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musictv's avatar
musictv
Visitor
9 years ago

JSON Feed Errors

Hi, 

Another question for the team from Roku, and experienced folks who've worked with JW Player. I have a JSON feed that i've created within JW Player, that we're using to power another connected TV app -- and I'd like to use them for our Roku channel as well. Here's the link: https://content.jwplatform.com/feeds/prfC7c87.json.

When I input the link into the Direct Publisher web builder, I see four errors, telling me that there is no content in the file, and that certain required parameters are missing. I was under the impression that this tool works well with JW Player? 

Looking for next steps, thanks.
Roku Direct Publisher

4 Replies

  • mitchstein's avatar
    mitchstein
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    roku has specific requirements for it's json file, that is supposed to be "industry standard", however, upon researching, I can find no definitive standardfor the syntax used in the json file pertaining to video files.. It's very likely that jw players format is different from rokus.. I would suggest starting with one video file and getting it to ingest into the direct player before trying it with a complete library of files.. Then you'll be able to find out whats what..

    Also the direct player has some limitations, 15 categories and 40 videos per category. I ran into that undocumented roadblock immediately and have to create several different channels to get all my content on roku..
  • musictv's avatar
    musictv
    Visitor
    9 years ago
    "mitchstein" wrote:
    roku has specific requirements for it's json file, that is supposed to be "industry standard", however, upon researching, I can find no definitive standardfor the syntax used in the json file pertaining to video files.. It's very likely that jw players format is different from rokus.. I would suggest starting with one video file and getting it to ingest into the direct player before trying it with a complete library of files.. Then you'll be able to find out whats what..

    Also the direct player has some limitations, 15 categories and 40 videos per category. I ran into that undocumented roadblock immediately and have to create several different channels to get all my content on roku..

    Very helpful mitchstein, I've gone ahead and built the JSON file from scratch, thanks.
  • RokuTomC's avatar
    RokuTomC
    Community Moderator
    9 years ago
    "mitchstein" wrote:
    Also the direct player has some limitations, 15 categories and 40 videos per category. I ran into that undocumented roadblock immediately and have to create several different channels to get all my content on roku..

    That's not exactly accurate. Direct Publisher has a limit of 25 rows, with 40 content items per row. This comes out to 1,000 unique content items per channel.
    It is important to make the distinction between videos and content items, as a series or a season would both only count as one content item. This means that any one channel can include the complete catalogue of episodes for up to 1,000 different unique series, all within the same channel. For all intents and purposes, the number of videos could be nearly infinite, as there are no limits to the number of episodes that can be nested within one series.
    Direct Publisher channels change their channel behavior based on the contentType. For a short-form video, the video will simply play upon being selected. However, when selecting a series, the user will be brought to a springboard display that provides links to each season of the series, or allows them to continue watching from the most recent episode that they left off at.