How I finally got Magic Info Express/Samsung Signange to FINALLY Save & Work

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Offline DashingDaryl

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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.

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Offline RACH

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Brilliant work!  But it is still Mickey Mouse with the screenshots, Paint editing, etc.  The program should just work.  I love you figured out the png file size is too large, and the Slide Show idea instead of scheduling each is a brilliant idea.

I've been working with Samsung on this issue I will send your findings to the guy I'm dealing with.

Great job!

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Offline richardmc

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Hey

I'm looking for  a solution which is similar to this but is automated.  Have you found anyway that the screenshots could be automatically taken  ie scheduled for every hour and stored and used to display?