Channel Issues & Questions

[philsoft]

"grifter102" wrote:
That's the filename, and it was just an example. Most all the files are .mp4, there may be a few .avi or .mkv, but I would expect roksbox to not be able to play them... not crash to home whenever the folder is opened.

Is the fact that some files are .avi or .mkv causing the crash to home?

The files need to be encoded as h.264 video with mp4 file extension. Audio needs to be ac3 or aac ( I believe there may be wma support as well, but I have never used that).

[grifter102]

None of my folder names have periods in them. The example I used was a full file path, /var/www/roksboxmedia/Videos/TV/Show/Season/ is the path name, Episode.avi was just placeholder name. I should have written Episode.mp4 to go along with the format that Roku requires, but i didn't think it mattered, since it's just an example to illustrate how I have my directory tree set up.

Yes, I understand which file formats are supported and which are not. I don't think that's the problem, unless Roku not only cannot play non-mp4 files, but crashes whenever it sees them. Is that the case? Does simply seeing a .avi or .mkv file cause the entire application to crash?

My problem is that whenever I traverse into a directory with episodes in it, it crashes to the Home screen. Doesn't matter if they're all .mp4 or a mix, it always crashes to Home.

I'm not using a video.xml file, I'm using a Videos directory.

[krisbee]

My suggestion is start off with a file in the root VIDEO directly and see where that gets you.. Then, if that works, make one directory a subfolder lower, just one file, then another, just one folder. This way you can see if it is the file or the depth that is the issue. Make sure all files from /var/www/ and below have permission for all to at least read the file.

[philsoft]

"grifter102" wrote:
Yes, I understand which file formats are supported and which are not. I don't think that's the problem, unless Roku not only cannot play non-mp4 files, but crashes whenever it sees them. Is that the case?

I just want to make sure you understand that not all mp4 files are created equal. the video portion of the mp4 file needs to be an h.264 encode right?

[JSW]

Hi,

I have a suggestion for an enhancement to Roksbox. Would it be possible to add a 'Delete' choice to the menu where you get the Play and Resume options? The reason I ask is that in addition to playing back my movies, I'm also using Roksbox as a DVR front-end. I'm recording TV shows with Windows Media Center and then using MCEBuddy to remove the commercials, convert them to .mp4 and store them in one of my Roksbox folders. That way I can watch them on any TV with a Roku.

If this were possible, it would be nice to have a verification message come up before deleting a file. Ideally, what I would like to see is someway to have a configuration file where we could list the folder(s) that we wanted the delete option on. That way it wouldn't even come up on the majority of our folders, only the ones where we had temporary videos that could be deleted.

Thanks as always for your great product!

[WilDD]

"grifter102" wrote:
None of my folder names have periods in them. The example I used was a full file path, /var/www/roksboxmedia/Videos/TV/Show/Season/ is the path name, Episode.avi was just placeholder name. I should have written Episode.mp4 to go along with the format that Roku requires, but i didn't think it mattered, since it's just an example to illustrate how I have my directory tree set up.

Yes, I understand which file formats are supported and which are not. I don't think that's the problem, unless Roku not only cannot play non-mp4 files, but crashes whenever it sees them. Is that the case? Does simply seeing a .avi or .mkv file cause the entire application to crash?

Having .avi or .mkv files wouldn't cause Roksbox to crash, Roksbox would just ignore them.

My problem is that whenever I traverse into a directory with episodes in it, it crashes to the Home screen. Doesn't matter if they're all .mp4 or a mix, it always crashes to Home.

I'm not using a video.xml file, I'm using a Videos directory.

Do you have several other channels installed? If so, see if you can get rid of some. It sort of sounds like you are running out of memory.

Also, try krisbee's suggestion above if you haven't already done so.

[WilDD]

"JSW" wrote:
Hi,

I have a suggestion for an enhancement to Roksbox. Would it be possible to add a 'Delete' choice to the menu where you get the Play and Resume options? The reason I ask is that in addition to playing back my movies, I'm also using Roksbox as a DVR front-end. I'm recording TV shows with Windows Media Center and then using MCEBuddy to remove the commercials, convert them to .mp4 and store them in one of my Roksbox folders. That way I can watch them on any TV with a Roku.

If this were possible, it would be nice to have a verification message come up before deleting a file. Ideally, what I would like to see is someway to have a configuration file where we could list the folder(s) that we wanted the delete option on. That way it wouldn't even come up on the majority of our folders, only the ones where we had temporary videos that could be deleted.

Thanks as always for your great product!

A delete option is on the todo list, but it probably won't happen before the end of the year.

[ryguyrocks]

I have been using handbrake to rip my dvd so I can use them with Roksbox without a problem. I just got a blu ray drive and want to start to rip some of my blu-rays. Handbrake doesn't reconize the blu-rays like it does DVD's that use the BDMV structure. What other options besides handbrake that I can use to rip blu-rays.

[wdbames]

If You Need to Backup Blu-Rays You own to Your server:
Try: http://www.makemkv.com

MakeMKV is available for PC, OSX and Linux. It will back up Your Blu-Ray to an MKV
file which You can then process through Handbrake into a Roku-compatible MP4.

wdbames

[JSW]

"ryguyrocks" wrote:
I have been using handbrake to rip my dvd so I can use them with Roksbox without a problem. I just got a blu ray drive and want to start to rip some of my blu-rays. Handbrake doesn't reconize the blu-rays like it does DVD's that use the BDMV structure. What other options besides handbrake that I can use to rip blu-rays.

Hi ryguyrocks,

I use DVDFab and have had very good luck with it. It gives you the full suite of tools free for 30 days; after that you can purchase individual pieces. HOWEVER, one product, DVDFab HD Decrypter, remains free forever (you can just download this by itself, I believe, at http://www.dvdfab.com/hd-decrypter.htm ). It rips and removes copy protection from both DVDs and Blu-Rays. It claims it removes all DVD protection and some Blu-Ray, but I've yet to find a Blu-Ray disc it couldn't handle.

If you decide to use this product, you can rip DVDs straight to an ISO for HandBrake to use, but for Blu-Rays you need to rip to a folder and point Handbrake to that instead. One more item on Blu-Rays if you go this route: You don't want to point HandBrake to the root folder; you need to point it about three levels deep. If you drill down into the Blu-Ray folder, you will get to a level that is named something similar to the movie title, and it will have two directories beneath it. Sorry, I'm at work so I can't give you the exact names. If you use HandBrake on the root level folder, it will work, but it won't find the chapters on the disc - I found this out the hard way. You need to point it to the sub-folder in order to get chapters.

One last thing, there are websites out there that claim they will sell you the entire DVDFab bundle for a ridiculous price like $20. They are NOT affilited with DVDFab! Like I said, their free HD Decrypter is plenty good if you just need to rip a disc for HandBrake to encode.

I hope this helps!