Xibo guide for digital signage

Preamble

Note: Designing your presentation

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This guide provides the steps needed to convert and display a completed Powerpoint presentation on the libraries' digital signage installations. For information regarding the design and creation of such a presentation, please see the Digital signage presentation design guidelines. That page also includes links to download the production-ready templates, with the correct aspect ratios and orientations for the various displays in the libraries.

Preparation

The Xibo software requires the presentation to be in video format to display correctly in all situations. This means that the prepared Powerpoint presentation needs to be converted before uploading it to Xibo. Luckily this functionality is already available in recent versions of Powerpoint. To convert your existing presentation, do the following:

Open your presentation (the file usually ends in .ppt or .pptx), and then click on the "File" menu in the top left corner, as shown below:

The File menu in Microsoft Powerpoint

Then choose "Save As", and select "Browse":

Choosing "Save As"

Now choose a location to save the file, give it an appropriate name and select "MPEG-4 Video" as the file type in the dropdown list. Now press save.

Note: Appropriate filenames

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Naming your presentations carefully is important since the Xibo server is shared between all the University libraries. As such, the following naming convention is recommended to reduce confusion:

<library>_<type>_<date>.mp4

where <type> can refer to any term used to differentiate presentations. For example:

JSG_LC_20180314.mp4

where JSG refers to the J.S. Gericke Library, and LC refers to the Learning Commons.

Selecting the "MPEG-4 Video" file type

Powerpoint will display a progress bar at the bottom of the window indicating the progress of the conversion process. This may take a minute, depending on the size/length of your presentation. The screenshot below shows an example of this progress indicator.

The conversion progress bar

Once the conversion process is complete, you may proceed to the next section.

Login to Xibo

Navigate to it-digitalsignage.stb.sun.ac.za and enter your credentials, as shown in the screenshot below:

The Xibo login form

Please see #Questions below if you have forgotten your password.

Upload a new presentation

To upload a new presentation, #Login to Xibo and open the Media menu on the left hand side, as seen in the screenshot:

The Media item in the sidebar

Then click 'Add Media' in the top right:

Adding new media to the library

The upload form will display as shown below:

Uploading files to the library

Now click "Add Files", and choose your converted presentation (the file should end in .mp4, and follow the <library>_<type>_<date>.mp4 naming convention discussed earlier). Once you have chosen the file, click on "Start Upload", and wait for the process to complete. This can take a few minutes depending on the size/length of your presentation. Once the progress bar has filled and the filename displays underneath the buttons, you can click "Done" to complete the upload.

Note: Deleting a file

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If you have uploaded the wrong file, search through the list of files to find yours (you may need to page through the items) and click on the triangle on the far right of the item, then click Delete.

After completing the upload, you are now ready to proceed to the next section.

Change the live presentation

After uploading your converted presentation, it is now available to use on a display (or group of displays).