Roku Developer Program

[renojim]

Thanks for the thanks! I love it too, so you can bet when a problem is detected I'll try my best to fix it.

I have good news to report. 😄 I think I have the problem with v2.8 of the firmware figured out! It was a struggle, but worth it since the server definitely had some issues that the new firmware release exposed. I still have some more testing to do and I have to roll the changes into the last server release (my server has morphed into something quite a bit different from the last release, so I'd be afraid to release it), then I'll figure out how to get it to everyone.

Stay tuned!
-JT

[capt_kirk]

JT, you da man. I wish I could help, but Perl is the only scripting languague I know reasonably well, and it's been quite a long time since I've done anything significant with it. Pretty much just doing sysadmin stuff now.

[Timmy_Likes_to_]

Do you know if any of these fixes you are working on might alleviate the rebuffering with 23.976 fps videos?

and...a BIG thanks for working on this JT!!! This is one of our most used channels!

[renojim]

No they will not (at least I'm pretty sure they won't), but I thought 23.976 was ok? I'll try one myself when I get a chance. I encode all my videos at 29.97 fps.

Just so everyone knows, videos show up "squished" horizontally like others have mentioned. I haven't done enough testing to be able to tell if it's all videos or just some, but since most of my videos were encoded the same way I wouldn't be surprised if all of mine are squished. I'm sure Roku will figure out what the problem is, but looking at a widescreen, letterboxed, video squished to 75% of the screen width (but 100% of the height) looks pretty horrible.

-JT

[mikebdoss]

"renojim" wrote:
No they will not (at least I'm pretty sure they won't), but I thought 23.976 was ok? I'll try one myself when I get a chance. I encode all my videos at 29.97 fps.

Just so everyone knows, videos show up "squished" horizontally like others have mentioned. I haven't done enough testing to be able to tell if it's all videos or just some, but since most of my videos were encoded the same way I wouldn't be surprised if all of mine are squished. I'm sure Roku will figure out what the problem is, but looking at a widescreen, letterboxed, video squished to 75% of the screen width (but 100% of the height) looks pretty horrible.

-JT

Hopefully Roku fixes that, because it is pretty bad to look at - I've noticed it on some podcasts (on the PODTV channel), but others are fine. I'm curious to try out your fix to see a) if it makes MyMedia work again, and b) if I have the same encoding issues. I've generally been encoding with Handbrake using its "default" settings. We'll see...

[renojim]

I haven't had time to test this as much as I would like, but I have other more pressing life issues right now and it may be a few day before I can get back to it, so don't be surprised if there are a few glitches.

To apply the fix:
1) Stop your Python server. If you're using the springboard script, it may not actually kill the server, so use taskmgr (Windows) or the equivalent for your OS to make sure all references to python processes are killed.
2) Locate the server directory of the project. You should see several Python source files in it, like rss_server.py, springboard.py, etc.
3) Once the server is killed, do yourself a favor and delete the my_media_log.txt file in the 'server' directory. It may have grown to be quite huge. This update will stop logging all but error messages, so it shouldn't grow anymore.
4) Delete *.pyc in the 'server' directory. I'm not sure if this is necessary, but it can't hurt. Note: that's pyc not py
5) Download rss_server.py and while you're at it also get springboard.py and common.py. Overwrite the files with the same names in the 'server' directory. The fix is in rss_server.py. The springboard.py file contains a fix for the script not actually killing the server. It should now. The common.py file contains support for SRT subtitles files. It's not in the client/channel yet, but it will be eventually so you may as well get it now. There's a couple of other fixes in rss_server.py, like MP3s that didn't have any meta-data tags at all would cause the server to crash (if I'm remembering correctly).
6) Restart the server using springboard.vbs or whatever method you've been using.

Let me know how it goes!
-JT

[renojim]

I'm not sure what you mean by it's looking for an RSS feed. The channel on the Roku? Your browser? You should be able to browse to http://xxx.xxx.x.xxx:8001 where the x's are the IP address of the computer that's running the server and the 8001 is the port that's configured in config.ini.

What OS are you on? Make sure the springboard configuration screen isn't hidden by another window; it should be there. You can just edit config.ini with a text editor. It's pretty much self-explanatory and it's just a text file.

I just realized something that may be pretty important: Make sure you're on the latest version of the channel and server, found here before you apply the updates. I'm not sure what would happen if you're using an older version.

-JT

Oops, what happened? Your post disappeared.

[JC77]

"renojim" wrote:
I haven't had time to test this as much as I would like, but I have other more pressing life issues right now and it may be a few day before I can get back to it, so don't be surprised if there are a few glitches.

To apply the fix:
1) Stop your Python server. If you're using the springboard script, it may not actually kill the server, so use taskmgr (Windows) or the equivalent for your OS to make sure all references to python processes are killed.
2) Locate the server directory of the project. You should see several Python source files in it, like rss_server.py, springboard.py, etc.
3) Once the server is killed, do yourself a favor and delete the my_media_log.txt file in the 'server' directory. It may have grown to be quite huge. This update will stop logging all but error messages, so it shouldn't grow anymore.
4) Delete *.pyc in the 'server' directory. I'm not sure if this is necessary, but it can't hurt. Note: that's pyc not py
5) Download rss_server.py and while you're at it also get springboard.py and common.py. Overwrite the files with the same names in the 'server' directory. The fix is in rss_server.py. The springboard.py file contains a fix for the script not actually killing the server. It should now. The common.py file contains support for SRT subtitles files. It's not in the client/channel yet, but it will be eventually so you may as well get it now. There's a couple of other fixes in rss_server.py, like MP3s that didn't have any meta-data tags at all would cause the server to crash (if I'm remembering correctly).
6) Restart the server using springboard.vbs or whatever method you've been using.

Let me know how it goes!
-JT

Springboard does not seem to want to work after the 3 .py files are replaced. But the "launch_server.vbs" does launch the server. But them Mymedia gives me an error message saying that it cannot find the RSS feed.

[mikebdoss]

Success! I ran into problems at first because I didn't have the latest version installed (I got some errors in terminal), but those all disappeared once I installed the latest version.

In even better news, whatever it is I'm doing to encode videos (or some other variable, who knows) is playing well with 2.8 in terms of not shrinking my videos on the sides. My videos are loading quickly and look just like they did before. No errors at all, but I'm sure my daughter will let me know if she notices any at longer playback times.

Thanks JT - I appreciate all your work!

[renojim]

"JC77" wrote:
But them Mymedia gives me an error message saying that it cannot find the RSS feed.

The server IP address must be setup incorrectly. Did you reload the channel? I would think not if the springboard script won't execute. Check the settings in the channel and make sure the server IP address is correct.

Are you comfortable with the command line? If so, open a command prompt window and change directories to wherever the springboard.py file is. Run this command (assuming C:\Python26 is where Python is installed):
C:\Python26\python springboard.py
Nothing really should have changed as far starting the springboard script. Depending on how you installed Python, you may be able to double-click on springboard.py in an Explorer window.

One more thing to try is what I said in the post a couple up about browsing to the server from your PC. Also, make sure you have the latest version of the client/channel as I also mentioned in that post.

-JT