Chapter 1

Overview

Orad’s Maestro PageEditor is used for managing data set presentations before going on air.
Managing a page includes:
1. Creating a data entry page
2. Define a page background
3. Define the scene animations
4. Using text fields linked to scene exports that let you update scene data in real time
through Maestro Controller.

In this tutorial, we will go through the process of creating 3 pages that will demonstrate all of the
Page Editor features, and later can be played on air with Maestro Controller. We will use the
3Designer financial demo scene that you may already be familiar with.
 Chapter 2

Creating A Page

Start the PageEditor from either the Windows Start Menu > Programs > Orad > PageEditor, or by
double clicking the PageEditor icon on your desktop.
The main screen should look like this:

Make sure that a local preview is set; from the menu strip, select Customize > Settings choose
preview and check enabled for local preview. You can set a remote host as well, should you wish
to use a DVG for a real-time preview of the page.
We will start by creating a new page: either use the menu option File > New, or click on the new

page button . The select scene window will open:

You should choose a 3designer scene that you wish to work with – in our case select from the
project section ‘finance_tutorial’, and in the scene section ‘finance_tutorial’ as well, click the OK
button and the scene will load.

On the upper right side of the PageEditor, you can see the scene in local preview, you can also
view the animations and play them one by one, in the lower right side we have a list of all the
scene exports and their current values together with the scene parameters.

Next step will be to choose the page background that will help us to identify our page.

Click on the ‘set background’ button from the view menu or from the toolbar
The snapshot window appears, use the animation toolbar at the bottom of the snapshot screen,
select and play the background animation. When you have a view of the scene that best
represents the page you will be creating, click the OK button. A snapshot of the scene will be
made, and in the page view, a still image will be placed as a background. It should look
something like this:
 Chapter 3

Page Features

We will start by setting up our animation and data timeline. Here we define the order of the scene
animations and data update that will be triggered by the operator.

At the bottom of the page, there is a timeline representing the duration of the page with a
sequence of events. There are 3 events that can be used with-in a page:
• 1.Scene animation - Play & continue
• 2.Data update
• 3.Manual Take

BackGround Page –

On this page we will play the background animations that will be used through the Maestro
rundown.

3.1.1 Adjust the total duration of the page for 1 minute, this will allow you to get a better

view of the events

Note! You can also use the up / down arrows on the timeline control (shown above) to
change the duration of the timeline view.

3.1.2 Scroll through the animation toolbar and select ‘logo_spin’, click on the ‘animation
play’. Event button and click on the timeline, a play event for this animation is added
to the page. Place the event at the beginning of the timeline.
3.1.3 Scroll through the animation toolbar and select background, click on the ‘animation
play’ event button and click on the timeline; a play event for this animation is added
to the page. Place the event after ‘logo_spin’ animation on the timeline.

Save the page from File > Save As, and name it Tutorial_BG.

First Page -

Repeat the steps 2.1.1 – 2.1.3 from the section ‘creating a page’, and choose the “price_in’
animation as your background snapshot.

3.2.1 Adjust the total duration of the page to 2 minutes; this will allow you to get a better
view of the events.

3.2.2 Click on the ‘data update’ button , then click on the timeline, a data update event
is now added to the page. Drag the event through the time line, and place it at the
 beginning of the timeline - this will trigger the sending of data that we will provide
later on.

Now we will define the scene animations order.

3.2.3 Scroll through the animation toolbar and select ‘background’, click on the ‘animation
play’ event button and click on the timeline, a play event for this animation is added
to the page.

3.2.4 Place the event at the beginning of the time line.

3.2.5 In this stage we will place a ‘manual take’ event, the operator can choose whether to
play the page directly or wait for a call.

3.2.6 Click on the ‘manual take’ event and then click on the timeline, place the event
right after the background animation event.

3.2.7 Scroll to the price_in animation, Click on the ‘Animation Play’ event and then click on
the timeline, place the event right after the ‘manual take’ event.

3.2.8 Click on the ‘manual take’ event and then click on the timeline, place the event right
after the price_in animation event.

3.2.9 Scroll to the price_out animation, Click on the ‘Animation Play’ event and then click
on the timeline, place the event right after the ‘manual take’ event. You should now
have a timeline that looks something like this:

Lets take a moment and run through the page animations -

We will do it using the cue/take feature that allows us to view the animations’
order and check the timing of our page.

• Click on the cue button , this will return our page to the start.

• You can see that we have 2 animations set in the page -

• Click the Take button ; all the events until the manual take event are sent (in our
case just the data update) and the page is waiting for the operator to continue playback.

In the cue / take window you will see - .

• Another click on the take button will play the price_in animation, and will stop on the 2nd
manual take event.
• A last click will play the price_out animation to the end of the page.

Note! Move the animation events on the time line to increase/decrease the time between
the manual take and the animations play out.
Next step is create text fields for updating the scene, we will do that by dragging the exports into
our page, when placing an export in the page, a menu opens with 3 options, those options define
the data type of an export.

3.2.10 Drag export named ‘sq_name1’ and place it on the page

,
Choose text option from the data type menu that opens when you release the mouse
button. We will do the same with ‘sq_name3’,sq_name4 and ‘sq_name5’.

3.2.11 Drag export named ‘sq_value1’ and place it on the paqe , choose text
option from the data type menu. We will do the same with ‘sq_value3’,sq_value4 and
‘sq_value5’.

3.1.12 Drag export named ‘sq_change1’ and place it on the page choose text option
from the data type menu. We will do the same with ‘sq_chang3’, ‘sq_change4’ and
‘sq_change5’.
3.2.13 Click on the ‘Export Names’ icon to view the exports name on the Page.

Note! Saving the page with the export names enabled, makes them visible in the Maestro
Controller as well.

Second Page -

On this page we will use the animation features, those animations are designed in 3designer and
in this case, contain math functions

Repeat the steps from the section ‘creating a page’, choosing “graph_in animation as your
background shot.

3.3.1 Adjust the total duration of the page to 1 minute

3.3.2 Scroll in the animation toolbar and select graph_in, click on the ‘animation play’ event
button and click on the timeline, a play event for this animation is added to the page.
Place the event at the beginning of the time line.
3.3.3 Scroll to the bar_up animation, Click on the ‘Animation Play’ event and then click on the
timeline, place the event on the timeline.
3.3.4 Click on the ‘manual take’ event and then click on the timeline, place the event right after
the bar_up animation event.
3.3.5 Scroll to the graph_out animation, Click on the ‘Animation Play’ event and then click on
the timeline, place the event right after the ‘manual take’ event.

The page should look like this

 Chapter 4

Data Update

Earlier we saw how to use text fields and link them to scenes’ exports. We can also use external
data sources like Excel, ODBC or SQL server as our database, and linked them to the text fields
in our pages.

We will use as an example an excel sheet.

First, create an excel sheet with the following data:

 A Definition of the table name must be added – mark the table range you wish to use,
and then from the menu strip select Insert > Name > Define, and name it Tutorial Data.

Save the excel file as Tutorial_Data.xls

Back in Maestro PageEditor, click on the DataBase icon ; the Data source and queries
window is opened.
4.1 Right click on the window on the left and select ‘Add Data source’.
4.2 Name it ‘Tutorial’
4.3 Scroll in the type toolbar and select MS Excel file
4.4 Browse to the Tutorial_Data file and press the OK button

An empty data source is created.

4.5 Select the Tutorial Data source and then right click in the right side; a small menu will
open – select ‘Add Query’. The Query Wizard will open, and you will see the table
name definition from the Excel sheet, when selecting it, the rows titles will appear in the
bottom section
 4.6 Select the Name title and click on the Results tab; the Name row along with it’s values
will appear

4.7 Select the first value and press save query button; a query is added to the data source.

Repeat steps 2.35 – 2.3.7 for all the exports in the scene.

4.8 Drag the Name query into the sq_name1 text field.

To test our database connection, click on the button ‘Exec SQL’, this will execute all queries in
the page.

Note! You can either edit or remove a query from a text field by right click on it and
selecting the required option.

Congratulations, you have now run a simple query to collect data from an Excel sheet and send it
to the appropriate field in the page. You could now repeat some of these steps for your own
scenes that have been made in 3Designer, or move onto displaying them on air with the Maestro
Controller.