Splitting the screen with Layouts

Layouts allow you to put two or more items of content on screen at once. For example, you can use most of the screen to show a slideshow, while having a news ticker scroll across the top or the bottom.

To set up a layout, click Basics and then Layout. The Add button is bottom right - click that to start the process off.

Give your layout a name and then choose how you'd like to split up the screen.

CODA offers you the following options for splitting up your display screen:

Each gives you two or more regions of the screen into which you can put content. That includes playlists, smart playlists, videos, HTML pages - all the usual options except schedules. You can schedule your displays to show a layout (once you finish creating a layout, it acts just like other content items and can be included in schedules) but you can't put a schedule in a layout.

Once you've chosen how you'd like to divide the pixels up, simply drag and drop content items from left to right to define the layout.

At this point it's worth mentioning the content scaling options. Say you have a high resolution version of your company logo which exactly fills your display. Then you decide to use that in the main part of one of the 'simple ticker' layouts. Since the display allocates some of the pixels to a ticker, the logo no longer fills the screen completely (and its aspect ratio is different, too). There's an option for just this situation - once you've finished your layout and saved it, go to your logo, double click it and set 'Expand & crop to fill screen' against the Scaling option under the Meta tag. You can see these options in our Advanced use screencast.

Some layouts have long, thin horizontal sections designed just for tickers. There's nothing to stop you putting other content in there, except that it will look pretty small or pretty stretched (depending on its natural aspect ratio and the options you choose regarding content scaling).

To save and use your layout, click Submit and then use the Assignment page to display it on one or more of your screens. As mentioned earlier, layouts can be used within schedules as well.