My boss bought some Digital Signage boards and told me to program them.
That is when I found out that Magic Info Express is the MOST FRUSTRATING program ever.
***** THE PROBLEM ******
Like others, I would make a template, save it once or twice and then never be able to save it again because of an unexplained error. I had to reconstruct templates over and over from scratch due to a simple typo or a minuscule design change. It was maddening.
To compound the problem, when I would schedule it, sometimes nothing would come up or the templates would not rotate.
Finally in desperation to solve the problem, I tried to find the files and change permissions on the folders (which did not work) Looking through the files I saw the templates were being saved as .PNG files It dawned on me that MagicInfo is really just a photo editing program kind of like Microsoft Publisher.
********* HOW I SOLVED THE PROBLEM *******
It turns out the PNG files are too big for the signage to handle.
1. What I ended up doing was making a template.
2. Then I would press the PREVIEW BUTTON
3. It would display the template and I would hit the ALT & PRNT SCRN button on my Windows PC.
4. That takes a screen shot of the template.
5. I then opened MS PAINT and pasted the picture.
6. I cropped everything out except the Template.
7. I saved the picture as a .JPG in the picture folder Magic Info Express (M.I.E.) uses.
I did this process for multiple templates
Then I left paint and went back into M.I.E.
I chose the template with only a single large picture
I pasted the PICTURE OF THE TEMPLATE into the picture square
I added additional template pictures and answered YES when it asked if I wanted to make a slide show and not replace the picture.
I setup how many seconds I wanted each picture to show for.
I press save and setup a schedule for my picture template and sent it to my TV/Signage.
IT WORKED and has continued to work for the past 3 weeks. Even with multiple updates.
**** HOW I CHANGE MY TEMPLATES ****
I have to update my templates every now and then.
I use all those templates that I could never save again as the basis of my changes.
I edit them until I get the product I want. Then I just hit Preview and screen shot the new changes and follow the steps above.
I never bother to try and save the templates, which makes me less frustrated.
*** MY THOUGHTS ***
When I first tried programming Magic Info Express I Was SOOOO frustrated I swore I would never buy another sign from Samsung. Now that I figured out this work around, they are really pretty neat Sign Boards. Hopefully the Samsung programmers will take my idea and use it to make a better program/product. Even more hopeful, they give me a Digital Signage board for my personal use for figuring out how to make their product usable.
*** For MAC users ***
I tried MIE for both PC & MAC. It stinks on both platforms. You can use the same hack by following the preceding directions and pressing CMD + SHIFT + 4 together instead of SHIFT-PRT SCREEN. Paste into a Photo program and save it as a JPG. All the other steps are the same.