When it comes to a choice of content creation tools, your cup runneth over. Thanks to the sheer amount of openware/freeware out there, and the number of content creation tools built for social media, you can create awesome displays completely on your own and with some very sophisticated tools. Here are just a few ideas to get you started.
Kitcast Digital Sign Display Software
In order to get your videos, PowerPoints or images onto your digital signs, you will need some sort of digital signage software. The Kitcast.TV software allows you to schedule and stream your content, and it also has its own content creation tools too. Plus, in many cases, you create the content yourself if you are the one deciding which video/image comes next, which music is played and so forth.
Microsoft PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress
The Microsoft version is pretty expensive, but is used in schools and such, so is the better known of these two tools. They both allow you to create PowerPoint presentations. Think of it as a series of posters that appear, one after the other. They were used in office settings for many years as people created presentations for colleagues. These days, each of the pages doesn’t just have cheesy music and star wipe transitions, you can add videos, effects that linger on different pages, and you can even make them dynamic so that other people and users can control them.
Adobe After Effects and Blender.Org
Here we have another paid tool and another free one. Adobe is very expensive but is pretty much an industry standard at these points. Even companies that don’t do most of their editing with Adobe will still dip their toes into the programs for the occasional bit of text of visual flair for their video. Blender is far deeper and more complex and allows for everything from video editing to 2D and 3D computer-modeled animation. It takes more skill, but there are no limits to what you can create with Blender.
There is also a program called Handbrake.Fr, which converts your videos so that you will play on anything, including any streaming device you own. You can also lower your video file sizes with Handbrake, which is handy if you have hundreds of videos that you are trying to mix into the same stream (on a rotation, one video after another).
Sketch and Inkscape
There are others like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW, but they all do a similar thing. They allow you to create vector drawings, to shade them in, create visually stunning images and text, and so forth. Why create content in something like Inkscape when there are plenty of other art programs out there? The thing about these programs is that they allow you to create vector drawings. These are drawings that you can change to any size and they come out of the same quality. You can also draw them in layers, which means you can add and remove elements very quickly and then export them to create perfect images every time. These programs are very adaptable too, which is why vector art varies so greatly in its quality.
How Do All These Tools Apply to Digital Signs?
You can set up your digital signs so that they show off a video, or show videos that play one after each other, or that play randomly. You can also set up displays that are similar to the PowerPoint presentations that were mentioned earlier, where you may have stationary images (like posters), but perhaps have parts of them moving or have fancy transitions so that they display in sequence to tell a story. All the tools above will help you create digital sign content as videos or sequences of images and so forth. Think of your digital signs as your canvas, and the tools above as your paint brushes, your watercolors, your oils, acrylics, pens, and pencils.
