This page was updated for Elementi 2025; the information below might not apply for older versions.
Overview
An Elementi project is a container for the multimedia resources, layouts, playlists, widgets, and settings used to build a digital signage presentation in Elementi. It allows you to create, preview, organize, and publish content for SpinetiX players in a structured and reusable way. Projects can contain local media files as well as remotely referenced content, and they use an index.svg root file as the main entry point for playback and publishing.
Working with a local project offers several advantages over editing content directly on a player. It lets you prepare and test content offline, publish the same project to multiple devices, archive projects for transfer or backup, and keep your work organized in a dedicated project folder.
This article explains how to create and manage Elementi projects, understand the role of index.svg, choose the right format and duration, copy an existing project from a player, and restrict access to specific parts of a project when needed.
Why work with projects?
Even though it's possible to modify the content of a player from Elementi M/X, working with a local project has several advantages, the most important being:
Sandbox / Off-line mode: Create projects off-line, preview them and keep modifying them without affecting the actual presentation being displayed live. When the content is finalized, it can easily be published on the target player(s).
Multi-target publishing: It's way faster to modify a project locally and then publish it onto multiple devices, than doing the same modifications on each individual player. This is especially useful in case of multiscreen projects.
This view shows projects and collections with large dynamic icons and names underneath. The project's icon is based on a generic icon, similar with the one on the right, with a snapshot of the content added on top; the snapshot is updated at every save of the root index file.
List View
This view shows two columns: “Name” (the name of the project/collection, preceded by a small generic icon) and “Type” (either collection or the project's model). Click on the column headers to order the list by that field.
To import a project into Elementi, drag the 7z archive file from the File Explorer and drop it into the "Projects" tab within the Browse panel. Or use the "Menu ▶ File ▶ Import..." option on the toolbar.
Projects folder on computer
When installing Elementi, a folder named "Projects" is created under "C:\Users\your_user\Documents\SpinetiX" and the built-in sample projects are automatically copied inside.
If you ever need to open this folder in the File Explorer, go to the “Projects” tab within the Browse panel, right-click on an empty area, and select the "Open folder in explorer" option. Or run the following command: shell:Personal\SpinetiX\Projects.
This is where Elementi looks by default for your projects, yet, this location can be changed using the “Menu ▶ Settings ▶ Projects/Assets location...” option. This creates another projects' repository, but note that the existing projects are not automatically copied when doing so.
Create a new project
To create a new project in Elementi, follow these steps:
Within the "New Project" dialog that opens, configure your project's settings (details below).
Click the 🆗 button to create the project. The newly created project contains a single file, index.svg.
New project folder gets created Double-click on the project's icon in the Browse panel to open it. Its index file is automatically opened for editing and preview.
Note:
For more details about how to add more elements to your project, see “My first Elementi project” tutorial.
Project settings
New Project dialog
The "New Project" dialog allows configuring the following project settings:
Name
Enter a distinctive name for your project.
If the name already exists, a digit will be added at the end. The following characters are not allowed in file names: ? * | : < > " / \.
The project's name can be changed later from the Browse panel; right-click on the project's icon, select "Rename", then type in a new name.
Model
Select the model of the player(s) that will render this project, from:
This parameter is used by Elementi during media import to ensure that the result is compatible with the target player. Players with similar capabilities are grouped together.
Feature Set
Select which Feature Set is activated on the target player, from:
This parameter is used by Elementi to enable or not certain features, such as HTML5, interactive content, multiscreen, network stream input, etc. This option doesn't apply for HMP300 and HMP350.
Color Gamut
Only for "iBX440 / 8K Partner Player" model, you have the possibility to select “HDR”, if you have an HDR-capable display. This option is disabled and defaults to SDR otherwise.
Select the project's format/aspect ratio according to the target screen(s). Some of the options below are enabled only for certain player models and/or Feature Sets.
The selected format is used by the root index file and proposed by default for any new layout created within the project. It defines the canvas (vectorial dimensions) onto which graphics elements are rendered, not the video output resolution (pixels) of the player. If the content format doesn't match the video output, it is scaled to the size of the output frame.
Multiscreen
This option is disabled and defaults to "Single screen" for most formats.
If a multiscreen format is selected above, then you get "One screen per player" by default.
Only for multi-output enabled players like iBX440, you can also select "One player with multiple outputs" or "Many players with multiple outputs" options.
Width, Height
This option shows the width and height of the viewport, according to the selected format. It is enabled only when selecting the “Custom” format, so you can specify the desired width and height.
These are vectorial dimensions, not pixels, although it's a good practice to align these values with the video resolution. What's important is to keep the aspect ratio; for example a project set to 128x72, 1280x720, 1600x900, 3840x2080, or 12800x7200 will look exactly the same on 16:9 screen.
Duration
Select the project's duration from:
"Indefinite" (the project is not time-limited)
"Automatic" (the project's duration is determined automatically during playback, based on the inner content)
some common durations (“0:00:30” to “0:05:00”)
or enter the project's duration as hh:mm:ss.
Notes
Some of the project's properties, such as model, Feature Set, color gamut, and cloud account, can be changed later, as follow: right-click on the project icon, select the "Project Properties..." option, and make the desired changes. This is however not recommended if you've already imported media files (Elementi won't recheck the media for compatibility) or used data-driven widgets (they must be reconfigured).
The project duration can be changed from the index.svg document properties.
Open a project
Elementi sample projects
To open an existing project in Elementi, follow these steps:
If you organize your projects into collections, navigate to the one where you want to create the new project.
Double-click on the project's icon in the Browse panel to open it. Its root index file is automatically opened for editing and preview.
Root index file
When a new project is created, it contains a single file, index.svg, that inherits automatically the project's properties. It is a multi-layer SVG document, like a master layout, and can contain layers or references to other layouts/playlists. When opening a project in Elementi, the root index file gets opened automatically for editing and preview.
This root index file serves as the entry point or the foundation of the project – the file that the player/Elementi uses to start, organize, and render other related files of that project. The name is case-sensitive and must be kept in lowercase. If it is missing or renamed incorrectly, the project cannot be published, nor rendered by the player.
Document Properties
The file properties can be modified by clicking on the icon from the toolbar. This opens the "Document Properties" dialog which allows configuring:
Format
Select the format of the document view box (which should match the format of the target screen).
Choose between some standard formats (16:9, 4:3, 16:10 etc.) or custom (in this case, enter the width and height).
Duration (see above)
Background
Enable this to add a background color to the document.
Copy a project from a player
To copy the project present on a player, follow these steps:
Within a multi-site deployment, the content management might raise some challenges - for instance, a content manager from a company headquarters would create and schedule the global communication, yet most often, the local branches would need to have their own local content included as well. This kind of situation is usually addressed through content delegation, however, in some cases, the HQ content manager might want to restrict the access to some parts of the project so that other users cannot overwrite it.
Depending on the level of restrictions to impose, there are three solutions:
Low level
User roles feature of Elementi M / X can be used to limit other users from editing / publishing the content. A user having editing role set to "Edit mode" is only able to change the content (e.g., images, videos, texts etc.) specifically marked as editable (within Elementi X), while a user with "Read only" cannot modify anything.
The downside of this is that the user can open the project location in Windows Explorer and delete or change the project files.
Medium level
The project is divided into two collections (folders), for instance "public" and "private", and you want other users to be able to modify only the public" part.
To achieve this, follow these steps:
Set a content password on the player(s) to avoid overwriting the entire content on the player.
Archive of the "public" collection and import it on the user machine.
Create a "Publish Location" for address http://Player_address:81/public/. Enter the username "content" and the password you set at first step.
The user will then publish his changes onto this location.
The downside of this is that the user can find that password under the Network Credentials and use it to overwrite the entire content.
High level
This is similar to the previous scenario, but scales better when having multiple players and also allows you to control when the content is published on the players. This requires a web server with WebDAV enabled. The players will retrieve the content using Scheduled Download / Pull mode.
To achieve this, follow these steps:
Create a skeleton project containing two folders, for instance "public" and "private", and publish it on your web server (e.g., http://Server_address/path_to_project/) using Publish Location feature. This will create the initial structure of your main project.
Create a second project that will be used to publish changes onto the "private" part of the main project. Use a second "Publish Location" pointing to the "private" folder (http://Server_address/path_to_project/private/).
On the user side, create a project that will be used to publish changes onto the "public" part of the main project. Use a "Publish Location" pointing to the "public" folder (http://Server_address/path_to_project/public/).
Troubleshooting
Project does not open in the last tab and / or nothing happens when you try to publish it.
That's because it is not recognized as a project by Elementi. Right click on its icon and set its type to "HMP*** Project".
Warning: using link 'project://...' will only work on this computer.
This warning message appears because a file was drag & dropped from another project directly into the current opened document, without copying the file into the current project. Since the URI to that file is relative, the file can be displayed only on that computer. If the project is published, the player won't be able to retrieve the file. The solution is to first copy the file into the current project folder and then drag & drop it into the current opened document.
Note:
icon from the toolbar. This opens the "Document Properties" dialog which allows configuring: