Forum Discussion

tim_beynart's avatar
tim_beynart
Channel Surfer
8 years ago

trickPlayBar ad breaks example?

I can't find any documentation on how to display ad break markers on the built-in trickPlayBar instance of a Video node.
The functionality is mentioned in passing in the description of manifestData (https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Video#Video-Fields)
A new field, "manifestData", has been added to the Video node to detect the periods in a DASH manifest before they are played back. One major use case for this is to display ad markers in the trickplay progress bar.


Is there an example of this somewhere? I want to insert a visual indicator of ad breaks in the progress bar.
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  • tim_beynart's avatar
    tim_beynart
    Channel Surfer
    8 years ago
    Nobody has implemented this? Seems like a pretty common UI element. 
  • destruk's avatar
    destruk
    Streaming Star
    8 years ago
    It doesn't exist on Roku, and designing a full custom UI for video playback in Scenegraph is deemed to be more work than it is worth - if they didn't change the firmware so often then it'd be more feasible, but who knows - in a year they might have SDK 3.0 and force out scenegraph apps just like they are doing with the customization components from SDK1.  Fewer devs will jump in with both feet to do non-standard stuff after getting burned this way.
  • drinkrain's avatar
    drinkrain
    Visitor
    8 years ago
    "destruk" wrote:
    custom UI for video playback in Scenegraph is deemed to be more work than it is worth

    Messing around with this very thing today.  Do you know of any good examples that I can learn from?
  • tim_beynart's avatar
    tim_beynart
    Channel Surfer
    8 years ago
    Chapter breaks are bread and butter UX for ad enabled video, I don't understand why this would not be supported.  It's not like some weird request out of left field.
    I guess I can try to read the properties of the scrubber bar and see if I can hack some rectangles on there.
  • tutash's avatar
    tutash
    Binge Watcher
    7 years ago
    trickPlaybarVisiblityHint field and hashMarkPositions array allow this. You set an array in the trickplaybar (hashmarkpositions) when it first shows up (first instanced). It uses floats to determine positions along the trickplaybar. 

    Though this feature probably won't go away soon, it's undocumented, and Roku does not officially support it. 
  • destruk's avatar
    destruk
    Streaming Star
    7 years ago
    Excellent.  Scenegraph has a few more undocumented features available.