Specifications
Remote Control
49
AMX InspiredSignage XPress Programming Guide
Remote Control Of Playback
The playback.svg template in the Interactivity template folder acts as a transparent container for a single media
file and lets you control its playback. Using this template, you can pause and restart any type of document
including animations, playlists and videos.
When to use remote control of playback
You can use it to control the main document or for individual media files. It supports the following operations:
Pausing and resuming playback.
Changing the current time position.
Synchronized control of the same media on multiple screens.
Control from multiple clients over the network and/or serial port.
How to use remote control of playback
The control is based on a shared variable, the default name of which is “playback”. In its basic usage, it takes
two values: “PLAY” or “PAUSE”.
For playback control on multiple screens or better resilience, an optional timestamp can follow the PLAY or
PAUSE string (FIG. 49). It is defined as the time position in seconds where playback should pause or resume.
This extra parameter enables unambiguous control over the timeline. If the variable is stored in a central
server, this lets you control the playing (or pause) time, even if the target device was off or has restarted in
between two commands. It also enables frame accurate synchronization of playback on multiple targets, as
well as control over the current time position.
The timestamp can also be specified as a relative percentage of the total duration of the media if followed by a
percent sign. For instance, to jump to the middle of the media, the value is: PLAY 50%.
Interactive pause/resume over TCP
To test the remote control, create a project based on the playback.svg template and drop a video media inside,
setting it to repeat indefinitely.
To pause the media, send the following command over TCP:
UPDATE "playback" "PAUSE"
To resume play back, send the following command:
UPDATE "playback" "PLAY"
Playback will pause, respectively resume, at the time the command is sent. Because of latency, the media may
appear to step back in time a fraction of seconds when pausing. This can be avoided entirely by specifying a
timestamp in the future for the variable update.
Interactive pause/resume using HTTP GET
You can control the published project directly from a browser using the HTTP GET interface. The following
example assumes that the device is using the 192.168.1.10 IP address and the default port (1234) for the
network port.
To interactively pause the media, type the following command in your browser:
http://192.168.1.10:1234/update?playback=PAUSE
FIG. 49
Playback control properties