Playlists and schedules
A player box plays playlists on a schedule. Both live in the Shows section of Remote Display and are kept on the box, so it keeps to them with no internet.
Playlists
A playlist is an ordered list of videos and images from your media library. Each display has its own playlists; a new display can copy another's.
- Render the show first: File → Render MP4… in the designer. The render lands in your media library. The lists show videos rendered in the designer by default; tick the option to also list files uploaded from a computer.
- Open Shows → Playlists, add a playlist and add items to it. Drag to reorder. Images get a hold time; videos play through.
- Pick loop or stop at the end.
A playlist can also finish with the Pet Show: after its own items it plays the visitors' clips on the same face and song as the Jukebox.
What the box does with a playlist:
- Every file is downloaded to the box and checked before the new version plays; until then the previous complete version keeps playing, and the switch happens between items. Settings → Logs shows the download.
- Rendered shows with a black, silent tail are trimmed to it so the playlist moves on without a dark gap.
- Changes you make reach the box within seconds when it is online, and the next time it is online otherwise.
Schedule
Shows → Schedule is a weekly grid of entries: a playlist, a start, an end, and the days it applies. Where entries overlap, the higher one in the list wins (drag to reorder). Outside every entry the box is idle: HDMI off so the projector sleeps, or on showing nothing, as set in Settings → General.
The schedule runs in the display's time zone, set in Settings → General. A box with a wrong clock runs the wrong show; the status in Now warns when the clock is not synced.
Play something now
In Now, pick a playlist or a single item and it plays until the next scheduled change; pause, skip and jump to an item from there or from the phone remote. Back to schedule ends the override. A Jukebox pick and a Live Mode cast are overrides in the same way.
HDMI off and waking the projector
Between shows the box switches the HDMI signal off (on Linux, the port really goes off and the projector sees NO SIGNAL; on Windows, every screen is switched off and any key wakes it). A projector that sleeps on no signal and wakes when it returns then follows the schedule by itself, so there is nothing to switch on at dusk.
Some projectors do not wake cleanly. By default a show starting from off sends the signal, forces it if the projector does not answer, and checks two minutes later whether the picture came up before restarting the box's output. For a projector that reads as awake while it is asleep, turn on Forced start in Screens & sound: it forces the signal at once and does the restart a minute later regardless. It only applies to a start from HDMI off, and it is limited to a few times an hour.
Shows from the designer, every night
The routine most owners settle into:
- Design and tweak in the browser or the desktop app.
- Render MP4 when the show is right.
- Replace the item in the playlist. The box downloads it and switches at the next item boundary.
Live Mode is for lining things up and for running a show by hand; the schedule is for every other night.