BrightAuthor General FAQ

The Groups tab of BSN and the Manage tab in BrightAuthor show the following status colors:

• Green: The player has a presentation scheduled and has successfully communicated with BSN within a certain time period. You can customize how frequently the player connects to BSN:

  1. In BrightAuthor, go to the Manage > Status tab

  2. Right-click a player, and select Edit. 

  3. Under the Networked with BrightSign Network option, use the Content Check Frequency drop down menu to indicate how often you want the player to connect to the server.

• Yellow: The player has missed its last scheduled update. For example, if you set the player to update every 5 minutes, and it has been 6 minutes since the player last checked in for an update, then the color will have changed to yellow.

• Red can indicate a number of errors:

  • Connectivity: The unit has missed multiple update cycles. For example, the player is set to update every 5 minutes and it has not connected with BSN for 11 minutes.

  • Scheduling (Applies only to BrightAuthor versions 3.4 and earlier): No presentations are scheduled for the player. For example, if you have set up a unit, but have not assigned a presentation to it yet, then the color will be set to red.

  • Downloads errors: Either the player cannot download the current sync file, which is downloaded each time it checks in with BSN (you can see this by viewing the Error log in the Info window), or the player failed to download one or more files in a recently published presentation. You can see the download status of each file listed in the Download Progress window. Go to Manage > Status and right-click on a player name to access either the Info or Download window.

  • Errors: The system has crashed due to a script error, or attempts to write to the SD card have failed because the card is malfunctioning or is locked. You can see these errors by viewing the Error log in the Info window.

  • Subscription: The subscription for the player’s serial number has expired, and the unit has been suspended.  You can see the subscription status by clicking on the properties of a player.

The View Mode option in BrightAuthor allows you to determine how videos will be scaled to fit in a Video Only or Video or Images zone. This option has no effect if the video and the zone are the same size.

In regular BrightWall presentations, the View mode option applies to videos on individual screens the same as described above. In stretched presentations, the View mode option applies to the entire wall. The following descriptions apply to stretched presentations only:

• Scale to Fill: The video will be stretched over all screens in the video wall. If the aspect ratio of the video wall does not match the ratio of the video content, the video will likely appear stretched or distorted.

• Letterboxed and Centered: The video will not be stretched. Instead, it will appear at the center of the video wall at its original resolution, which may cover one or multiple screens. Areas of the video wall that are not filled by the video will display the background color of the presentation.

• Fill Screen and Centered: The video will be stretched to fit the height or width of the video wall (whichever length is lesser). If the aspect ratio of the video wall does not match the ratio of the video content, the video will be cropped.

When you created your BrightAuthor presentation, you chose the target player model for the presentation. If you select a player model that doesn't support a certain interactive input, then that interactive event will be unavailable (it will be greyed out in the playlist tool bar and will not appear in the events tab) when you switch to an interactive playlist.

Make sure to select the correct player model to see all available interactive options. 

If you are using the BrightSign Network, and you enabled the Upload Logs feature during device setup, then each log file is deleted as soon as it is successfully uploaded to your BrightSign network account. If you are not using BrightSign Network, logs are stored for 10 days for BrightAuthor version 4.6 and earlier, and 30 days for BrightAuthor version 4.7 or newer.

There are several ways to display 4K images in BrightAuthor versions 4.3.0.x and later:

• Add the image to a Background Image zone

• Use the 4K Image Plugin.

• Add the 4K images to a Data Feed and select Support 4K Images.

Displaying a 4K image will consume the 4K video decoder on the player, so you won't be able to display both a 4K image and a 4K video at the same time. Some newer player models support Full Resolution Graphics in certain output modes, which allows for display of images larger than 1920x1080 without consuming a 4K video decoder.