Elector Player for XPression

The BL Elector Player for XPression is an output tool that outputs graphics using Elector database elements created using Ross' XPression Studio or XPression Designer. You will need to use the Elector Gears for XPression tool to synchronize the graphics package data with the available election data and playlist information in the Elector database. The Elector Player can output individual scenes or entire Playlists of ordered, scheduled scenes created in the Elector Playlist Builder module in Flow.

Access Elector Player for XPression

To access the Elector Player, run it from its desktop icon.

Database Connection

You need to connect the Elector Player to your Elector database. You will need a URL to an Elector Flow instance that is setup to work with the particular Elector database for your current needs. You will also need a user id and password for Elector Flow as well as a user id and password for access to the database itself. The Elector Flow instance will provide the information regarding the Elector database to connect to.

Use caution when modifying these values. Contact Bannister Lake Support for assistance.

1. To modify the database connection values, select File > Preferences.

2. Modify the Flow and Database connection values and settings as needed.

   1. As for the MySQL - Additional Parameters field, there is usually no need to put anything in it. However, in some cases, you may need to add the following parameters should the connection attempts be rejected:
      1. SslMode=None;
      2. AllowPublicKeyRetrieval=true;
3. Press the Test Connection button to first try out the connection to the database.

4. Click OK to save your changes.

XPression Projects

You will need to specify the location of the Projects Folder that is the root folder for the XPression Project folders. In each of the XPression Project folders, there will be the Project Files (XPF) that the Elector Player can use if selected.

1. To modify the Projects Folder location or the XPression Project files to use, select File > Preferences.

2. Modify the Projects Folder location as needed. You can also click on the Browse button (...) and select the folder from the dialog. Once the location has been updated, the list of available XPFs will be shown in the 'Projects to use:' list.

3. The Elector Player can use any number of the XPFs listed. Choose at least one of the XPFs listed.

4. Click OK to save your changes.

Access XPression

When you access the Elector Player, an XPression instance is launched, but the XPression Studio interface is hidden by default. You can make XPression available by selecting XPression > Show Expression GUI. Not applicable to XPression BlueBox.

Elector Player Logs

The Elector Player system log is available for troubleshooting purposes. Select Help > Show Current Logs. You can also clear the log file by selecting Help > Clear Current Logs.

Take Election Results to Air

Before you are able to show any election results on air, you have to decide how to setup the elections show package. The most common way is to setup display content that is intended to occupy most of the screen (fullscreen scenes) using at least 1 of the Playlist tabs in the UI shown below. The lower third content can be setup using another of the Playlist tabs.

Using the Playlist Tab

The Playlist tabs are used to display elections Playlists. These lists are composed and managed using the Elector Playlist Builder web module within Flow.

Elections Playlists are grouped into 'Bins'.  The most common usage for a bin is to identify who created the bin and/or what the playlists in the bin are about.

• Click on the Bin drop-down list and select from any of the available bins.
• Click on the Playlists drop-down list and select from the available playlists.

The grid should now show all the members of the playlist list as they were assembled in the Elector Playlist Builder.

Note that the contents of the Bins and their Playlists, as well, as the items of the selected Playlist can be refreshed from the database by pressing on the 'Update Playlists' button. The update can also be done periodically by enabling the 'Auto-Refresh Playlists every N seconds' option. 

Playlist Information Panel

The Item Information Panel shows the information that was set into the selected playlist item.  Depending on the item's scene type, the list of candidates shown are either set using the Elector Playlist Builder module in Flow (for a 'Candidate/Choice' scene)  or are obtained from the database directly in descending order based on the candidates' vote count (for a 'Riding/Area' scene). To learn more about scene types, go to the table on Scene Names in Elector Player Tags.

Note that by default the 'Image & Notes' tabs are hidden. To make these tabs visible, enable the 'Show Information Tabs' option in the 'Playlist Settings' section in the Preferences dialog. For more information on enabling this feature, see the 'Playlist Settings' section of the documentation on the General Settings Tab below.

This tab will show a larger version of the thumbnail of the selected Playlist item. If there are any notes entered for the Playlist, the panel on the right will display them. These notes are entered using the Playlist Builder module in Elector Flow and can be useful to communicate to the operator on what the Playlist items are or to convey some special instructions.

The Playlist Information Panel can be hidden if so desired. To hide the panel, click on the 'Hide Information Panel' button in the top right corner of the Playlist Controls Panel. To show the information panel again, click on the same button.

Playlist Items Grid

The Playlist Item grid shows the items that are contained in the selected playlist. To select an item, click any where on the row that defines the item's contents. An arrow on the leftmost column will appear indicating that the item is selected. The cell which was clicked on will be shown in an orange highlight.

The size of the thumbnails and also the heights of the item rows can be changed by selecting a different value for the 'Row Size' drop-down list in the Playlist Controls Panel. 

Playlist grid columns and their meaning:

• 'Output' - By default, an item is enabled for output when it is added in the Elector Playlist Builder in Flow.
  • The item can be disabled by left-clicking on the 'Output' checkbox which will clear the check mark indicator.
  • A disabled item will be skipped over when using the 'Play Playlist' mode (see the topic on Playlist Controls Panel below).
  • Note that items are disabled only for so long as the Elector Player is running. Once the Elector Player is shutdown or restarted, the 'Output' settings for the items are re-enabled once more.
  • To re-enable an item, click on the checkbox once more.
  • Tip: You can enable or disable all Playlist items at once by left-clicking on the 'Output' column header.
• 'Status' - Indicates whether the item is off-air, on-air or is cued up.
• 'Type' - Indicates what the item's scene type is, followed by the name of the scene. 
• 'Event/Region/Riding' - Indicates what the Event, Region and Riding that are being contested for.
• 'Content' - The first part indicates what page will be shown when taken to air and how many candidates can be shown at a time. The next part shows all the candidates that are in the race. If there are non-zero vote data, the candidates will be sorted in descending order based on their vote count.
• 'Thumbnail' - Shows a thumbnail of the scene as generated by XPression Studio. If the Live Thumbnail feature is enabled in the Preference settings, these thumbnails will be replaced every so often with ones generated using actual data available at the time of generation.

Playlist Controls Panel

The Playlist Controls Panel hosts a number of controls and buttons that are used to manage the play out of the items in the playlist. 

Controls (from left to right):

• 'Cue Selected' button - Used to cue up an individual Playlist item. This prepares the item for output by filling in scene with the current elections data from the database at the time of the cueing.
  • This button is only available if cueing is enabled for the Playlist in the Preference settings. See the topic on IP Command Settings for more details.
  • First, select the item that you want to be cued.
  • Then, click on the 'Cue Selected' button.
  • If the cueing operation is successful, the 'Status' LED for the item in the grid will change to show a yellow LED  or an orange LED  if the item is currently on-air.
  • Taking the cued item to air will show the scene with the elections data that was setup during the cueing operation.
• 'Take' button - Used to show individual Playlist item on output.
  • First, select the item in the Playlist grid.
  • Then, click on the 'Take' button. Note that the item's 'Output' status is ignored for this operation.
  • If the Take operation is successful, the 'Status' LED for the item in the grid will change to show a red LED. 
  • You can also use the hotkeys listed below the button (the Numpad+ key in the example diagram above).
• 'Clear' button - Used to clear any Playlist items that are showing on output. Also stops the 'Play Playlist' mode if active.
• On Air LED - The colour of the LED indicates whether any item in the Playlist is showing in the output or not.
  • Appears black if nothing is showing. 
  • Appears red if an item is showing. 
  • Note that there is also a squarish LED on the Playlist tab next to the label which also reflect the state of the On Air LED.
• 'Show Preview' button - Used to show a preview of an individual Playlist item.
  • First, select the item in the Playlist grid.
  • Then, click on the 'Show Preview' button.
  • If successful, you should see the preview output for the item appear on the XPression framebuffer designated for previewing purposes. See the topic on Preferences for more details.
  • If successful, the button's label will change to 'Hide Preview'. Click on this button again to clear the preview output.
• 'Play Playlist' button - Used to play all the items with their 'Output' status enabled in the Playlist one at a time, starting from the selected item.
  • The player will take the selected item to air and move the selection down to the next enabled item in the Playlist.
  • The button will change it's background colour and label to 'Stop Playlist' . Pressing the button again will stop the next item from being taken to air but the item currently on-air remains on-air.
  • After the number of seconds indicated in the 'Play every N seconds' control (6 seconds in the example above), the player will take the selected item to air.
  • If the looping button is enabled, i.e., showing with an orange background , the player will loop back to the top of the Playlist after playing the last item in the list.
  • If the looping button is not enabled, i.e., showing with the regular blue background , the player will stop at the last item in list.
• 'Row Size' drop-down list - Use to select the size of the Item thumbnails in the Playlist Items grid.
• Show/Hide Information Panel button - Click on this button to toggle between showing and hiding the Information Panel. 

Using the Tickers Tab

The Tickers Tab contains a variety of sections that enables a fair amount of flexibility in how a lower third can be shown. Even though the controls in this tab are targeted for lower thirds, you can still use them for any scene as long as the scene type is appropriate for each Ticker section.

Each Ticker section can be taken to air and also cleared individually by clicking on the associated 'Take' and 'Clear' button so long as there is a scene selected in the related drop-down list. You can also take or clear all selected Ticker sections together by first clicking on the checkbox controls to the immediate left of the Scene drop-down lists and then pressing the 'Ticker ON' or 'Ticker OFF' button. You can show a Preview of what the selected Ticker sections look like together by clicking on the 'Show Preview' button.

Each of the Ticker Section drop-down lists will only show specific scene types. For more information on what the scenes types are, please look at the Scene naming conventions in the documentation for Elector Player Tags.

• Bug Section - this section is intended for showing station bugs:
  • The drop-down list will only list scenes with names starting with 'Bug'.
• Background Section - this section is used for showing lower third backgrounds:
  • Only scenes with names starting with 'Background' will be listed in the drop-down list.
• Party Totals Section - this section is intended for showing a running seat count for the election parties for the current election event:
  • Only Party scenes will be listed in the drop-down list.
• Riding Results Section - this section is used for looping through the results of each riding/area in a selected region for the current election event.
  • The drop-down list will only show Riding/Area scenes.
  • When showing on air, the 'Pause' button will be enabled. Clicking on this button will pause the loop timer so that the output stays on the current riding.
• Breaking News Section - this section is used for showing a Breaking News crawl.
  • Only Crawl/Ticker scenes will be listed in the drop-down list.
  • When showing on air, the 'Refresh' button will be enabled. Clicking on this button will cause the crawl content to be cleared and restarted from the beginning of the breaking news items. This is useful for quickly showing new content in the assigned RSS feeds.
• News Section - this section is used for showing a News crawl.
  • Only Crawl/Ticker scenes will be listed in the drop-down list.
  • When showing on air, the 'Refresh' button will be enabled. Clicking on this button will cause the crawl content to be cleared and restarted from the beginning of the news items. This is useful for quickly showing new content in the assigned RSS feeds.
• Party Majority Section - this section is intended for showing the progress of each party towards reaching a majority lead in elected count for the current election event.
  • Only Party scenes will be listed in the drop-down list.
• Sponsor Section - this section is intended for showing Sponsors.
  • The drop-down list will only show scenes with names starting with 'Sponsor'.
• Widget Section - this section is intended for showing clocks or countdown scenes. (Available for Player v6.0.0.64 or later)
  • The drop-down list will only show scenes with names starting with 'Widget' or 'Time'.
  • When a scene is selected, the list of XPression Clock Widgets in the matching project will be listed in the 'Clock Widget' drop-down list.
    • Select the widget that is attached to the text object that you will be using to drive the timing display.
    • Once the widget is selected, the 'Start', 'Stop' and 'Set' buttons will be enabled.
    • Use the 'Start' button to start the XPression widget's activity (i.e., count-down or count-up). Note that the time is not reset and will simply start from where it was left off at.
    • Use the 'Stop' button to stop or pause the XPression widget's activity.
    • Use the 'Set' button and associated hh:mm:ss textboxes to assign a time value to the XPression widget. Note that if there are values in the hh:mm:ss textboxes when the Widget is chosen in the Clock Widget drop-down list and you press the 'Take' button, the time values will first be set automatically before going to air. This auto-set action will not be done between subsequent takes and clears. This auto-set action also won't be carried out for the first time after application launch if both the scene and widget settings are recalled from the previous session so it is best to set the time manually after an application launch.

Using the Fullscreen Scenes Tab

The Fullscreen tab is used for a couple of things. Firstly, you can set a common background for all scenes taken to air including the ones in any of the Playlist tabs and in the Fullscreen Scenes. The other thing is that you can use the Fullscreen Scenes as a means of taking any scene in an ad hoc basis or for testing out each of the scenes with data during the preparation stages of an elections show. You can also use the Fullscreen Scenes to loop through the results for a region's ridings (and event) much like what is done in the Riding Results Section of the Tickers Tab.

IP Commands

The Elector Player can also optionally respond to commands sent over IP. This feature is supported in Elector Player for XPression version 6.0.0.60 or later.

To enable this feature, please see the topic on IP Command Settings.

When this feature is enabled and connected to a command server, the following display should appear on the status bar at the bottom of the main UI (highlighted by the red rectangle). If the command server is not available or the Player fails to connect to it, a black LED will be displayed instead. The Player will continue attempting to connect to the specified server every few seconds.

Note that the commands only control play out and previews for Playlist items. If the Playlist is in auto-play mode i.e., the 'Start Playlist' button has been pressed for a particular playlist, IP Commands received that target the playlist will be ignored.

The following table shows the list of commands that the Player will respond to. Note that for all the following commands in the table, the '#' symbol indicates the Playlist number and should be a value between 1 and 4. The '%' symbol specifies the item number and should be a value that is between 1 and the total number of items in the specified Playlist. The '%' symbol can also be used to specify an item count depending on the command.

Preferences

A number of features and options for the Elector Player can be modified using the Preferences dialog. The dialog has the following tabs:

• Database & Templates Settings tab,
• Headshots Settings tab,
• General Settings tab,
• Live Thumbnails tab,
• XPression Settings tab,
• News Sources tab, and the
• IP Command Settings tab.

Database & Templates Settings Tab

This left portion of this tab is used for setting the Flow login and MySQL database access credentials. The right portion of the tab is used for choosing the XPression Projects that will be used by the Elector Player. The Logo Graphics folders can also be specified in this tab.

• For the Database section, please refer to the Database Connection section above.
• For the Projects section, please refer to the XPression Projects section above.
• For the Logo Graphics folder, specify or browse (...) for an existing folder within which should contain Party logo image files. In general, the party logos should be created as materials in the XPression Projects but additional party logo files can also be used if desired. For further information, please refer to the ^choice[#].party.media tag in this documentation: Elector Player Tags.

Headshots Settings Tab

This tab contains settings for controlling various Headshot options.

• Source Settings:
  • Get Headshots from BLADE - Select this option if the database is in the same system as the Player system or if your internet is very fast and there aren't too many demands on the database (i.e., not too many Flow users). With this option, no headshots will be cached in the system.
  • Get Headshots from Database - Generally this is the best option to use when you have the database setup on another system or if there are a fair number of Flow users. With this option, headshots can be optionally cached or temporarily saved on the system.
• File & Folder Settings:
  • Root Folder: specify or browse for an existing folder which the Elector Player will be used to cache the headshot images from the database. These headshot images are used to fill in the candidate headshots in the Playlist items or Fullscreen scenes.
    • Note that the headshots will actually be saved to a subfolder that is named after the database schema as setup in Elector Flow.
  • File Format:
    • When caching headshots, the files can be saved in a number of formats depending upon your needs (i.e., using those files as a source for Web uses, for example). As far as the Player is concerned, it doesn't matter what the file format selected is. 
    • Use 'Data Feed ID' as Party Codes - If enabled, the PartyCode portion of the filename will use the Data Feed ID instead of the Shortname of the party (as shown in the 'Manage Parties' page in Elector Flow).
• Missing Headshot Settings:
  • Enabling the 'Use Generic Image for Missing Headshots' will cause the Player to use the specified Generic Headshot file on output for any candidates that don't have an assigned image in the Elector Database.
  • Generic Headshot: specify or browse (...) for the image to use.

General Settings Tab

There are various options in this tab that control the format of some of the output as well as some options to enable, disable or modify some of the Player features.

• Log Settings:
  • Log Debug Messages - if enabled, additional messages are logged. Only enable this setting if directed to do so by the Bannister Lake support team. The additional debug messages can help track down any issues that may have arisen during operation.
• Riding Settings:
  • Show Riding Identifiers first - This option affects the Riding drop-down lists in the Player UI. if enabled, shows the ID of the Area/Riding first before the name of the Area/Riding. This can be useful in the Fullscreen Scenes group when attempting to locate a riding by it's ID in the Ridings drop-down control when a Riding scene is selected.
  • Show Incumbents first if 0 votes - This option affects output. For Riding scenes where there are no votes registered yet, the incumbent candidate is listed first followed by the other candidates sorted in ascending order of their last names.
  • Skip Ridings with 0 votes - This option affects the Riding drop-down lists in the Player UI. if enabled, Ridings that currently don't have any results yet will not appear in the drop-down lists. This is useful for looping through only ridings that have some results.
• Language Settings:
  • These settings affect output of Riding/Area names, Party names and abbreviations for non-main parties. This Elector Database supports up to 2 different language categories for names of Ridings, Parties and their abbreviations. This is only useful if you intend to broadcast in 2 different languages with the same Elector Database. Though the options are labelled as 'English' and 'French', in reality they can be any 2 languages.
  • 1 (English) - Selecting this option causes the Player to use names that are in the first category.
  • 2 (French) - Selecting this option causes the Player to use names in the second category.
• OTHER Party Settings:
  • These settings affect output of Party names, colours and abbreviations for non-main parties.
  • Group Non-main Parties as OTHER - This will group any non-main party into a single 'OTHER' party group. For Party scenes output, all non-main party values will be lumped together and displayed as belonging to the 'OTHER' party.
  • Set Non-main Party Candidates as OTHER - For Candidate/Choice and Riding/Area scenes, any candidate that belongs to a non-main party will be displayed as belonging to the 'OTHER' party on output.
  • OTHER Name & Code - By default, the OTHER party's full name is 'OTHER' and it's code (abbreviation) is 'OTH'. Name1 and Code1 will be used when the '1 (English)' Language setting is chosen. If the '2 (French)' Language setting is selected instead, Name2 and Code2 will be used on output. Modify these values to suit.
  • Colour - This setting specifies the OTHER party's colour and is used on output via the use of the ^choice[#].party.colour and ^choice[#].party.colourvalue tags. Please see Elector Player Tags for more details on those particular tags. You can type in the RGB values as a Hex string or use the Colour Dialog to chose the colour by clicking on the ... button.
• Bin, Playlist, Event, Region & Riding Lists Settings:
  • List Controls Allow Key Entry - This option affects the Bin, Playlist, Event and Riding drop-down lists in the Player UI. If enabled, all these lists will allow you to type in the textbox portion of the drop-down list to find matching entries. Otherwise, you will have to click on the down arrow of the list and scroll through the list of items to select an option.
• Playlist Settings:
  • Show Information Tabs - This option affects all Playlist Information Panel in the Player UI. If enabled, 
• Playlist Hotkey Settings:
  • These settings affect what the hotkeys for the associated Take, Clear and Cue actions are. They also affect the labelling of the hotkeys beneath each of their associated button controls.
  • Take hotkey - Default is the Numpad+ key.
  • Clear hotkey - Default is the Numpad- key.
  • Cue hotkey - Default is the Numpad. key.
  • Other hotkeys that can be assigned are: Enter, Numpad/, Numpad*, Ctrl Numpad+, Ctrl Enter, Ctrl Numpad-, Ctrl Numpad/, Ctrl Numpad. and Ctrl Numpad*.
• Playlist Cue Settings:
  • These settings affect the Playlist UI. Enabling any option shows the 'Cue Selected' button and hotkey label for the associated Playlist tab.
  • Enable the setting for the particular Playlist tab that you want cueing support for. Cueing a Playlist item is useful if the particular item's scene takes a long time to setup with elections data (e.g., like a map).
• Custom Candidate Settings:
  • These settings affect the output for the Candidate names when using custom tags. See the information on the ^choice.custom tag found in Elector Player Tags.
  • Elected - the specified text will be used as part of the candidate's name where indicated in the custom format string. By default, the string value is '[e]'.
  • Incumbent - the specified text will be used as part of the candidate's name where indicated in the custom format string. By default, the string value is '[i]'.
  • Acclaimed - the specified text will be used as part of the candidate's name where indicated in the custom format string. By default, the string value is '[a]'.
• Number Formats:
  • These settings affect the output of Seats for a Party, the Vote counts in a race and the Poll counts.
  • There are only 2 options available for showing count numbers.
    1. Numbers without commas as group separators. E.g., 1000000.
    2. Numbers with commas as group separators. E.g., 1,000,000.
• Vote Percent Sign Settings:
  • Show % - This setting affects the output of the % sign for percentage values like polls reporting or vote percentage.
    • The default option is Auto Detect. This means that if a text object in a scene contains text that has a '%' symbol in it, the output will also contain the '%' symbol.
    • The Never option means that the % symbol will never be shown on output.
    • The Always option means that the % symbol will always be shown on output.
  • Decimals - This setting affects the output of percentage values in terms of the number of decimals to show.
    • The default option is Auto Detect. This means that if a text object in a scene contains text that has a specific number of decimals in it, the output will also contain the same number of decimals.
    • 0 - 4: Shows the number of decimals indicated in the option.
• Party Logos Settings:
  • Use 'Data Feed ID' as Party Codes - This setting affects the output of Party Logos. If enabled, the party datafeed IDs will be used instead of the party abbreviations (i.e., codes) to determine what the name of the replacement XPression material (or image file) should be. See the information on the ^choice[#].party.media tag in Elector Player Tags.
• All Regions Name Setting:
  • Display as - This setting affects the Regions drop-down list as well the output of scenes that have a Region name when showing data for the entire region of the Elections event. If left blank, the output will also show as blank for the region.
• Timer Settings:
  • Use 10ths of seconds - This settings affects all timer controls in the Player UI. If enabled, you will be able to specify timing intervals with tenths of a second precision for any timed actions. Otherwise, only full second interval timings can be set.

Live Thumbnails Tab

The options on this tab are used to enable or disable the Live Thumbnails feature and to control the frequency with which the thumbnails are updated. You will also need to setup an existing folder for the Elector Player to save the thumbnails into.

XPression Settings Tab

The options on this tab are for setting up the XPression framebuffers to use for Previewing output for the various Player sections. You can use the same framebuffer if so desired as the layers of the items shown in the different sections should be different (as defined in the XPression Project TakeItem layer value for each of the scenes).

News Sources Settings Tab

Use the controls in this tab to set up RSS sources for the News and Breaking News crawls in the Tickers tab.

Although you can use any RSS feed as news sources, it is probably the easiest to use the Ticker Content module in Elector Flow to manage the content. From there, you can generate the URL for the RSS datafeed from the /wiki/spaces/EL/pages/2907537409 module.

• Add New Source - Click on this button to add a new row to the grid.
  • Type in or copy an RSS news feed URL.
  • Click on the tab key or the right-arrow key to move through the checkboxes on the right and select the appropriate options.
    • Title Only - on output, only show the content that is in the Title field.
    • Description Only - on output, only show the content that is in the Description field (i.e., the body of the news item).
    • Title and Description - on output, show the Title followed by a ' - ' and then the Description content.
  • Is Breaking News option - check this option if the RSS feed is for the Breaking News Ticker. Otherwise, the RSS feed will be used for regular News Ticker.
  • Enabled - check this option if the RSS feed is to be used for output. Otherwise the RSS feed will be ignored.
• Delete Source - Click on this button to delete the selected row in the grid.
• Delete All - Click on this button to delete all rows in the grid.
• Move Up, Move Down - Changes the position of the selected row in the grid. This will affect the reading order of the sources when the News/Breaking News Tickers are active - the ones on the top of the grid will be read and shown first.

IP Command Settings Tab

The options on this tab are used to enable or disable the IP Command feature and for setting up the connection to a Command Server.