Legacy FAQs
Other Legacy FAQs (Software)
20min
what is the brightsign network? the brightsign network (bsn) is an affordable subscription based content hosting and distribution service, to serve your digital signage network it makes delivering remote content to one or many units easy and frees you from the complexities of hosting and maintaining your own network it offers strong, reliable security using standard web technologies, and can support any size of network it also includes the brightauthor pc software application, which lets you monitor your network health and create, schedule, and distribute presentations the webui the bsn offers a browser based interface that allows you to schedule presentations and manage players from anywhere with an internet connection you can use the webui to do the following upload image, audio, video files to the bsn library create and publish simple looping presentations with images, video, and audio create dynamic playlists, live media feeds, and live data feeds organize players into customizable groups schedule presentations for groups of players add customizable tags to content files and players use tags to generate filtered playlists monitor the health of players connected to the brightsign network send reboot, recovery, and upload log commands to networked players monitor the statuses of networked players this includes the current active presentation, total network traffic, and device error logs generate various playback logs (event, state, diagnostic, playback) to keep records of player and presentation activity view the subscription status of players add purchased subscriptions to players you can also choose to have the brightsign network automatically manage your purchased subscriptions (which is the default setting) brightauthor is still required for many advanced presentation creation features https //support brightsign biz/hc/en us/articles/218068007 which brightauthor features are unavailable in the webui brightplates end of life (eol) policy docid\ e8vprxjdcsg jjlvzswhl brightplates is a browser based service that allows you to quickly and easily craft professional digital signs using html5 templates you can select from our collection of default templates, build your own from scratch, or connect with content partners to craft your own look after crafting your sign, it only takes a few clicks to distribute it to networked players and send instantaneous updates can i publish from a mac without using bsn cloud or brightauthor\ connected? bsn cloud and brightauthor\ connected support both windows and mac os clients on brightsign players running bos 8 x and above, including the 4k model series and all series 3 and newer players (see this article https //brightsign atlassian net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/2316206087/player+model+and+series+cross+reference for model/series cross reference) if you cannot use bsn cloud or brightauthor\ connected, here are some workarounds to publish to a brightsign player using a mac a growing number of third party cms partners support using brightsign players with their systems some of them may have mac os clients see https //www brightsign biz/partners/integrated solutions https //www brightsign biz/partners/integrated solutions brightauthor can be run on intel based macs using windows emulation software like parallels macs running apple silicon (e g , m1, m2, etc ) can emulate windows arm but not windows x86 (intel/amd) brightauthor is a windows x86 application and thus cannot be emulated on macs running apple silicon for parallels, and possibly other virtual machine software, it is best to use bridged networking mode which puts the windows virtual machine on the same network as the host, just like if it was a real computer see this article about networking modes in parallels for more information http //kb parallels com/en/4948 http //kb parallels com/en/4948 if you are using the player for simple full screen playback without network updates, you can display looping content on the player by simply copying content to the flash card and powering up the unit with that card no playlist file is required the files will play back alphabetically as a looping playlist ensure that the content types are supported and the proper extensions are used you can perform many operations from the brightsign network webui (an account is required) player setup can now be performed directly from the webui you can also use the webui to create full screen, non interactive playlists and publish them to your networked player(s) you can create a script file using any plain text editor and copy that script along with your content to the flash card scripts allow greater control of playback, including interactive playlists brightsign players support legacy playlist (autoplay bsp) and interactive playlist (autoplay csv) formats these can be edited with any plain text editor why is my brightauthor 4 6 installer failing? the brightauthor 4 6 0 5/8/14/15 installer may fail if windows firewall is disabled to fix this issue, enable windows firewall before installation once the installation process is complete, you can disable it again why can't i publish the autoschedule txt file in brightauthor 2 3? publishing may fail if you use a card for local file networking and then use it for local storage to fix, clear the flashcard and publish, or create setup files again why isn’t my autoplay bsp playlist working? verify that the playlist and your content are in the root of the flash card verify the playlist file is named "autoplay bsp" for the hd2000, also verify you have the correct version of the autorun script in the root of the flash card the latest is 2 0 43, which requires 2 x software if you are using firmware version 1 3 x, you need autorun version 1 3 07 the hd600 requires autorun 1 2 7 why don’t autoplay bsp playlists that were created on a mac work? this is most likely caused by improper formatting of the playlist playlists must be plaintext files use textedit (or other plaintext editing application) to edit and save your playlists open textedit preferences, and choose "plain text" as the default format go to the open & save tab, an choose "western (windows latin 1)" the autoplay bsp demo playlist works, but my playlist does not? if the demo files play, then the problem could be with your files, not the playlist normally, if files don't play at all, there's a problem with the content format remove any non alpha numeric characters from your file names for example, the "+" is not acceptable in a file name verify that every file used in interactive playlist is listed in the state column verify that a file is not listed twice in the state column if you need to list a file twice in the state column, then create a duplicate of that file with a different name check the spelling of filenames in the csv file to ensure that they match the actual filenames exactly for any input you accept, verify that the same event isn't listed twice on the events row for example, you can use "button 1" and "button 2", but you can't use "button 2" and "button 2" note some users have reported problems creating interactive playlists with openoffice please try excel or google spreadsheet instead why doesn’t my autoplay csv interactive playlist work? the interactive playlist will ignore any events (input) that are not clearly defined if your interactive playlist fails when you provide input, there's a problem with the file that's supposed to play when that button is pressed or the mouse is used open the autoplay csv file and verify that the file that's supposed to play is also listed in the state column check the spelling of the file name brightsign players require a comma separated csv file (with periods used as the decimal separator) if you’re outside the united states, check the regional settings in excel and make sure the list separator is a comma and the decimal separator is a period verify that the interactive playlist and your content are in the root of the flash card verify that the interactive playlist is named "autoplay csv" for the hd2000, also verify you have the correct version of the autorun script in the root of the flash card the latest is 2 0 43, which requires 2 x software if you are using firmware version 1 3 x, you need autorun version 1 3 07 download a brightsign interactive demo from http //www brightsign biz/support/demos http //www brightsign biz/support/demos and confirm it plays how do i rotate a landscape video for portrait playback? you can rotate mov & mp4 videos easily with quicktime pro open the video you wish to rotate click the window menu and select show movie properties select the video track choose visual settings rotate the video save or export the video as h 264 why am i getting an "access denied" error when uploading to bsn? if you see the error, "access to the path 'content' is denied ", then you need to update your brightauthor software this error only occurs with brightauthor releases older than 2 0 0 42 please download the latest brightauthor from the downloads http //www brightsign biz/downloads/ page why is brightauthor 2 3 0 57 not responding when using local file networking? there is a known issue with brightauthor 2 3 0 57 where occasionally brightauthor stops responding if it’s unable to discover a player that is set up to use local file networking this can happen when you either go to the publish > local file networking tab or when you go to the manage > local file network tab try quitting and reopening brightauthor if the player is no longer listed, you can add it manually by clicking the add button in the publish > local file networking tab or the manage > local file network tab try manually assigning the ip address of the player during the unit setup process and uninstalling all instances of bonjour on your pc you can then add the brightsign manually using its ip address https //support brightsign biz/hc/en us/articles/218066087 how do i create a video wall using brightauthor? this article describes an old (though still valid) method for creating video walls see this faq https //support brightsign biz/hc/en us/articles/218067417 which synchronization option should i use for an up to date list of options for creating a video wall in this method, each player plays a file that is a single part of the wall you will need to partition the original video file before playback for example, if you have two screens, then you would split the video into two equal sized clips you will need to create a master brightauthor project, as well as a slave project for each other piece of the video wall the master unit sends a signal each time it plays a video to keep the other in sync the attached pdf file contains step by step setup instructions this video http //www youtube com/watch?v=p955vrnqn1w\&feature=relmfu shows the 2011 digital signage expo entry arch the entry way contains 19 52" displays mounted in landscape and portrait controlled by one master unit and 18 slave units as you can see, the 19 videos are played in sync multi player sync instructions pdf https //support brightsign biz/hc/en us/article attachments/205899897 (1 mb) can i display html5 in portrait mode in brightauthor? this method only applies to old brightsign players and software since portrait setting in brightauthor covers this now here are a couple of things to do when you are designing html5 for portrait for publish from brightauthor (ba) in your web authoring software (i e , dreamweaver), make sure you set your page up for 1080 x 1920 (the reverse of landscape 1920x1080) if you publish this as is, the page will not display correctly when outputted using ba in portrait mode to get it to display correctly, you need to rotate the whole page in dreamweaver this will not affect the authoring in dreamweaver – it will look just the same but when you preview it will rotate to get this rotate to happen, you need to encapsulate the whole body in a \<div> \</div> region step 1 author the page in 90 degree rotation (1080 x 1920) step 2 encapsulate all your body content between \<div> \</div> tags … html stuff… step 3 within the \<style> \</style> tags, add a webkit 90 degree rotation call \<style type="text/css"> \#mainbodystuff { position\ absolute; width 1920px; height 1080px; z index 4; webkit transform rotate(90deg); webkit transform origin 540px 540px; } \</style> you can use other angles 270, 90, etc however, video will not work with these angels you will also need to align the div to top and left “0” step 4 in brightauthor, create a new presentation and set the monitor orientation to portrait then add your html file using an html state use brightauthor 4 3 0 x or later when setting the monitor orientation to portrait earlier versions of brightauthor may cause undesirable scaling in html pages when set to portrait mode #mainbodystuff shouldn't have any spaces for example, using "# mainbodystuff" will fail to rotate content