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Learn how to set up, publish, and optimize your HipDeck workspace.
A video element in HipDeck lets you embed a video file directly onto a slide, playing it back as part of your digital signage presentation. Video elements are ideal for product showcases, ambient loops, animated backgrounds, and any content that benefits from motion.
To add a video to a slide, open the slide editor in HipDeck, click the Add Element button, and select Video. You can then upload a video file from your device or select one from your media library. Once added, you can resize and reposition the video element on the slide canvas, and configure playback options such as autoplay, looping, and mute.
Because HipDeck is designed to run on a wide range of hardware — including low-power devices like Raspberry Pi and Android sticks — understanding the technical requirements for video files is essential for smooth, reliable playback.
The codec you choose has a direct impact on whether your video plays smoothly or causes stuttering, dropped frames, or device overheating. On low-power signage hardware, hardware-accelerated decoding is critical — and not all codecs are supported at the hardware level.
H.264, also known as AVC (Advanced Video Coding), is the universally recommended codec for digital signage. It offers an excellent balance of compression efficiency and broad hardware decoding support. Virtually every low-power device — including Raspberry Pi 3/4, Android TV sticks, and budget media players — includes dedicated H.264 hardware decode acceleration.
Hardware decoding offloads video processing from the CPU to a dedicated chip, dramatically reducing power consumption and heat generation. This is especially important for looping signage content that plays continuously for hours or days.
H.265 (HEVC) delivers roughly 40–50% better compression than H.264 at equivalent quality, making it attractive for 4K content or bandwidth-constrained deployments. However, hardware H.265 decoding is not universally available on low-power devices.
Raspberry Pi 4 supports H.265 hardware decoding, but earlier models do not. Many budget Android sticks have inconsistent or partial HEVC support. If you choose H.265, verify hardware decode support on every target device before deploying. Falling back to software decoding on constrained hardware will cause stuttering and excessive CPU usage.
VP9 and AV1 are modern codecs with excellent compression ratios, but hardware decode support on low-power signage devices is rare or non-existent. Software decoding these codecs on a Raspberry Pi or Android stick will result in poor performance. Avoid them entirely for signage use unless you are certain your hardware supports hardware-accelerated decoding.
Bitrate determines both the visual quality and the file size of your video. Higher bitrates produce sharper images but larger files that demand more from storage, memory, and the network. For signage, the goal is the lowest bitrate that still looks good on your target display.
Most modern encoders default to Variable Bitrate (VBR), which allocates more bits to complex scenes and fewer to simple ones. This is efficient for streaming but can cause unpredictable spikes in CPU and memory usage during playback — a problem on constrained hardware.
Constant Bitrate (CBR) maintains a fixed data rate throughout the video. For looping signage content, CBR is the more predictable and reliable choice. The device always knows exactly how much data to buffer, reducing the risk of playback hiccups during seamless loops. Use CBR when encoding video intended for continuous signage playback.
For the vast majority of digital signage deployments, 1920×1080 at 30fps is the optimal target. It matches the native resolution of most commercial displays, is well within the hardware decode capabilities of all common signage devices, and keeps file sizes manageable.
30fps is the standard for signage content and is sufficient for smooth motion in most use cases. 60fps is rarely necessary — signage content typically does not involve fast-paced action that would benefit from the higher frame rate. More importantly, 60fps roughly doubles the file size and bitrate requirements compared to 30fps, placing additional strain on both storage and the decoder.
If your source footage is 24fps (common for cinematic content), encoding at 24fps is perfectly acceptable and will reduce file size slightly.
Always encode video as progressive scan (p), never interlaced (i). Interlaced video (e.g., 1080i) was designed for broadcast television and causes visible combing artifacts on modern displays. If your source footage is interlaced, deinterlace it during encoding before deploying to signage. HandBrake and FFmpeg both include deinterlacing filters for this purpose.
The container format wraps the video and audio streams into a single file. While the codec determines how the video is compressed, the container determines compatibility with players and operating systems.
MP4 (.mp4) with H.264 video is the universally supported combination for digital signage. It is natively supported on every major operating system, browser, and media player — including all common signage hardware platforms.
When in doubt, always re-mux or re-encode to MP4 before uploading to HipDeck.
Audio is often unnecessary for digital signage loops. Most signage deployments run in public spaces where audio is either unwanted or actively disabled at the display level. Including an audio track in your video file adds to the file size without providing any benefit in these scenarios.
When audio is needed, use AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) at 128 kbps stereo. AAC is the standard audio codec for MP4 files and is hardware-accelerated on most signage devices. 128 kbps stereo provides good audio quality for voice-overs, background music, and ambient sound without excessive file size.
If your source video contains audio that you do not need, strip the audio track entirely during encoding rather than simply muting it in HipDeck. Removing the audio track reduces file size, simplifies the media pipeline, and avoids potential autoplay policy issues in browser-based players — many browsers block autoplay of videos that contain an audio track unless the user has interacted with the page.
In FFmpeg, use the -an flag to strip audio from the output file.
File size directly affects how quickly a video loads, how much storage it consumes on the device, and how smoothly it loops. For digital signage, smaller files are almost always better — as long as visual quality remains acceptable.
Aim to keep each video clip under 100 MB. This threshold ensures fast loading from local storage, comfortable buffering on the device, and reliable seamless looping without memory pressure.
If your content requires a longer video clip that exceeds 100 MB at your target quality, compress more aggressively by reducing the bitrate. For signage content viewed on a display from a distance of several feet, a lower bitrate is often imperceptible to viewers. Consider also whether the video can be trimmed, shortened, or split into shorter segments.
As a rough guide: a 30-second 1080p H.264 clip at 4 Mbps will be approximately 15 MB. A 2-minute clip at the same settings will be around 60 MB — well within the recommended limit.
Encoding quality has a significant impact on the final file. Following best practices during encoding will give you the best possible quality at the lowest viable bitrate.
Two-pass encoding is strongly recommended when targeting a specific bitrate. In the first pass, the encoder analyses the entire video to understand its complexity. In the second pass, it uses that analysis to allocate bits more intelligently — resulting in better quality at the same bitrate compared to single-pass encoding. The trade-off is longer encoding time, which is acceptable for pre-produced signage content.
Every time a video is re-encoded, it loses quality due to generation loss — compression artefacts accumulate with each encode cycle. If your source video is already an H.264 MP4 at an appropriate bitrate, avoid re-encoding it. If you only need to change the container (e.g., from MKV to MP4), use a lossless remux operation instead of a full re-encode.
The following FFmpeg command performs a two-pass H.264 encode at 4 Mbps video bitrate with AAC audio at 128 kbps:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -b:v 4M -pass 1 -an -f null /dev/null && ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -b:v 4M -pass 2 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4
Pass 1 analyses the video and discards the output (-f null /dev/null). Pass 2 uses the analysis data to produce the final encoded file. Adjust -b:v 4M to match your target bitrate.
HipDeck provides several playback configuration options for video elements that are important to understand for signage deployments.
Video elements can be set to loop continuously. When looping is enabled, HipDeck will restart the video from the beginning as soon as it ends. For the smoothest loop, ensure your video is encoded so that the last frame transitions cleanly back to the first — this is a content design consideration rather than a technical one.
Autoplay starts the video as soon as the slide becomes active. This is the expected behaviour for signage content. Note that browser-based players may enforce autoplay restrictions for videos with audio tracks — this is a browser policy, not a HipDeck limitation. Muting the video or stripping the audio track resolves this in browser environments.
The mute toggle in HipDeck suppresses audio output at the player level without modifying the video file. This is useful for quickly silencing a video that contains audio without re-encoding. However, for production deployments, it is better practice to strip the audio track from the file itself, as described in the Audio section above.
The following are the most common video playback issues encountered on low-power signage devices, along with their likely causes and solutions.
Stuttering is almost always caused by the device being unable to decode the video fast enough. The most effective fixes are:
A black screen with no video output typically indicates a codec compatibility issue. The player may be unable to decode the video stream at all. Steps to diagnose:
Audio that is out of sync with the video is usually caused by a mismatch in timestamps between the audio and video streams, often introduced during editing or format conversion. To fix:
Video elements are a powerful tool across many signage deployments. See how restaurants use video-driven digital signage to transform the dining experience: Digital Signage for Restaurants
