Understanding Garlic-Hub Playlists

Garlic-Hub organizes your digital signage content into playlists. A playlist is a container that holds media elements like images, videos, and other playlists. Think of them as folders in which you can nest other playlists. Before you start building presentations, it helps to understand the playlist types and when to use them.

Master Playlists

A master playlist is the top-level container that gets assigned directly to a player. You can fill it with media directly or nest internal playlists inside it. Master playlists are also the only playlist type that can be used as a zone inside a multizone playlist.

Use case: A pharmacy runs a full-screen master playlist during opening hours. At night, they switch their screen to a multizone layout: the emergency service display takes the main zone, while the daytime playlist continues running in a smaller zone in the corner. No content duplication needed.

Master playlists are your go-to when:

• You want a single full-screen presentation on a player
• You need zones inside a multizone playlist

One master playlist per player or per zone. That’s the rule.

Internal Playlists

Internal playlists are playlists that can be nested inside other playlists. They cannot be assigned directly to a player.

Use case: You run a bakery chain with three locations. Each location has its own promotions, but all share the same opening hours slide. You create one internal playlist called “Opening Hours” and reuse it across all location presentations. Update it once, and every screen gets the change automatically.

Internal playlists shine when:

• You have content that appears in multiple presentations
• You want to delegate content maintenance to different people
• You need to break down a complex presentation into manageable chunks

Note: There is no limit on nesting levels, but experience shows that beyond three levels it gets hard to maintain.

Multizone Playlists

A multizone playlist splits the screen into several independent areas, each running its own master playlist simultaneously. Like a master playlist, it can be assigned directly to a player.

Use case: You operate a gym. The main zone (70% of the screen) shows workout videos. A slim bar at the bottom displays the current class schedule. Top right shows the current time. Three zones, one screen, all running independently.

Zones can be defined by percentage or pixel values and can even overlap. This gives you a lot of flexibility but also more complexity to manage.

Multizone playlists make sense when:

• You want to maximize screen real estate
• Different parts of the screen need unrelated content
• You need a persistent element like a clock or ticker alongside your main content

How They Work Together

The three types are not competing options, they complement each other.

A typical setup looks like this:

Multizone Playlist (assigned to player)
├── Zone 1: 1st Master Playlist → 1st Internal Playlist "Promotions"
│                               → 2nd Internal Playlist "Company News"
└── Zone 2: 2nd Master Playlist "Live Clock Widget"

You build your content bottom-up: start with internal playlists for reusable content blocks,
combine them in a master or directly in a multizone playlist, then assign that to your player.

Quick Reference