Roku Developer Program

[malkin13]

Preparing videos for use with your Roku set-top-box can be accomplished very simply using one of the Roku Presets on Encoding.com. Choose a Preset, set a destination location for output files and you're up and running! There are 2 presets: Single Bitrate output and Adaptive Bitrate (HLS) output

1. Roku Preset for Single Bitrate output: quick setup to generate a single video output in .mp4 format

When using the web interface, select the "Roku 800kbps" preset from the Format drop-down menu to generate a static bitrate video output:



If you are sending XML to our API, use this template to make a 800kbps Roku mp4:

  <format>
    <output>roku_800</output>
    <destination>ftp://username:password@yourserver.com/output/filename.mp4?passive=yes</destination>
    <size>640x480</size>
    <bitrate>800k</bitrate>
    <audio_bitrate>128k</audio_bitrate>
    <audio_sample_rate>44100</audio_sample_rate>
    <audio_channels_number>2</audio_channels_number>
    <keep_aspect_ratio>yes</keep_aspect_ratio>
    <video_codec>libx264</video_codec>
    <profile>roku</profile>
    <audio_codec>libfaac</audio_codec>
    <keyframe>200</keyframe>
    <audio_volume>100</audio_volume>
    <file_extension>mp4</file_extension>
  </format>

2. Roku HLS Preset for Adaptive Bitrate output: quick setup to generate the index file (.m3u8) and h264 segments (.ts)

When using the web interface, select "Roku HLS" from the Format drop-down menu to generate the necessary files for adaptive streaming:



For Roku HLS adaptive bitrate API jobs, please use this XML template:

 <format>
    <output>roku_hls</output>
    <destination>ftp://username:password@yourserver.com/output/filename.m3u8?passive=yes</destination>
    <size>0x480</size>
    <audio_bitrate>96k</audio_bitrate>
    <audio_sample_rate>44100</audio_sample_rate>
    <audio_channels_number>2</audio_channels_number>
    <keep_aspect_ratio>yes</keep_aspect_ratio>
    <video_codec>libx264</video_codec>
    <profile>roku</profile>
    <audio_codec>libfaac</audio_codec>
    <audio_volume>100</audio_volume>
    <bitrates>1200k,800k,600k,400k,200k,110k</bitrates>
    <framerates>29.97,29.97,29.97,29.97,15,10</framerates>
    <keyframes>90,90,90,90,45,30</keyframes>
    <pack_files>no</pack_files>
    <segment_duration>10</segment_duration>
    <add_audio_only>no</add_audio_only>
    <still_image>no</still_image>
  </format>

Additional notes regarding Roku HLS
Please do not use two pass encoding, or you will see a blurry I-frame "popping" at the beginning of each 10 second video segment. Also, be aware that 5 different bitrates will output 30 segment (.ts) files per minute of video, so a 10-minute video will be 300 files. You will probably want to encode each video to a separate destination directory to keep your Roku organized. Otherwise, you will quickly have thousands of segment files in one directory.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for this, Jeff. Perhaps this will be useful for people looking to convert libraries for Roku playback.