xlsx .numbers .ods – Each page in the file is converted to a .png image with transparent background.
Spreadsheets hosted in a storage solution (Google Drive, Dropbox, HTTP server) can be embedded with our web plugin directly using web-based file viewers – see the guide.
Archives (Zip files)
.zip – Only image files from the zip archive are converted into assets, other file types are skipped. The zip archive folder structure is not preserved, all files are extracted to the same directory (flat) where the zip is uploaded.
Download from a URL
You can paste the URL of a file, this way you don’t have to download it to your computer first. Our server will download the file directly and a copy of the file will be stored in your Library, this way even if the original file is no longer available (maybe it was removed by the owner), you can still use it. The maximum file size is 200 MB, if the file is larger, you should download it to your computer and upload it instead.
Custom fonts
Custom Fonts are a big part of brand identity. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to upload and use your Custom Fonts in yo Digital Signage content.
We support fonts in .woff, .ttf, and .otf file formats. If your font file is in some other format, you can try using an online font converter (for example http://www.freefontconverter.com/). However, beware that on rare occasions converting fonts from one format to another can result in malformed font files.
Our content management system treats fonts like any other files, so simply upload the .woff, .ttf, or .otf file to the library. Once the file has been uploaded, you can start using the font in 2 ways:
Assets dialog
By selecting the font from the “Assets” dialog in the editor, a new text element will be created on canvas with that font selected.
Drop-down selection
When you’ve uploaded your font, all font selection drop-downs will include the uploaded font option appended to the bottom of our default font selection.
Private files
Normally when a file is uploaded directly or added via the “Public URL” option, it will be processed by our server and stored on the Internet, so that your browser and the player device can load it as long as there is an Internet connection. Our server obfuscates the file URL and makes it virtually impossible to guess in an attempt to hide it from others, but sometimes this can go against a company policy. If your organization stores files in a private file server, you can use these files without uploading them to our servers and thus expose them to the Internet.
You can add a private file by going to the library, clicking “From URL” button and selecting “Private file” tab.
Key differences
+ Files will never leave your premises. + You can use large files without restrictions (our server has a 2 GB upload limit). + Supports following formats: .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .mp4, .m4v (other file types, such as .pdf, .mov or .doc require conversion in our servers). – Our support team can not help you if we can’t load the files. – Files are not processed by our server, therefore they are also not optimized for player devices (make sure not to use enormous files). – You can only use the editor and players while you are connected to the private network where the files are.
Prerequisites
The files must be served over the HTTP protocol
The file server must enable CORS requests (Must return header Access-Control-Allow-Origin with value *).
If you plan on using files greater than 25 MB with our Chrome extension player, the server must also expose the Content-Range header (Access-Control-Expose-Headers with value Content-Range)
Google Drive
Google Drive lets you access your Google Drive files directly in your library. This way you don’t have to download files to your computer and then upload them to your library at my.playsignage.com.
We don’t limit how many files you can store, but rather expect the users not to abuse them. We do monitor it so we can detect abuse use of the free storage offer.
How big files can I upload?
The maximum size of one file can be up to 2 GB. PDF files, presentations, and documents can contain up to 50 pages, larger files should be split before uploading.
How to move files between folders?
When you enter multi-select mode, an option to cut files appears. After you cut the files, navigate to the folder where you want to pass the files.
How to delete files Library in Digital Signage?
When you enter multi-select mode, the button to remove files appears. If the files are being used in a playlist, you’ll be prompted to remove the file from the playlist as well. If you select yes, the file will be removed from the slide it was on, but the slide itself will remain in the playlist.
How do I split PDF files?
It is actually very easy to split PDF files, it is essentially printing a range of pages as a PDF. In this example, we’ll be using Chrome to open the PDF file and then print the page (Ctrl/Cmd + P shortcut) and select a page range of 1 – 50. Then repeat the process with 51-100 and so on.
File in the zip archive is skipped?
When you upload a .zip archive, only image files are processed, and other files are skipped. If the zip archive contains files otherwise supported by our service (video, pdf, excel, etc…), you should unpack the zip archive on your computer and upload unpacked files instead.
Why is CORS needed?
Cross-Origin-Resource-Sharing is required because our web-based editor is hosted on the domain my.playsignage.com and it is using html5 canvas element. Browser security requires that images loaded into the canvas must come from the same domain (my.playsignage.com). If the image is not on the same domain, the image HTTP response must have CORS headers present.