Live feed system alternative

[Manngunner]

I am looking for a suggestion to improve a small system I have put forward at work.

This system is supposed to eliminate the current paper-based system where daily updates are collated on 10+ pieces of paper and then displayed at several locations.
My system uses one computer in the big wigs office, connected to the sites' closed-network, multi-casting a video stream to nodes around the work site.
The system uses a normal desktop PC to cast the stream through VLC. This PC will have a power point presentation looping through slides with relevant information.
The nodes are Raspberry Pi 2's picking up the stream and displaying it on big screens.

My question is: Is there a more bandwidth efficient programme as an alternative to streaming 1080p power point slides across the network? I'd prefer to keep using the Raspberry Pi as the node, but any small form-factor computer can work.

I attempted to google an alternative but found it hard to specify the problem in a google friendly way.

[DaveLembke]

At a workplace I worked at  in past we had a similar setup for casting information at multiple sites. The method I went with was web page on the intranet that had a javascript that would perform a reload once every 5 minutes. And since the information was rather small on the web page, all systems got and displayed the information on the large monitors without being bandwidth hogs.

Is there really a need to be casting a video stream?

The Powerpoint slides could be created into a HTML setup of pages and a simple javascript could loop thru the pages. The information your streaming seems static so its very wasteful of bandwidth to be casting it when there is no video content plating its just a slideshow.

[Manngunner]

This is why I wanted to change it. I couldn't think of an alternative to streaming.

I don't have much experience with HTML/CSS/Java so would have to do a little research myself.
The main thing with this casting system is that it had to be very easy for anyone to come along and edit information on the power point.
I've heard of dreamweaver and other programmes that make webpage design easier to do, but would it be easy enough for someone who wasn't trained to do?

I could be really wrong here but, I fear that now the big wigs have the user-friendly and familiar system, they might not take to something that requires more training.

Thank you very much for your help

[DaveLembke]

If your using MS Office to make your power point projects then you should be able to save as with option for HTML

This turns the Power Point into a Web Page format for a browser to be able to display it.

Javascript is best for displaying a web page for a certain period of time and then displaying the next group of pages with time delay and then loop back to page 1 again. With powerpoint creating the HTML version of the slideshow you might have it counting say 1 to 5 and back to 1 again to loop the pages with time delay and have to use Anchors in HTML to specify the focus area of within the HTML webpage to display. Anchors are when your at a single website that the page scrolls, and you click on a link at the top of the page it instantly moves your view to the middle of the page placed as intended by the web designers intent with a paragraph or picture or whatever is to be displayed.

Someone will need some basic HTML knowledge and would have to maintain this. However with proper skills a person could code up an easy interface for management to look over the powerpoint presentation and approve it and click submit and it updates and code adjusts dynamically to display the latest data but making up a dynamically updated system like that would need a skilled programmer/web designer.

Last and easiest to avoid Anchors, but still requires editing by someone in HTML with Javascript would be to take the sides from power point and each slide saved as a image file such as a png or jpg file. The javascript then counts say 1 to 5 and loops back again and it loads image 1 waits 15 seconds and then 2, 3, 4, 5 and back to 1. As long as the image files are named say 1.jpg or 1.png all the way to say 5.jpg or 5.png and these image files are located in the same directory that the web page that the javascript is running or correct full URL path given for access to that image file on the local intranet it will work pretty easily.


If your using Powerpoint 2010 see this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/980553

If you chose to save as images and go that route check out your save as selection. JPG and PNG are listed. JPG will be a smaller file, but not as sharp as PNG. With large displays you probably want PNG if you go this route.






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[Manngunner]

Ah brilliant, this would give me something to sink my teeth into.

For the moment, the network backbone for this system isn't utilized for anything other than this video feed system.
Given this I am inclined to leave it like this for now and mention to my bosses the better system which we will have to move into.
Hopefully they will take it on board and maybe even send me away for some training

Thank you very much for your help.

[Geek-9pm]

Here is another link for the Power Point presentation over Network.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Broadcast-your-PowerPoint-presentation-to-a-remote-audience-25330108-518E-44BE-A281-E3D85F784FEE

Normal MP4 video eats up bandwidth due to high frame rate require.
Thee are a number of low bandwidth low frame rate presentation packages. A visual presentation with a very low frame rate is called a "presentation manager."
WINK is presentation thing as a alternative to PowerPoint.
And there are many others out there.
http://www.customshow.com/best-powerpoint-alternatives-presentation-programs/

Presentation software is great, but we know there are plenty of options to choose from.  Some have their advantages and disadvantages while others are perfect for a certain audience.  We’ll examine the presentation maker programs we believe would be great and even the ones that may not be but could still be another viable solution.

Hope that is of some help.   

[Manngunner]

Ah excellent! Another option to keep things simple!
We have just upgraded to Office 2010 so this could be the answer to my prayers.

Thank you very much

[Geek-9pm]

Other notes:
Many presentations tools are  some form of Adobe Flash.

And the GIF format has an animation option. One can alter frame rate and  set transparency y of nice low-rate  animation effects.

[DaveLembke]

Additionally if it remained run casted from powerpoint you can have embedded videos in it playing in sized window areas, but that would bring you back to the bandwidth problem unless you had dedicated systems get a single download of the latest powerpoint and a copy of the video file cached locally to play in loop vs each time the slide comes around to that embedded video that it would yet again consume bandwidth over network.