If you wish to display a varied cycle of Content throughout your signage network, you can make a Playlist to publish to your Players instead of publishing Content like Campaigns one by one.
There are several advantages, such as better control of total playback duration, easily duplicating Content to ensure this one will be shown more often than others, and also arranging the playback order of Campaigns evenly by Category with the distribution function.
Categories are available for Campaigns and Playlists. Individual files and Compositions don't have a Category option yet.
1) Organize your Campaigns or other Playlists using Categories. Create several Categories to distinguish Campaigns according to their purposes. Create news, entertainment, advertising, and video categories, for instance. You can do that when editing or creating a Campaign.
2) On your HD2 TV account, select an existing Playlist or select “Playlist” from the New options to create a new Playlist.
2) Add as many Campaigns as you want to the Playlist Content box. At this point, the order does not matter. Note that how many times each Category was used is shown at the top of Playlist Content box.
3) Once you have inserted all Campaigns you want into the Playlist, select “Distributed by Category” in the Playback Order option.
4) Another dialog window will prompt requesting confirmation.
5) Now all Campaigns are neatly ordered without any Campaign from the same Category directly following one another each in the loop.
From now on, each time you drag a new item into the loop, it will be arranged evenly in keeping with the distribution.
When you modify the Campaign order, the "Distribute by Category" option will be disabled, but the current playback order will be kept. In case you want the next items added to also be distributed evenly according to their category, enable the option again.
6) Publish the Playlist to Players.
Important: After publishing the Playlist, the Campaign loop order won’t be modified if you change a Campaign’s category. The previous order will be maintained until you re-edit the Playlist after the Category modification.
This feature ensures your Player displays balanced content. Prevent the audience from being overwhelmed with advertising and losing interest in the screen.
HD2 TV Academy - Playlists
HD2 TV Academy - Create and Manage Playlists
HD2 TV Academy - New Playlist Layout
Expert Tips - Campaign and Playlists