Roku Developer Program

[renojim]

"Saqqara" wrote:
Renojim, I look forward to testing and using this and future versions and do appreciate the work you are doing to carry this project forward, including implementing some of my suggestions. I do agree that the best direction this project can take is to make installation and upgrading less formidable for non-technical folks. Roku people don't like to leave the couch. 🙂

Thanks. The big problem with trying to turn this into a private channel (or public for that matter) is the server. I've actually come up with a way to update the server from the Roku client, but it might be too much to expect people to allow me to muck with files on their server. However, the real problem is getting the server installed in the first place. You all know what it took; it's probably too much to expect the average Roku user to be able to accomplish.

The whole server issue may become a moot point. The new firmware supposedly includes "File System access". If they ever release the SDK to other than their favorite sons, I'll be able to figure out what that means. If the feature is as useful as it sounds on the surface, I expect more local media channels to be created.

-JT

[canaws]

For renojim...

I've now had two livestreams from ustream where the video was perfect, but there was no audio. I don't know if it's a coding issue or a channel issue. I was going to try to test it by playing the same video on nowhereman's channels, but it's not working right now (it's over video requests threshold).

Maybe you can take a look and see if you can tell? Right now I'm watching women's USA Rugby and the video is great, but no audio:
http://iphone-streaming.ustream.tv/ustr ... ylist.m3u8

I tested another stream (Taylor Swift 13 hour Meet & Greet) and it's working fine:
http://iphone-streaming.ustream.tv/ustr ... ylist.m3u8

[renojim]

I wasn't able to connect to the rugby stream; I guess it ended. Like you said, the Taylor Swift stream was fine. I'm not sure what the problem was. I know the Roku only supports aac audio in HTTP live streams, but if you look at the playlist.m3u8 files they both specify the same codecs with mp4a being the audio codec. As far as I know, that's the same thing as aac. I don't know if the "CODECS" parameter in the playlist file really means anything since it's an optional parameter. It might be possible to have one thing in the playlist file but use a different codec in the actual video. Doesn't seem likely, but who knows?

I know this is a stupid question, but did you try the rugby stream on your computer or some other device to verify that it did have audio?

If you notice it happening again, you could try to capture one of the video segments on your computer and then check its properties in Media Player or something similar. I don't know if you've tried, but if you download the first 'playlist.m3u8' file that's specified in the m3u8 file you've already downloaded, you'll see something like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:NO
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:13
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:444
#EXTINF:13,
http://http-streaming-data.ustream.tv/4/wow03/ustreamVideo/335984/streams/live/media_444.ts?wowzasessionid=1777850759
#EXTINF:13,
http://http-streaming-data.ustream.tv/4/wow03/ustreamVideo/335984/streams/live/media_445.ts?wowzasessionid=1777850759
#EXTINF:13,
http://http-streaming-data.ustream.tv/4/wow03/ustreamVideo/335984/streams/live/media_446.ts?wowzasessionid=1777850759

If you then copy & paste the link to one of the .ts files (I'd recommend the third or even adding 1 or 2 to it since the segments only hang around for little while before they're deleted from the server), you should be able to save the segment and open it with a video player and check the audio codec.

-JT

[seracious]

I just wanted to drop a note to thank renojim and hammertown for their support. I was the Mac guy having trouble on Tiger. I updated to Snow Leopard, made sure I had the accepted version of Python, and I'm in business. That is to say, I can browse and listen to music and even photos. I haven't tried much else.

Photos are slow, and I can't get that trick with libjpg-libpng to load through Terminal. I get an error noting that something called "gcc-4.2" (or close, not sure about punctuation and number) fails, unable to be found in System/Library/Frameworks. I searched the same file in Frameworks and found nothing.

So far, if I play an album, it will play through the songs, then loop back to the first track. While I've read about the shuffle and other features, I don't know how to access them, and am not remotely a programmer, so I might be out of my league on that front. Is there a place where one can see/adjust such settings? I've read about making playlists but haven't tried my hand at it. It will take some thorough research of the posts to gather all that information.

If there is a place where such things are discussed, such as instructions for making playlists or how to use the shuffle feature across all folders, please let me know. Gleaning all the relevant info from 46 pages of posts is taxing for the newbie.

But thanks again. I love the utility and hope for more features.
Mike

[renojim]

seracious, thanks for your thanks. I'm glad you got it working. The 'Play all' and 'Shuffle all' "posters" should show up to the left of the highlighted music folder or song as you enter "My Music" and subsequent music folders. If you don't see them, you probably don't have the latest version. Get it here. I haven't tried to contact el.wubo, but it looks like he has moved on and I have no way to update the first post in the thread to point to the latest version. At some point I hope to repackage the channel and make it easier to install. Unfortunately, Mac users will probably be left on their own since I have no way to support them. It would be nice if I could virtualize a Mac, but oh well. Thank you Steve Jobs.

Photo viewing will be slow without PIL (Python Imaging Library) installed. gcc-4.2 would be a compiler. I thought it came with the OS, but I'm not sure. Maybe the error is coming from gcc and there's something that it's looking for and can't find? You might want to do a search for installing PIL on Snow Leopard. Sorry I can't be more help.

The top level 'Settings' poster gets you to the available settings. If you don't see that poster, again you don't have the latest version. The only setting that applies to music is the "Autoplay subfolders" setting and it's kind of leftover at this point. With it set to 'Yes', when you choose 'Play/Shuffle all' all of the songs in the current folder plus any songs in subfolders will be played (which is probably what you want 99% of the time). With it set to 'No', only the songs in the current folder will be played.

The playlist feature is designed to work with .m3u playlist files. They're simple text files and you can find plenty of information on them if you care to search, but to be honest any text file with a list of songs to play, one per line, will work. Either a full path to the song or a path relative to your top level music folder must be used. For example on a Windows machine, I could have either:
F:\Roku\Media\Music\Eagles\Hotel California\Hotel California.mp3
F:\Roku\Media\Music\Rush\Moving Pictures\Tom Sawyer.mp3
or (assuming I have F:\Roku\Media\Music set as my music folder in my config.ini file)
Eagles\Hotel California\Hotel California.mp3
Rush\Moving Pictures\Tom Sawyer.mp3
Putting either of those two lines in a file called "jim's list.m3u" should work.

Feel free to ask any questions here. I rarely give anyone a hard time for asking a question that's already been answered unless it was answered in the previous post ;). I'm not a jerk.

-JT

[seracious]

Thanks again, renojim. I confirmed that I have the latest version, though I still can't conjure up the settings and shuffle options. I'm wondering if I need to do some kind of reset, wiping the old one out so that I'm sure the new one is enabled correctly. I've tried redownloading to a new folder, installing the client, and then relaunching but without any luck.

I never set any configurations or dealt with .ini files and am not sure if I should do something with that either. I haven't toyed with playlists since I was hoping to get the shuffle working most of all.

If anyone has any other advice for me, including a way to even erase the channel and "reinstall" it, it would be most appreciated. It doesn't appear in the upper tier of My Channels and I don't see a way to remove it elsewhere either.

But thanks for the attention all the same. I still dig it.
Mike

[renojim]

It won't show up in your "My Channels" since it's technically a development application. You can delete it from your box via your browser (go to the ip address of your Roku, e.g., http://192.168.1.103), but it shouldn't be necessary if all you want to do is load a new version. I'm assuming you're using the springboard.py python app to load the channel. You don't have to mess with the config.ini file because the springboard code does it all for you, but you can take a look at what's in config.ini if you like.

I really need to make up some screenshots, but let me try to explain what you should be seeing. When you first select the channel, you should see six "posters": "My Music", "My Videos", "My Photos", "My Streams", "Now Playing", and "Settings". Of course, there isn't room for all of them to fit on the screen at once, but using the left and right arrow buttons on the remote will get you around those top level posters. Now if you're on "My Music" and you press the select button on the remote you'll enter whatever folder you've set up as your music folder, called 'music_dir' on the springboard configuration app. That will take you to a new level of posters that are dependent on how you've organized your music on your computer. The currently "focused" poster will be the first song or subfolder of your music collection. If you press the left arrow on the remote, it will take you to a poster called "Shuffle All". Selecting that poster will play all of your music in a random fashion. To the left of that poster is the "Play All" poster.

I hope this helps!
-JT

[quikone]

Hi, I have had no problem getting through all the steps to get media player installed, so far I have not been able to play anything. Even if I browse to http://myip:8001/feed. I see the two feeds, video and music. If I go to them I see limited folders, but not all of them. If I click on one of them I get a screen that says 'none'. Any ideas?

[renojim]

It shouldn't matter, but what kind of computer/OS are you using for the server? Can you post the contents of 'config.ini'? All folders under the directory you've configured for your music/videos should always show up when you click on "My Music" or "My Videos" when you browse to http://myip:8001/feed. I assume you didn't set up a Photos directory. I've never seen a screen that says 'none', so I have to wonder if you're really talking about "My Media".

-JT

[quikone]

"renojim" wrote:
It shouldn't matter, but what kind of computer/OS are you using for the server? Can you post the contents of 'config.ini'? All folders under the directory you've configured for your music/videos should always show up when you click on "My Music" or "My Videos" when you browse to http://myip:8001/feed. I assume you didn't set up a Photos directory. I've never seen a screen that says 'none', so I have to wonder if you're really talking about "My Media".

-JT

I am using XP. I actually have dedicated drives for video, music and photos. The reason I have not listed photos is because I didn't think that it worked for photos yet. The screen that says none shows up after I click or select something to watch or play. I am pretty sure that I am using My Media, at least that is what the selection says. The screen I am talking about is not through the ROKU it is through my laptop to the server. When I browse in the heading says 'A personal Music Feed' with selections for music and video. When I select music, it shows all my folders. From there it show sub folders indicating rock, country, etc. When I select one of them it drills down to albums and from there to songs in that album, it is when I select a song, the next page simply says none. It is like it finds nothing to play or nothing to play it with. When I go to the Roku device and select Mymedia, I see mymusic and myvideo. If I select mymusic, I see the subfolders under that heading with the choices of rock, country, etc. If I select one of those it then goes to a choice of band and then from there a selection of albums. At this point I cannot get past the albums, selecting anything just stalls.

Here is the config file
rokuip=10.10.15.4
serverip=10.10.15.1
serverport=8001
collapse collection=false
max_folders=40
music_dir=F:\
video_dir=E:\
python_path=C:\python27\python.exe

I did notice that one of the videos that I ran through handbrake does try to load for a few seconds and then returns to the previous menu. Before trying another I must back out and then return to another that has been converted and it does virtually the same thing. BTW; I have looked at the command window and it looks normal or at least what I think normal should be; ip number; some other number; date; time; http: get /media or get /feed 200 okay