Branding Player for XPression

Owned by Georg Hentsch
Last updated: Feb 25, 2022 by Danny Ljubisic
3 min read

Branding Player is used to show branding graphics in the form of bugs and snipes. All bugs and snipes are called assets and are defined in Flow using templates that have been published into the Chameleon database.

After launching Branding Player, you can optionally set preferences. This is where your Chameleon credentials are entered:

Followed by a dialog to choose automation options:

Here you can define all the automation commands and set com and ip ports. After clicking ok, Channels and XPression options can be selected:

The Co-Channels make it possible to select channels which can be used for branding programming on other channels. The XPression options provide a way to define the program and preview channels as well as specifying how layers work. Both the templates and logos directories are defined here too.

On the main tab of the Branding Player, we can view the program schedule. There are also tabs for showing/triggering bugs, snipes and manually triggering assets.

Branding Player supports a single program and optional preview channel. It uses ip connections for sending branding commands and automation commands. It also supports connecting directly to a com port for automation. The 2 ip connections are:

  1. branding port - Acts as an ip server for clients to connect to the Branding Player for sending branding commands. This is the way Flow triggers assets. It’s also how the Branding Master triggers commands. The ip port is defined in Flow on the Branding Players page. Any platform that can send commands over ip can be used to communicate with the branding connection. For example, Ross Video’s Dashboard can easily integrate with the Branding Player using this connection.

  2. automation port - If there’s a requirement to trigger assets using automation, an automation ip connection can be used. Branding Player can be the client or server for an automation connection. While branding commands are fixed, automation commands can be defined in the Branding Player.

Branding Player supports XPression-based GPIs beyond the automation triggers for going on/off air. It’s also possible to map GPIs to execute branding commands. This can be defined in the GPI Maps form which is opened from the File->GPI Mapping… menu item:

This simply causes branding commands to be executed whenever a GPI is triggered. There are no limits on how many can be defined or how many can be defined on a single GPI.

 

Refreshing Assets

The branding player automatically refreshes the assets every 5 minutes. If you make a change and want to see it right away, you can trigger an immediate refresh of the assets using

  • Branding Player for XPression - File Menu - Refresh Assets

  • Branding Command: <refresh assets>