This info-beamer code allows you to play a playlist containing videos and images on multiple identical screens that are arranged in a grid. Content will be scaled automatically to fill the complete combined area available.
So if you provide four screens arranged in a 2x2 grid, each of them will display a quadrant of the videos/images.
It will automatically synchronize the playback without additional tools required. Just start info-beamer on each Pi and all devices will start all videos/images at the same time.
Setting up a giant video image wall will be trivial.
Each device has to have the exact same playlist. The playlist is specified in the file playlist.txt. An example playlist (without the assets required to play it) is provided as playlist.example.txt.
Each line in the playlist.txt file must contain a single image/video filename and its play time in seconds. A comma seperates the two values.
The file type is determined by the file extension. Currently videos (mp4) and images (png/jpg) are supported. Unrecognized file extensions will result in an error.
Make sure that you copy all referenced images and videos as well as the playlist.txt file to all devices. The file must be identical on all devices, otherwise synchonization won't work.
info-beamer expects the file settings.json in the current directory. An example settings file is provided in settings.example.json. Make sure all devices use the same settings.json file.
It must be a valid json file and should look like this:
{
"audio": true,
"grid": {
"width": 2,
"height": 2
},
"rotation": 0
}
The grid values sets up the grid of screens. In this example it sets up four monitors are arranged in a 2x2 grid.
If you provide a rotation value, you can specify how all monitors are rotated. The default value is 0 which means no rotation. Use 90 to show all content rotated clockwise, etc.
The resolution of all monitors (as well as their physical size) must be identical. Otherwise things will probably look wierd or wrong.
The audio boolean value decides if videos should generate audio output. By default info-beamer uses the analog output of the Pi.
If you want HDMI audio instead of using the analogue audio
output, set the INFOBEAMER_AUDIO_TARGET=hdmi environment
variable before starting info-beamer.
On each device, start info-beamer like this
INFOBEAMER_ENV_GRID_X=<x> INFOBEAMER_ENV_GRID_Y=<y> info-beamer .
where <x> and <y> is the position of the screen inside
the defined grid in settings.json. The top left screen is at
x=1, y=1.
It might take a moment before playback starts. You'll see a countdown in the bottom left corner.
Once playback started, you can update the playlist by adding all required assets and then replacing the playlist.txt file. It will again take a moment before playback with the new files starts.
For a perfectly synchronized playback, make sure that each device has a good time source. For best results connect all devices using Ethernet and provide a local NTP server.
The screen.width / screen.height options in the settings.json files have been removed as they seem rather pointless as it doesn't make sense to use anything other than the native resolution.