Hyper Media Director

From SpinetiX Support Wiki

Introduction

Hyper Media Director ("HMD") is a commercial software application from SpinetiX which simplifies the creation of digital signage projects and the deployment of these projects on Hyper Media Players, allowing you to achieve professional results quicker than ever. You can also use HMD to monitor and manage your network of HMPs.

The latest version of Hyper Media Director is 2.2.4 and it can be downloaded for free from SpinetiX website: http://www.spinetix.com/hmd/download.

You need to log into your account or register for an account in order to be able to download the installer file.
Any version of HMD (including the trial one) must be activated before it can be used.

Features

The main features of Hyper Media Director are:

Authoring (editing) and Previewing Hyper Media projects (you can use either simple drag and drop functions for basic design or more advanced editing using XML Tree View).
Scheduling Hyper Media projects.
Publishing of Hyper Media projects.
Monitoring and management of Hyper Media Players (see Device discovery).

These and many other features are detailed in the HMD User Manual.

Versions

There are two versions of HMD: Lite (also referred to as "Standard") and Professional (also referred to as "Pro");
The installer for both versions is identical, the features available to each version are determined on the license activated within the software. To switch from one version to another, just enter the new license key and activate it (there's no need to re-download or to reinstall HMD).
Only one instance of HMD can be installed on a computer concurrently and that instance will be available to all the users registered on that computer.

HMD Lite

HMD Lite is the version obtained by default after installing HMD.
Management of a maximum of 10 devices
It contains all the features, except the "Pro" ones (read the HMD User Guide for more details).

HMD Professional

HMD Professional has more features than HMD Lite, like:

Management of unlimited number of devices.
Fusion integration:
- Fusion Elements - allows for layers from HMD projects to be editable within Fusion.
- Creation of Fusion Style packs, Fusion Skins and Fusion Templates.
Publishing directly to a Shared Project on a WebDAV server (ideal to use in large Pull Mode deployments).
Javascript debugger integrated in the developer console.

Note: more features will be added in the future releases.

Licenses

This section has been moved to a separate page - please see HMD license.

System requirements

Operating Systems

PC Operating System: Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, Windows 7 SP0 or later.
- Windows Server operating systems are not supported, but may work (see the notes below).
- Other operating systems, like MAC OS or Linux OS are not supported.
- Please note that while the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 can be used to run HMD, only 32-bit builds of HMD are supported at this time.

Recommended Hardware

Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon or newer processor that supports SSE2.
512MB of RAM.
200MB of hard drive space.
Graphic card with support for DirectX 9.0c or later.

The specifications required to run HMD depend heavily on the content of your project. If you are running a project with multiple videos, for example, HMD will not be able to render smoothly if your PC is not capable of playing multiple videos independently.

Notes for Windows Server and terminal services:

Windows Server 2008 has a known issue with Powerpoint conversion whereby the Powerpoint Viewer crashes on startup.
Many Servers have very limited graphics capability and poor DirectX support. If you see errors such as "D3D9 Backend not used" when starting HMD, change the "Viewer Backend" under the HMD Settings menu to "Image", to avoid repeated messages. Performance will be less than optimal.
Terminal services, Citrix and VNC are technically compatible with HMD but often graphics acceleration is not available with such software so the experience will be less-than-optimal, especially when using complex graphics and video.

Notes for Mac OS:

The Mac OS is not supported, however you can use Boot Cam that lets you run compatible versions of Microsoft Windows on an Intel-based Mac.

General Hints

Finding logs and config files

HMD stores all the logs, configuration files, streaming captures and crash dump in the 'Local Application Data' folder. This folder can be located using:

Vista/Win7: %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpinetiX\HMD
XP: %APPDATA%\Local\SpinetiX\HMD
Alternatively you can use the command shell:Local AppData in any OS.

Resolution and Aspect ratio

When creating a new project in HMD, you can choose a predefined format (aspect ratio) which will be applied on the default index file created inside it.
When creating a new SVG file inside a project, you can choose a predefined format (aspect ratio) or choose "Custom" and specify it in the form of a resolution (width and height).
The resolution is only used for positioning elements inside the svg container and it's not the actual digital output resolution (set from Display settings).
- You can use whatever resolution and, as long as the aspect ratio is kept, the result will be the same on the screen - for example 128x72, 1280x720, 1600x900 or 12800x7200 will look exactly the same on the screen.
- The resolution is not important when working with SVG as content will simply be scaled to the size of the output frame (i.e. the screen(s)). However it is important to decide on and set the aspect ratio you will be working with for your project - mixing different aspect ratios will result in a project that is difficult to manage.

Troubleshooting HMD

Also see Troubleshooting HMD Templates

Error: <file name> is not a valid Windows Executable.
- The executable is corrupt, usually by a broken download from spinetix.com. Clear your browser's cache and download again.

Error after installation of new version: "The procedure entry point raptor_parse_chunk could not be located in the dynamic link library libraptor.dll."
- The old version of HMD has not been properly uninstalled, and some older files have been left in the Program Files folder.
- Uninstall any and all versions of HMD, delete everything in the \Program files\SpinetiX\HMD folder, then try installing HMD again.

"This application is going to terminate because of an unexpected error". Unexpected crashes such as this can be caused by a number of issues. Please try the following steps before contacting support:
- Ensure you are using the latest HMD version.
- Ensure your PC is running the latest graphics drivers. The majority of HMD issues of this type are caused by graphics problems.
- Note if a particular file or action causes the error consistently.
- Temporarily change the resolution on your PC and see if this changes the frequency of the problem.
- If your project is in a network location, copy the project to a local folder such as c:\temp
- Run dxdiag.exe to check that you are using DirectX 9.0c. Press the "Save all information" button and send this file to support, along with the crash.dmp file which is located in the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpinetiX\HMD\ (if using XP: "%AppData%\Spinetix\HMD")

When connecting to an HMP, HMD returns "This version of HMD can only manage local resources.".
- There is a Proxy (or a firewall, or a router) between the PC running HMD and the HMP. When trying to connect to the port 81 of the HMP, the Proxy (or the firewall, the router) returns an HTML page with some error. This is not an answer from an HMP, so HMD treats it as a remote WebDAV server and returns this error.
- There is a Proxy or a Router between the PC with HMD and the HMP. The proxy changes the header of the response from the HMP. In this case HMD no longer recognize the player has been an HMP and returns an error.

When entering a html web page URL as a source (in the URI field for media layer or as a feed source), nothing is displayed - please see Web content page for details.

Components

Languages

Earlier versions of HMD used language packs which could be installed separately. Since 2.1.0 version, HMD has all its available languages installed by default (with the main application). The language will be selected automatically based on your system settings.
If HMD is starting in the wrong language, please check in Windows Control Panel > Region and Language, that "Format" is set appropriately - often system have the location set correctly, but not the format locale.

HMD is currently translated in the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese.

Bonjour

At the end of the HMD installation, two additional programs from Apple Inc. are installed: Apple Software Update and Bonjour.
- These programs are installed as part of HMD and the installation cannot be skipped or the programs removed.
- If needed, you can disable the Bonjour Service afterwards from your system services console - in this case device discovery will stop working.
- If for any reason, Bonjour is not correctly installed, HMD will not going to start - you will get an error message saying "hmd.exe - Unable To Locate Component" and "This application has failed to start because dnssd.dll was not found ...".
  - If reinstalling HMD doesn't fix the problem, then download and install the Bonjour Print Services standalone application from Apple website.

PPT2SVG

PPT2SVG is a command-line tool supplied with HMD for File import of SWF and Powerpoint (PPT & PPTX) files. Due to licensing restrictions it is not available to be installed separately; you can however use the command line version (in the Program Files folder of HMD) without activating HMD.