Roku Developer Program

[Nerdtron]

Am looking to create a Roku channel for our church.  The channel should provide both of the following.

1) Browse through RSS media feeds from vimeo to show our previously uploaded videos.  This looks pretty straightforward and could be done with Roku Direct Publishing.

2) Ability to view the live service video feed.  This is available currently via an HLS link from our streaming provider, a DASH link, or HTML embed code with the providers player.

Given the mix of 1 and 2 I'm thinking I need to create a custom channel using the developer tools.  Then I could setup the UI to have both the "watch live" player and the media archive (which would pull from the RSS feed from vimeo).

Any experience viewing a live HLS/DASH feed from a Roku app?  I'm a software developer but am new to Roku so just coming up to speed going through the tutorials.  If you could point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it 

[boogernose]

I saw your post on Community.

I encourage you to go for it. Roku has its own scripting language much like others.

There is also a Channel https://channelstore.roku.com/details/5bd649ba7940dc875cc4f61c20ef5b92/roku-developers

[Nerdtron]

Thanks!  I've been working through the tutorial videos and it looks feasible, just wondering how its going to work to have a player control which will pull from the type of live feed URLs I have available.  Will see what happens as I get farther in.

[Baradanikto]

If you'd like to avoid the programming, and, get up to speed quickly, Direct Publisher can accommodate your needs.  Using a JSON feed, your channel can contain both Live and Archived content.

[Nerdtron]

Our JSON feed is provided by vimeo.  For each showcase you create in vimeo, a feed is provided for that showcase.  Our channel will show a set of showcases, one for each series of videos.  We additionally have a DASH link for the live video to be shown separately.  This isn't provided in the feed as its a different source, not through vimeo.  We'll also want to check the contents of the dash link to see if the feed is currently live.

So far this appears like it'll work well with a custom channel.  I'm not sure if direct publish would provide this level of customization and functionality in our channel, but by going through the custom channel tutorial I think we can get this working.

[Baradanikto]

Keep in mind, you are not required to use the JSON output from Vimeo.  There's nothing preventing you from modifying it to meet your needs.  In fact, you can merge multiple feed files to create one "master" feed file that can serve as your channel feed.  This means you can combine live and archived content into one feed file.  Your showcases can then be used to define channel categories.

[Nerdtron]

When you say, "merge multiple feed files to create one "master" feed file" do you mean a file you would manually maintain?  We add weekly videos which get added to the showcase.  Are you saying we'd need to manually edit the feed with each video then to add it?  The showcase feed automatically includes the videos there so you can just add a video as part of the post production process and it would show up automatically.

[Baradanikto]

Not exactly.

You would definitely need to maintain your feed file on a regular basis, but, it doesn't need to be totally manual.  There are lots of software solutions on this forum to help you maintain your feed file while taking full advantage of Direct Publisher.  You'll need to balance the advantages/disadvantages of using the Vimeo feed.  Some developers on this forum have complained that Vimeo limits the use of categories among other problems.

The point is....you're not locked into what Vimeo generates for you.

[Nerdtron]

ok, thanks!  Appreciate the feedback.  Will keep that in mind.

[kasiris]

I understanding you want 3 seperate feeds Live, RSS and Archive ... if your not dealing with a Mega Church jmo I would host the content on a different host, run a php script (scndir output save xml/json) for the RSS and Archive and run the Live on it's own leaf (m3u8) and go with the Videoplayer example because it's all written in Brightscript and functions off of a xml/json