Filed under: Software, Video, WWDC
WWDC Demo: Videro, a digital signage tool for Macs
Videro is one of those silent-but-cool application suites you've probably never heard of, but you may see it being used every day. I met some of the Videro team at WWDC, and they were happy to demo a little of what the tools do: electronic signage and interactive kiosks. If you happen to need an animated in-store (or museum) display, fed from a server, easy to set up and deploy, complete with iPhone access to check on the servers (so they say), then Videro is an impressive tool.
To start, Videro has a composition tool that allows you to drag and drop your animations, complete with images, video and audio. In fact, Videro has extensive in-app tools for cropping, rotating and otherwise "fixing" your assets for display. But wait, there's more! This isn't just Keynote all gussied up. Videro is designed for business, and a server application makes sure mission-critical displays are functioning properly. There's solid asset management support both in the client and the server applications, making sure your displays never fire off with a dreaded "black box of nothing" where a product shot should be.
Videro mentioned an iPhone app in the video but I have been unable to locate it in the store and a search on their website revealed nothing. Still, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to provide some baseline stats via password-protected web app. We weren't able to get Wi-Fi at our location, so some features weren't visible and this might have been one of them.
Unfortunately Videro's site mentions nothing about price. In my experience that means we're talking about an expensive solution, and likely a custom one for the high-end customers. If you're looking for something simpler, don't miss Dave's excellent post about using Keynote and Dropbox to create an updating and easy presentation solution that would work in a pinch.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hal2k said 3:24PM on 6-29-2009
Hi,
Some folks here at North Carolina State University developed an open source based billboard system that we use for our own digital signage on campus. It uses a webkit derived browser that talks to a web based application. You can use any old stock mini connected to a display, or of course run it in a web browser. In other words, it requires the bare minimum of software to be installed on the Mac, and is entirely managed through the web application.
http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/billboard/admin/help/
I didn't have anything to do with developing it. A developer here wrote a screen blanker for the Mac that would show web pages, and I realized it could be used for digital signage. Smart people took it from there.
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Benedikt Terhechte said 6:09PM on 6-29-2009
Hey,
this is Benedikt from VIDERO. First of all thanks for posting the info regarding our app!
I'd like to add some additional information that wasn't mentioned in the article (as we forgot to mention it during our brief demonstration).
Website: First of all I have to explain that we've mostly been tackling the B2B market so far which is why our internet site is heavily optimized on big enterprise solutions. We recently build a new, international, site to accommodate for the fact, that our customer segments broadens. The site lacks some final touches, but we were overwhelmed with WWDC aftermath (actually just staying away from work for one week shouldn't result in such a devastating email inbox :-) ). However, all the information is there. Additional text, photos and videos.
http://signage3.videro.com
iPhone App: We're currently adding some final iPhone OS 3.0 touches and expect to submit the app to the App Store within the next week. So far we were able to give it to our customers via adhoc, but that's slowly getting out of hand, so the next version will end up on the app store.
Alternative Software: VIDERO is a mature software that has been in development and deployment for over 5 years now and has constantly been optimized. We worked hard to get every inch of power out of Quicktime, WebKit, or Flash in order to allow or customers to get maximum framerates when composing breathtaking compositions. Even on Mac Mini hardware. In addition to that, we've invested hours upon hours in order to design a very functional and usable user interface so that it's as easy as possible for our users to create, edit, and deploy new content. Thus, while there might be alternative software, it's hardly as efficient and usable (at least from my point of view ;-)
Prices: In B2B prices are often something discussed with upper level management, which is why they're currently not available online. However, as we plan to change this anyway, I'll give you the scoop right now. One license for the complete package is $899. For 10 machines it's $799 per machine, in addition to that, there's a $19 monthly fee if you intend to use the server in order to monitor your machines (there's also a sever license you can buy and put into your cellar, but that would go beyond the scope right now.
If you have any more questions, feel free to contact us via our contact form or directly at info@videro.com
Greetings,
Benedikt
VIDERO AG
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Victor Agreda Jr said 6:47PM on 6-29-2009
Thanks for the added info!
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z3r0bit said 8:31PM on 8-12-2009
I would recommend sedna presenter it powered Macworld:
http://www.sedna.de/
$599 for the client
$599 for the scheduler
Free unlimited updates. Much more advanced Videro looks like its in infancy and trying to chase sedna.
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