Zones

Layouts and how to create one

Working with zones is actually super easy. We’ve added a handful of layouts that will work for most projects where you want to divide the content on your screens.

Go to Playlists -> Create playlist

Give the playlist a name, pick your screen aspect ratio (Most will be 16:9 or 9:16), then pick one of the layouts, and finally click Create.

You’ll find that we’ve created the master playlist as well as the zones you need. For example, if you picked the second layout you’ll find a master playlist, a zone 1, and a zone 2.

Master Playlist

The master playlist is the playlist you will be publishing to your screen(s).

• The master playlist should be your BASE playlist in the group you’re using
• The master playlist only has one slide
• The master playlist’s slide duration is set to infinity
• The master playlist is the playlist where you add background music if needed

Zones

The zones are where you add your content.

• Zones can have multiple slides
• Zone slide durations can be whatever you want
• Zones are independent of each other

This is the most basic stuff you need to know about layouts, the master playlist, and zones, but we strongly recommend you watch the video further up in this article.

Custom Zones in General

Custom zones are used when none of our layouts fit your idea. Before we can talk about custom zones we need to address aspect ratio and our playlist-in-playlist feature.

Aspect ratio

Aspect ratio (AR) describes the proportional relationship between screen width and height (width divided by height). So a square would have an aspect ratio of 1:1, which is the same as 2:2 or 100:100. Most TV screens today are 16:9, and so is the Full HD resolution 1920×1080, because:

16 / 9 = 1.7777…
1920 / 1080 = 1.7777…

Playlist in Playlist

When you create a zoned playlist from one of our presets, behind the scenes the system creates a playlist for each zone (with appropriate aspect ratios) and then creates a final ‘master’ playlist with one slide that includes all these individual zones.

Creating digital signage zones

If you’re not into technical reading, check out the video: Zone Dimensions

When splitting the display area into sections, we must ensure that all these sections combined fill 100% of the screen. I recommend first drawing your zone layout on paper, ideally grid paper, as it reduces the chance of making a mistake. In this example, I am going to create a playlist with 4 zones for a TV with a 1920:1080 resolution (Equal to a 16:9 aspect ratio).

You can calculate the size of your zones in several ways. I usually work in millimeters: the resolution of the TV is 1920 x 1080, so I draw a box measuring 192 mm x 108 mm and add my zones. When I’m happy with the size of my zones, I simply measure each zone in mm. In this case, I have the following zones:

The TV is 192 mm x 108 mm, which equals 1920:1080
The zone on the left is 40 mm x 90 mm, which equals 400:900
The zone in the center is 112 mm x 90 mm, which equals 1120:900
The zone on the right is 40 mm x 90 mm, which equals 400:900
The zone at the bottom is 192 mm x 18 mm, which equals 1920:180

Now let’s create the individual zones. You can set your custom size in the “Advanced” section when creating a playlist (format xxxx:xxxx).

When done, I have a total of 5 playlists. I’ve changed the background color for each of the zones for illustrative purposes.

Now let’s configure the master playlist:

1. Set the duration of the first slide in the playlist to ‘forever’ (master playlist should only contain 1 slide)
2. [optional] Set slide background color to black
3. Add individual zone playlists to the first slide using the playlist in a playlist plugin. If your measurements were correct, they should nicely fill up the entire screen:

When creating a group for your screen, you only need to set the master playlist as the base playlist.