There are many ways to use Nod. The intention of this article is to provide a recommendation for how to configure content according to an example scenario you may have.
Scenario
- You have multiple screens and you wish to display the same content
- Your content is managed into a set number of slots (e.g. 6 slots)
- Slots are cycled evenly, i.e. content is displayed for an even amount of time and is shown the same number of times in a time period
- Content in each slot is changed on a cycle (e.g. weekly)
Recommended configuration in Nod
1. Set up a single playlist in Nod which will contain the content aligned to your slots. You might label it according to the types of screens / location which this content is relevant to (e.g. retail or reception). Help on creating playlists can be found here: Creating your first playlist
2. Assign your playlist to the relevant screens. Help on assigning screens can be found here: Assign your new playlist to your screen
3. Add content to the playlist according to each slot available in your cycle, you may choose to name the content with the slot number so that it is easy to identify each slot or you can visually check the number of pieces of content in the playlists. Help on adding content to your playlist can be found here: Adding content
Note: We would recommend including a unique/identifiable element in the content title so that it can be differentiated in other areas of Nod. For example, if you are viewing the playing history or frequently used assets. Additionally, if you are directly uploading content into your playlist, the name you choose will be retained as the title in your Content Library, and you may not want to end up with all your content named "Slot 1"!
4. You want each slot to be played evenly, therefore when adding content to the playlist you want to set the Image Duration to be the same for each (e.g. 20 seconds) and you should set the Priority as the same (e.g. Normal). Increasing/decreasing the priority for one will increase/decrease the number of times a piece of content is played in a time period, compared to others according to their priority.
5. In this scenario, each piece of content in your playlist represents a slot. Therefore, if a piece of content needs to be changed, you would delete the existing piece of content from your playlist and upload / add the new piece of content.
6. You can also set up future slots by adding content with start and end dates which match the correct dates for your content cycle. By default, Nod will display the current content so that your view is focused. You can check for future or past content by selecting "Not yet active" or "No longer active" from the drop down shown in the screenshot below.
A note on play order when adding multiple playlists to screens
If you add multiple playlists to a screen and all your content is added individually to the playlist, Nod will mix the content. For example if you have two playlists with two pieces of content, the order played on the screen would be:
| 1 | Playlist 1 | Content 1 |
| 2 | Playlist 2 | Content 1 |
| 3 | Playlist 1 | Content 2 |
| 4 | Playlist 2 | Content 2 |
| 5 | Playlist 1 | Content 1 |
| 6 | Playlist 2 | Content 1 |
| etc. | ||
If you want the content in playlist 1 to be played in order, the content needs to be added as a group and you should select the group playback mode to be "Play all assets in sequence".
Assuming Playlist 2 content is uploaded individually (or with the Group Playback Mode set to "Play one asset per loop"), this would result in the following play order:
| 1 | Playlist 1 | Content 1 |
| 2 | Playlist 1 | Content 2 |
| 3 | Playlist 2 | Content 1 |
| 4 | Playlist 1 | Content 1 |
| 5 | Playlist 1 | Content 2 |
| 6 | Playlist 2 | Content 2 |
| etc. | ||
Note: Adding content as a Group can only be done by uploading content into the playlist directly (by dragging & dropping into the playlist, or select the "Upload Files" option from the Add Content drop-down on the playlist tab), it cant be done when adding content from the Content Library.