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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Roku channel stream has 1 too many clicks

Hello, I created a Roku channel that has 1 live video stream link that I watch to The Shopping Channel but when I start the channel I have to click on The Shopping channel logo 3 times before it will start. The second time just has a blank image. What do I need to change? All the other one stream channels out there just have to click twice to start the stream, once to select the channel I want then a second time to play/start the stream. Here are my files for examination; Thx
Categories:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<categories>
<category title="TSC" description="The Shopping Channel" sd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc214x144Sd.png" hd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc290x218Hd.png">
<categoryLeaf title="TSC" description="The Shopping Channel" feed="http://ia601509.us.archive.org/27/items/RokuXML/themind.xml"/>
</category>
</categories>

themind:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<feed>
<!-- resultLength indicates the total number of results for this feed -->
<resultLength>2</resultLength>
<!-- endIndix indicates the number of results for this *paged* section of the feed -->
<endIndex>2</endIndex>
<item sdImg="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc214x144Sd.png" hd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc290x218Hd.png">
<title>The Shopping Channel</title>
<contentId>10001</contentId>
<contentType>Shopping</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>hls</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>1500</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://tscstreaming-lh.akamaihd.net/i/TSCLiveStreaming_1@91031/index_3_av-p.m3u8</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis>TSC is a Canadian English language cable television home shopping channel. The Shopping Channel is a division of Rogers Media. The channel is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. It showcases various products which viewers can purchase either by telephone or internet. TSC also distributes a catalogue twice per year and owns an off air outlet store located in Toronto.</synopsis>
<genres>Shopping</genres>
<runtime>0</runtime>
</item>
</feed>
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43 REPLIES 43
belltown
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

I assume you're using the Roku's 'videoplayer' SDK example. That's just the way it works.

If instead you were to use the NewVideoPlayer (http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=91672&p=516080), which you can get from https://github.com/belltown/Roku-NewVideoPlayer then you can simply change one line of code in Main.brs (replace "pkg:/xml/categories.xml" with "http://ia601509.us.archive.org/27/items/RokuXML/themind.xml", or whatever file has your actual feed, and you will only have one screen to click on before getting to the screen with the play button. I would also change your feed's Xml file so that <contentType>Shopping</contentType> is changed to <contentType>episode</contentType>, so your image on the springboard screen isn't squished up.

You can also just use a single XML file like so. Point to this file in Main.brs instead of your existing categories.file:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<categories>
<feed title="HSC">
<item sdImg="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc214x144Sd.png" hd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc290x218Hd.png">
<title>The Shopping Channel</title>
<contentId>10001</contentId>
<contentType>episode</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>hls</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>1500</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://tscstreaming-lh.akamaihd.net/i/TSCLiveStreaming_1@91031/index_3_av-p.m3u8</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis>TSC is a Canadian English language cable television home shopping channel. The Shopping Channel is a division of Rogers Media. The channel is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. It showcases various products which viewers can purchase either by telephone or internet. TSC also distributes a catalogue twice per year and owns an off air outlet store located in Toronto.</synopsis>
<genres>Shopping</genres>
<runtime>0</runtime>
</item>
</feed>
</categories>


or if you really wanted it split over two files you could use:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<category feed="pkg://xml/feed.xml" title="TSC" description="The Shopping Channel" sd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc214x144Sd.png" hd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc290x218Hd.png"/>


and in feed.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<feed title="TSC">
<item title="TSC" sdImg="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc214x144Sd.png" hd_img="http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/TscGraphics/Tsc290x218Hd.png">
<title>The Shopping Channel</title>
<contentId>10001</contentId>
<contentType>episode</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>hls</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>1500</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://tscstreaming-lh.akamaihd.net/i/TSCLiveStreaming_1@91031/index_3_av-p.m3u8</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis>TSC is a Canadian English language cable television home shopping channel. The Shopping Channel is a division of Rogers Media. The channel is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. It showcases various products which viewers can purchase either by telephone or internet. TSC also distributes a catalogue twice per year and owns an off air outlet store located in Toronto.</synopsis>
<genres>Shopping</genres>
<runtime>0</runtime>
</item>
</feed>
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

Ok, thank you. Yes, I was using the old VideoPlayer SDK folder.
Can I keep all of the files local? instead of having to host some of the graphics at archive.org and others in the local images folder. I tried before linking the images in my xml to the local package folder like the manifest does for some of the graphics but did work. I'll try again with the new program

EDIT: So I have created a tsc.xml file in the XML folder as you have posted above and changed the line in main.brs to: (parseXmlDocument ("pkg:/xml/tsc.xml")).
Should this be all I need to do and now upload the new zip to my Roku once I fix the manifest file to point to my icons? That is a lot easier than having to use themind.xml and categories.xml files 🙂
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belltown
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

"matrixebiz" wrote:
Ok, thank you. Yes, I was using the old VideoPlayer SDK folder.
Can I keep all of the files local? instead of having to host some of the graphics at archive.org and others in the local images folder. I tried before linking the images in my xml to the local package folder like the manifest does for some of the graphics but did work. I'll try again with the new program

EDIT: So I have created a tsc.xml file in the XML folder as you have posted above and changed the line in main.brs to: (parseXmlDocument ("pkg:/xml/tsc.xml")).
Should this be all I need to do and now upload the new zip to my Roku once I fix the manifest file to point to my icons? That is a lot easier than having to use themind.xml and categories.xml files 🙂


First of all, I've uploaded a new verison of NewVideoPlayer to GitHub. You may want to download that one instead. It has improved support for live video. You can put a <live> element in the video feed's item to signify a live stream (e.g. <live>True</live>). This will disable the FF/REW keys as well as bookmarking/resume functionality, which aren't applicable to live video. I also no longer display the 'Play All' button if there is only one item in the feed.

Yes, all your files (feeds, images, etc.) can be in your local Roku package. This works with NewVideoPlayer, but not with Roku's videoplayer SDK example.

Yes, to your edit. However, check out the UITheme.brs file. If you're using a logo that appears at the top left hand corner of your screens, then un-comment the lines below "No logos in this implementation ..." and replace the filenames with your own. You can also make any other changes you wish here for different colors, etc. You may want to change your OverhangSlice attributes to use your own overhang images (the stuff that appears across the top of the screens).
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

Ok, cool so this is all I am going to do and if you can let me know if this will work;

1) Created a tsc.xml in the xml folder;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<categories>
<feed title="TSC">
<item sd_img=pkg:/images/Tsc214x144Sd.png hd_img=pkg:/images/Tsc290x218Hd.png>
<title>The Shopping Channel</title>
<contentId>10001</contentId>
<contentType>episode</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>hls</streamFormat>
<live>True</live>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>1500</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://tscstreaming-lh.akamaihd.net/i/TSCLiveStreaming_1@91031/index_3_av-p.m3u8</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis>TSC is a Canadian English language cable television home shopping channel. The Shopping Channel is a division of Rogers Media. The channel is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. It showcases various products which viewers can purchase either by telephone or internet. TSC also distributes a catalogue twice per year and owns an off air outlet store located in Toronto.</synopsis>
<genres>Shopping</genres>
<runtime>0</runtime>
</item>
</feed>
</categories>


2) Change uiDisplay (parseXmlDocument ("pkg:/xml/categories.xml")) to uiDisplay (parseXmlDocument ("pkg:/xml/tsc.xml")) in Main.brs

3) Edit manifest to my own pics and put my images into the images folder;

#*******************************************************************
#
# NewVideoPlayer -- Example Multi-Level Roku Channel
#
# Copyright (c) 2015, belltown. All rights reserved. See LICENSE.txt
#
#********************************************************************
#
title=TSC
subtitle=The Shopping Channel
#
major_version=1
minor_version=0
build_version=01
#
mm_icon_focus_hd=pkg:/images/MainMenu_Icon_CenterFocus_HD.png
mm_icon_focus_sd=pkg:/images/MainMenu_Icon_CenterFocus_SD.png
#
mm_icon_side_hd=pkg:/images/MainMenu_Icon_Side_HD.png
mm_icon_side_sd=pkg:/images/MainMenu_Icon_Side_SD.png
#
#splash_screen_fhd=pkg:/images/mm_icon_focus_hd-366x210.png
#splash_screen_hd=pkg:/images/mm_icon_focus_hd-366x210.png
#splash_screen_sd=pkg:/images/mm_icon_focus_hd-366x210.png
#
splash_color=#414a4c
splash_min_time=1500
#


4) Is this all I need to do? I don't need a hosting site anymore for my images and don't need categories.xml and themind.xml files for my custom channel.
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belltown
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

1) Enclose your image attribute names in quotes (or the Xml won't parse), and you should probably change hd_img to hdImg (my code doesn't care, but if you were to try this in the Roku SDK videoplayer example, it wouldn't recognize it):

<item sdImg="pkg:/images/Tsc214x144Sd.png" hdImg="pkg:/images/Tsc290x218Hd.png">


2) Yes

3) Yes

4) Yes - no hosting needed; you can put everything in your local package, and you don't need the other xml files that come with the example.
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

Awesome, thank you for the help, I'll test it tonight and yes, you can use my TSC source in your cat example 🙂
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

Okay, it works great with the side load zip, now where is the guide again on creating the package file for uploading it to my Online Dev channel account for sharing private channels?
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belltown
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

"matrixebiz" wrote:
Okay, it works great with the side load zip, now where is the guide again on creating the package file for uploading it to my Online Dev channel account for sharing private channels?

It's in the Channel Packaging and Publishing document, which I believe used to be a single web page document that you could easily search through to find stuff. Now, in their infinite lack of wisdom, they've decided to split all their documents into multiple mini-documents, which in some cases aren't immediately obvious which 'Child Page' you need to be searching in (the BrightScript Reference and the Developer Guide are the worst in that regard). I miss the good old days when each document was a separate PDF file that I could download onto my PC and search through at will.

Anyway, the section about generating a package is here: http://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Packaging+Your+Application and the section on creating a Private Channel is here: http://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Managing+Channels
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Roku channel stream has one two many clicks

Okay, thank you
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