By now you can see how this will all come together. I created a layout, used a playlist to assign assets and time to my layout regions, and now I’m going to tell the system when and where to run these playlists.

The DCM is used to create a channel. During installation your MediaEdge players were assigned to channels (any number of channels may exist). You simply drop your playlist on the channel, date and time you want it to run. You can even set a 30-min- ute playlist to run all day. By selecting repeat, you can run the playlist over and over again for as long as you wish.

COMMIT

The final step is to commit MediaEdge resources to the task—that is, to publish your assets, layouts, playlists, and schedules throughout the network. Fortunately, the DCM does this in the background. The DCM will, without further intervention from me, send messages to the MediaEdge servers in my network informing them of the assets, layouts, playlists, channels and schedules they need to run. Each MediaEdge system will pull only what it needs from the FTP server, and run the programs as scheduled.

In most cases updates will be scheduled to take place at night, or on weekends, when network bandwidth is more available. If needed, you can force an update in real-time by selecting Update from the File menu, but you’ll need to allow sufficient time for everything (particularly video assets) to be moved into place.