The broadcast screen
What the public, the athletes or the camera see: the view of the moment, drawn on every frame of the screen with what FINISH broadcasts (and, for the overall standings, what EVENT broadcasts). TABLEAU does not time anything: it receives, chooses a view, and draws.
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SGS219.3719.3- The banner: the elements placed only once on the screen (here the competition and the time).
- “All timers”: each race in the view and its running clock.
- One card per athlete: their position in their race, then the colour of their start position.
- The name in the view's format and the avatar from the athlete's record.
- The laps they still have to do.
- The time of their last lap (“N”).
- Their race time (cumulative).
The window and scaling
Each view has a design size (1920 × 1080 by default, Screen (W × H)). The window scales it like a video signal: the view keeps its proportions, and black bars fill the rest if the window does not have the same ones. Element positions and sizes are therefore always expressed in design pixels, whatever screen is connected.
On first launch, and as long as no view is chosen for a moment, TABLEAU shows the delivered view “Classement (par défaut)”: it displays something clean before any configuration. The control panel (F2) sits on top of it, on the right; detached, it lives in its own window (see Detach).
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| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
| F1 | This help, at the section for the item you are on (Context help). |
| F2 | Show or hide the control panel (also in the detached panel). |
| F11 or double-click | Full screen, borderless; remembered for the next startup. |
| Esc | Leave full screen. |
| F5 | Reload the views and images from disk (like Reload views). |
| Ctrl+E | Open the view editor. |
Full screen hides the built-in panel; a detached panel stays open on its own screen.
The banner, the cards and the pages
A view has two kinds of elements (the geometry):
- banner elements, drawn only once, positioned from the corner of the screen: competition, time, message, logo, clocks of all races, lapping… When they refer to a race or an athlete, it is the reference race: the first race in progress in the view (otherwise the first one), and its leader;
- card elements, drawn once per card, positioned from the corner of the card. One card per athlete (athlete cards, athlete table), per race (race cards), per race in the schedule, or per athlete in EVENT's overall standings.
The cards fill the card area, below the banner (banner height + 6 pixels) and above the bottom margin. When they do not all fit, they are shown in pages: the next one every “Page (s)” seconds (8 by default), then back to the first. An introduction or results always last long enough for every page to be shown once.
The cards slide to their new place when the standings change; a new card fades in, a card that leaves fades out. Only what changes is redrawn: a pack of thirty athletes crossing the line does not slow the screen down.
Only the FINISH races in progress
The scoreboard never shows anything (race, athlete, lap, time, clock) of a race that is not in the FINISH tabs. A race not run or already run does not appear; every state change in FINISH shows with the next message, and so on the next frame.
| In FINISH | The race becomes | On the scoreboard |
|---|---|---|
| Loading | loaded | it appears (start list) |
| Start signal | in progress | the clock starts |
| Last athlete finished, “All finished” | finished | it stays (results) |
| “False start” | loaded | clock and laps disappear, the athletes stay |
| “Finished”, hold delay elapsed | run | everything disappears |
| “Next” | not run | everything disappears |
| FINISH closes | — | everything disappears |
To keep results on the screen longer, lengthen the race's hold delay in FINISH: as soon as it becomes run, it leaves the scoreboard. The one intended exception: a Schedule view can also list the upcoming races and those already run, with no athlete or time (Schedule: also races not run yet and races already run).
A network outage
| What happens | On the scoreboard |
|---|---|
| FINISH stops (normal or forced shutdown) | everything disappears at once: FINISH closes the connection |
| Cable unplugged, Wi-Fi lost, FINISH computer suddenly switched off | the last state stays for 15 s (clocks running), then nothing more is shown; the background and the pause view remain |
| The connection comes back | a new attempt every 2 s; on reconnection, FINISH sends the complete state again and everything is replaced in one go |
Why 15 s: a short outage (an access point switching) must not empty the screen in the middle of a race. FINISH sends a heartbeat every 5 s; after three missed heartbeats, the scoreboard no longer knows what is in progress. With a display delay, all this reaches the screen with that delay on top.
Overlay on the video
A green #00FF00 background (Screen background) is removed by the video production software. Two rendering choices serve this overlay:
- text is smoothed in greyscale (no red and blue fringes around the letters once the green is removed);
- an element's opacity only makes its background transparent: the text stays solid and sharp, and the race can be seen through the banner. For an image, the opacity applies to the whole image.
See the scenario Overlay on a webcast (and the display delay).
Advertising on the screen
During the “Advertising” moment, an image, a video (muted), a formatted text or a web page fills the whole screen, on a black background, in place of the view. It hides as soon as timing data arrives. See Advertising.