Using the Marquee, Announcements and the Mobile Marquee
In a social dance situation, the dancers like to know what dance the song is. Many social dancers do not have the knowledge or experience to figure out which dance is associated with a particular song.
In BallroomDJ 4, there are a few different ways to let the dancers know what dances are upcoming. The marquee displays the upcoming dances on a monitor or projector. Announcements play an announcement before the dance. The mobile marquee displays the upcoming dances on a mobile device. Any or all of these options may be used at the same time.
Marquee
The marquee is the easiest to set up and use. There are a couple of different situations.
(a) You have a second monitor or projector. Or (b) You have a single monitor that can be viewed by the dancers.
In Configuration / Marquee, the marquee can be turned off, set to start up minimized or start in a visible state (the default for new BDJ4 installations). Use the selection box to choose either Minimized or Visible.
It is recommended that a narrow font be used for the marquee so that more information can be displayed. Some Windows installations have Arial Narrow available. Or you can install a narrow font on your computer and use it. Do not worry about the marquee's font size. This will be changed later via the player interface.
The Show Song Information switch can be turned on if you want the song's artist and title (1) displayed.
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The marquee is started when the player is started.
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If you have a second monitor or projector, drag the marquee window to the second screen. Adjust the size of the marquee to fit as appropriate. The font size will be adjusted in the next step.
If you only have a single monitor, double-click in the marquee to change it to full-screen mode. Double-click in the marquee again to return it back to a smaller size.
Adjusting the Marquee's Font Size
If you have a single monitor, double-click in the marquee to change it to full-screen mode. Then use the Alt-Tab keyboard combination to switch to the player window. For single monitor setups, the marquee font size should be small when the marquee is not in full-screen mode, and large when the marquee is in full-screen mode.
In the player, select Font Size in the Marquee menu.
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- tips-mq-sz-dialog.png (9.25 KiB) Viewed 19133 times
Use the + and - buttons to change the marquee font size to an appropriate size. Close the font size dialog when done. Once the marquee's font size is set, it will be restored the next time the marquee is started.
If you cannot find your marquee, use the Recover Marquee in the Marquee menu in the player to bring the marquee back. This function will attempt to make the marquee visible and place it on the same screen as the player.
Mobile Marquee
The mobile marquee allows dancers to view the marquee on their smart phone or mobile device. There are two possible setups. Internet mode requires that your computer be connected to the internet. Local mode is used where there is no internet connection and requires that a router be connected to your computer and set up.
Mobile Marquee Internet Mode
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In Configuration / Mobile Marquee change the Type to Internet. For the mobile marquee's internet mode, the Tag and Password must be set. It is important to use a unique tag name. For example, if you had a dance studio named Ballroom Life (2) in Montreal, Canada, a good tag name would be: ballroomlifemontrealca. A bad tag name would be ballroom, test (do not use this!), and other generic sorts of names. The password protects your mobile marquee from being hi-jacked by other people. Once the mobile marquee is used for the first time, the password will be set and cannot be changed.
The Title is optional and can be set to the name of the dance studio or ballroom group.
The QR Code link can be selected, and a QR code will be displayed in your browser. This can then be copied and pasted into a document to create a poster or flyer that the dancers can use to access the mobile marquee. Alternatively, the link can be copied and pasted into an e-mail.
The mobile marquee is started when the player is started.
The dancer's smart phone will have a display similar to:
- tips-mq-mob-scrn.png (30.18 KiB) Viewed 19133 times
Mobile Marquee Local Mode
The mobile marquee local mode is used when there is no internet connection available. It also works best if there is no other public wi-fi available. Mobile marquee local mode requires that a router be connected to the computer and set up with a public wi-fi service. Router setup cannot be covered here, it is outside the scope of BDJ4.
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In Configuration / Mobile Marquee change the Type to Local. The Tag and Password are not used. The Title is optional and may be set if desired.
Like internet mode, the QR Code link can be selected, and a QR code will be displayed in your browser. This can then be copied and pasted into a document to create a poster or flyer that the dancers can use to access the mobile marquee. Alternatively, the link can be copied and pasted into an e-mail.
Announcements
Announcements are short audio files that announce the name of the dance before the dance is played. Announcements require more setup. Complete directions can be found at wiki: Subjects / Announcements.
Pre-built announcements can be found at BDJ4 Announcements. Both English (en- prefix) and Nederlands (Dutch) (nl- prefix) announcements are available.
If you have any questions, please ask here on the forum.
References:
wiki: Configuration / Marquee
wiki: Player / Marquee
wiki: Configuration / Mobile Marquee
wiki: Subjects / Announcements
(1) The song information displayed can be set in Configuration / Display Settings / Marquee.
(2) I just made this up at random, if there actually is a studio with that name, apologies.