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What plays and how

This page explains what the player shows on screen and how it behaves, so you can predict what a device will do with the campaigns you publish.

The player plays the images and videos you publish in a campaign.

A published H.264 campaign playing full-screen on the device
An H.264 video playing full-screen on the Media24 Player

If a device cannot decode a video, the player briefly shows “Playback error · this device could not display the video”, then skips that item and advances to the next one. One bad file never freezes the screen.

  • Images stay on screen for 10 seconds, then the playlist advances.
  • Videos play to their natural end, then advance.
  • A playlist with a single item loops it seamlessly.
  • Publishing a new campaign restarts rotation from the top.

For screens mounted in a fixed orientation, each item can carry a 0 / 90 / 180 / 270° rotation, and a fit mode — contain (the default), cover, stretch, or real size. You choose these per item in the campaign editor when you publish.

Multi-zone template layouts render natively — a single screen can show several content zones side by side. A device decodes at most 2 videos at the same time; on cheaper hardware, extra video zones wait their turn rather than all playing at once.

The player keeps playing everything it has already downloaded with no network, across power cuts and reboots. While cached content plays, nothing on screen changes — the player never paints a status message over running content.

Only when there is nothing to show does it display a status:

  • “Offline · playing saved content” — offline, with a gap in what is scheduled.
  • “Waiting for network…” — offline with nothing cached yet (for example, a brand-new screen that has not finished its first sync).

The media cache holds up to 8 GiB; when it is full, the oldest content is removed first, and the current campaign is kept.