Channels & viewing

[farside847]

I am using the Roku Media Player app to play videos on a USB drive. I was able to get many features working (trickplay, captions, and poster images).

I am stuck trying to get any type of metadata to display in the app. The only thing it shows on the movie title screen is the image, movie title, file extension and file size. There seems to be space for more information however. Is there a way to have it also display a description and a list of actors? I have tried providing metadata files with the same filename as the video, in various file extensions and formats, but so far nothing is working.

thanks!

[renojim]

I don't think it supports anything like that, but @atc98092 would know better than me.

[atc98092]

What format is your metadata file in? I don't know if a Roku can read an NFO file. In fact, I'm not certain RMP can read any metadata file. I can't find any documentation that covers it.

However, RMP will display metadata from a DLNA server that offers metadata support. This requires installing a server application on a computer or NAS connected to your network. Some have their own dedicated channels for Roku devices, such as Plex or Emby. Both have a nicer user interface than RMP provides. There's also DLNA only servers, such as Serviio. DLNA servers generally download the metadata from an online database, but can also read personal NFO files for non-commercial content. It requires the file to be named in a specific format, so it can match the title correctly in the online database.

RMP displays the year, a synopsis of the title, the date it was released, and on occasion it might show artists or directors. 

Disclaimer: I wrote the Roku profiles that are included in Serviio, and am also a moderator on their forum. 

[farside847]

My files are currently nfo, but I was looking into the format dlna uses. But my tests for both failed. Ideally I would like everything on the USB with no server.

Do you know of a way to provide the dlna metadata in a file? I wonder if RMP might pick it up if the data is formatted in this way, and named correctly... 

[atc98092]

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@farside847 wrote:

Do you know of a way to provide the dlna metadata in a file? I wonder if RMP might pick it up if the data is formatted in this way, and named correctly... 

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I don't believe there's any way to duplicate the way a DLNA server streams the metadata with a file. The primary problem is that the Roku OS would have to be programmed to recognize the file type, and then read and display it correctly. Since it doesn't recognize the NFO file, I don't think there's much chance of the OS being programmed for that. 

Roku does provide a significant amount of programming instruction, and this is the page that discusses streaming the metadata. Someone might be able to write a channel that would recognize the metadata file and display the information accurately. I haven't been able to contact the Roku RMP developer for over 6 months, so I can't reach out and ask about this sort of thing. 

[farside847]

Interesting. Thank you for the reply and information.

Sadly I am no developer, but if you ever do have contact with the Roku dev (or if one reads this in the future) supporting movie content in some way via USB would be a really great enhancement. Or, if this functionality already exists, I just need some documentation on how the data should be formatted.

In case it helps someone in the future, by playing around I found that creating a BIF file, and naming it the same as the video enables trickplay. Very useful, but if I was not testing different things I never would have known this worked. Cheers.

[atc98092]

I'm not familiar with a BIF file. I do notice that right now RMP will not trick play any files in the TS/M2TS container. It used to, and it works fine for MP4 and MKV files, or any files transcoded using HLS/applehttp. 

[farside847]

One more question 

can you skip the “select media device” screen and go directly to the video content? I swear it used to do this …

[atc98092]

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@farside847 wrote:

One more question 

can you skip the “select media device” screen and go directly to the video content? I swear it used to do this …

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You are correct. RMP did allow selecting a specific device. I hadn't had that configured in quite a while, so wasn't aware if it's gone away. I just went into the * settings when I first started RMP, and turned off select media type. I then highlighted one of my DLNA servers and clicked Select Favorite DLNA server. The next time I started RMP, it was still on the device screen, but that DLNA server was still highlighted so I only needed to click OK and I was in. Since I'm looking at a Premiere, which doesn't have a USB port, I can't say if there's such a setting for a USB device or if it's only for DLNA servers. 

[AvsGunnar]

@farside847 

"can you skip the “select media device” screen and go directly to the video content? I swear it used to do this …"

The Roku Media Player kind of remembers where you last exited.  If you press Home when you are finished watching your video, then the next time you launch the Roku Media Player, you will be back at the Video screen. (last video played).  If you back out to the Video folder, then you will be started at the Video folder, an so forth.

This behavior remains in effect until you restart the device.  Best you can do is disable the "Request Media Type at Startup" in the options so that you at least can skip to the "Select media device screen".