Forum Discussion

FoodChainTV's avatar
FoodChainTV
Visitor
11 years ago

[FIXED]My channel only works in HD. Videos do not play in SD

I have set up my private channel, and everything works just fine in HD. But, when I set my Roku to SD 4:3 for testing, my videos will not play. What do I have to do, to get my channel to work in HD and SD? Do I have to add some instructions to my XML feed file? Or do I have to edit another file?

My video URL's are coming from my Vimeo Pro account.

I am using the videoplayer from the Roku SDK.

I am not sure if I have to add some sort of line to my manifest, or one of the source files in the SDK? I am thinking that I may be missing something in my XML feeds?

Here is an example of one of my XML files that works fine in HD, but not in SD (i have added generic text to some categories):


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<feed>
<!-- resultLength indicates the total number of results for this feed -->
<resultLength>2</resultLength>
<!-- endIndix indicates the number of results for this *paged* section of the feed -->
<endIndex>2</endIndex>
<item sdImg="http://www.foodchaintv.com/testing/images/Episode-1-pic.png" hdImg="http://www.foodchaintv.com/testing/images/Episode-1-pic.png">
<title>EP 1: Dallas BBQ</title>
<contentId>10011</contentId>
<contentType>2015</contentType>
<contentQuality>HD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>mp4</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>HD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>2400</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://example_videoHD.mp4"</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis>On this episode Blah blah</synopsis>
<genres>Show Title</genres>
<runtime>296</runtime>
</item>
</feed>
Roku Developer Program

11 Replies

  • destruk's avatar
    destruk
    Streaming Star
    11 years ago
    If you set your streamquality tag to SD, that would allow them to be played, provided the client has matching or higher bitrate available.
  • FoodChainTV's avatar
    FoodChainTV
    Visitor
    11 years ago
    Hi Destruk,

    Thank you very much for your reply.

    I changed the <streamQuality> tag to "SD" and it still did not work. The video will not play in SD mode.

    I then changed the <contentQuality> tag to "SD" as well, to see if that would work. But, it didn't. The video will not play in SD mode.

    Any other ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
  • Romans_I_XVI's avatar
    Romans_I_XVI
    Roku Guru
    11 years ago
    Try playing around with the encoding of the video. I know it's weird but some things with the Roku don't always make sense. Just something to try and see, not making any promises.
  • FoodChainTV's avatar
    FoodChainTV
    Visitor
    11 years ago
    "Romans_I_XVI" wrote:
    Try playing around with the encoding of the video. I know it's weird but some things with the Roku don't always make sense. Just something to try and see, not making any promises.


    HI Romans, Thanks for the reply.

    I have Vimeo Pro. My options for getting the video URL's is 1080, 720, and standard (640x480). Should I not be using an HD video stream at all? I understand that regardless of the video size, I still should play with the specs and encoding of the video, but in looking at some public channels I'm noticing that a lot of videos are not HD. What size videos do you guys use? Or do you use multiple (different size) streams for each video?
  • RokuMarkn's avatar
    RokuMarkn
    Visitor
    11 years ago
    Before you go too much further, you should clarify what you mean when you say the video doesn't play. Does it start buffering? Do you see any error messages on the console?

    --Mark
  • FoodChainTV's avatar
    FoodChainTV
    Visitor
    11 years ago
    "RokuMarkn" wrote:
    Before you go too much further, you should clarify what you mean when you say the video doesn't play. Does it start buffering? Do you see any error messages on the console?

    --Mark


    Hi Mark,

    In SD 4:3, or SD 16:9, when I press PLAY, it starts buffering for like half a second (it says RETRIEVING), and then it bounces back to the play screen.

    Debugger Screen Shows:

    ButtonPressed
    showHomeScreen | msg = | index = -5
    Video request failure: -5 7
    showHomeScreen | msg = | index = 0
  • FoodChainTV's avatar
    FoodChainTV
    Visitor
    11 years ago
    Ok, so I did an experiment. I used a video that I have on another host and it worked.

    So:

    The vimeo pro video with the URL that ends in a bunch of numbers and letters only works in HD. Not in SD.

    The video that I uploaded to DropShots that ends in .mp4 works in both HD and SD.

    Both videos were encoded exactly the same when I rendered them.

    So, I think the solution to this issue will be to figure out how to keep my videos on Vimeo and have them end in .mp4 Has anyone been able to do this successfully with Vimeo?

    I don't want to use DropShots because they limit you to a 10 minute long video. And I can't find any other CDN that is $200 per year like Vimeo.
  • Romans_I_XVI's avatar
    Romans_I_XVI
    Roku Guru
    11 years ago
    I think that Vimeo Pro will give you a redirect link, which you need to manually interperete on the Roku.

    I don't have Vimeo Pro, this is just what I heard.
  • FoodChainTV's avatar
    FoodChainTV
    Visitor
    11 years ago
    Ok, so this is how I finally fixed it. The problem was the structure of the actual URL's that Vimeo was generating. So, I used a link shortener, updated the xml feeds with the shortened video URL's, and it seems to be working now. SD plays fine, and HD plays fine!