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Working with Overlapping Zones

Overlapping Zones is supported on Audience.playback.tv and Audience.playback.sign systems only.

You can use overlapping zones (zone layering) along with alpha pages to create a multitude of special effects. You can play zones over other zones, you can play background motion video behind your content zones, and you can easily create text over video or graphics with any transition by placing the video in one zone, and the text in smaller zone over the larger video zone.

You can create even more powerful effects by using the Target Pages feature, where a page in one zone targets content in another zone that is either underneath it or on top of it (or both!) 

This section presents a few examples of the kinds of effects zone layering provides. It also presents a few tips on how to set up your pages and templates to best take advantage of this new feature.

Create your pages and templates with the following settings (you may change the settings when required, of course):

  • Each magazine should have an Alpha Background page that is set to always play. This page should be in the playlist if there are no other pages on air. This ensures that when nothing else is playing in that zone, the zone remains transparent to the other zones below it. You may remove this page when your magazine has other content in the playlist.
  • Your pages should all use the Alpha Background (except graphic pages you want to play in a full screen zone). Any empty space in a CorelDraw layout becomes alpha.
  • Your non-video pages should all be set as following:
  • Video Type: None
  • Video Effect: Hide
  • Audio Type: None

With these types of pages and templates at hand, you can design your show using overlapping zones to create interesting effects. Following are a few examples of things you can create.

Text/Graphics over Video

You can design your playback so that a video page in one zone targets overlaid text in another zone that appears above the video zone. As long as the video zone is just below (in the tree) the zone that has the text pages, then the text will appear over the video. You can design this in two ways:

  • Make both zones identical in size and placement, and when creating the text pages in the content zone, just include text fields in the bottom (or top or wherever you like) of the layout in CorelDraw. Leave everything else blank (this creates alpha).
  • Make the text zone smaller than the video zone and place it where the text should display. In CorelDraw, create text pages or templates that only include text and/or text related options (drop-shadow, outline, etc). Leave the background of the page/template blank, to create the alpha.
  • In both cases, create Alpha Background pages, and put them in empty playlists. These pages guarantee that something plays on air, even if it is just a transparency to the zone(s) underneath. The Alpha Background pages are useful to act as filler in between transitions. While you can now use any transition between pages (except for crawl), you may want to transition from a page to a transparent page and then to another page to create a different effect.

Full Screen Graphic

1.Create a full screen zone on top of all your zones.

2.When the Add Zone box appears, remember to change the Left and Bottom positions from 0 to 2. Even though you are creating a full screen zone, zones cannot take up the entire screen; they must be at least 2 pixels smaller on both the x and y axis. (You may have to remove a pixel or two from the Width or Height before adjusting the Left and Bottom pixels to 2).

3.Give this new zone the highest priority in the tree.

4.Create an Alpha Background page, and put it in the playlist.

5.Create a graphic page (or copy/paste an existing page), with any transition but crawl. Try Zoom, Up, 1500.

If you want a zone (the crawl perhaps) to appear over the graphic page, move that zone above the full screen zone in the tree.

You can do this with any zone. You can create a small 'logo' zone with an Alpha Background page in its playlist. You can raise the priority of that zone to the top, and create logo pages that are not on-air. You can then have your full screen graphic page target the relevant logo page, which will play over the full screen graphic page.

Zoom Up a Video Page and Display a Crawl

There is no need to create a full screen zone (as indicated above) in order to display full screen video. You can simply use the DVE Zoom transition on any video. To have the page Zoom Up under the crawl zone, simply raise the priority of the crawl zone so that it is always displayed.

Animated Background

1.Create a zone under an existing zone.

2.In the tree, place that new zone just under the zone that has content.

3.Place a motion background video in that zone, set it to the Fade transition, and put it in the playlist. It should be the only file in the playlist.

If your content pages have an alpha background, they will appear over the new background video. If your content does use a background, that's fine too. The video will keep on playing, even though you can't see it. Or you can stop the video from playing by having your graphic page target the Alpha Background page in the background video zone.

Advanced Tutorial

These are just a few examples of what you can achieve with overlapping zones. The Tutorial manual includes an Advanced Tutorial that deals specifically with zone layering (among other new features), and suggested methods of work. It is also available through the Audience File Menu, under Help.