Roku Developer Program

[belltown]

"ThirdWaveSka" wrote:

On the Shoutcast App, my Third Wave Ska station buffers to 19% then says "Unfortunately, an error has occurred during playback". This has been occurring ever since I started the station back up two months ago.

On the TuneIn App. Third Wave Ska takes about 2 or 3 minutes to buffer and then has artifacts. No Metadata.

On ThirdWaveSka App. No Artifacts. No Metadata, about 2 or 3 minutes to buffer. It does take the full buffering because it's about a full song behind the live station.

The Roku SHOUTcast channel and the Roku TuneIn channel do not implement the workaround used to prevent your Wavestreaming Shoutcast server from embedding metadata in the audio stream. Consequently you'll hear the artifacts on those channels, assuming they play at all. I'm not sure why the SHOUTcast channel doesn't play the stream though. Bear in mind that the audio artifacts are totally and completely an issue with the Wavestreaming server and nothing to do with Roku, the Roku SHOUTcast channel, or the Roku TuneIn channel. The correct solution to that problem would be to get Wavestreaming to fix their servers so they don't embed metadata when it hasn't been requested by the client -- or use a different streaming host.

The reason you're not seeing any metadata on the Third Wave Ska Roku channel may be because Instant TV Channel doesn't have any code to handle the metadata. Was it showing metadata before the workaround was implemented? The particular method used by Shoutcast to handle metadata is unique to Shoutcast.Even though it's trivial to at least get the song title and artist for your Shoutcast stream, I wouldn't expect a generic channel generator to handle something so particular (although it might -- I'm not familiar enough with ITVC to say). If ITVC doesn't handle it then the solution to that problem would be to develop a custom audio channel. EDIT: I just looked at their docs and it looks like they do handle Shoutcast metadata. It's not the same metadata that was being embedded in the mp3 audio stream, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't show up.

[ThirdWaveSka]

Yeah, I can understand all of that. I think I've reached the breaking point with Wavestreaming.  Now it's just a matter of working through the metadata with InstantTVChannel. I would hate to have to rebuild everything again with another hosting company but it's a matter of what I can handle. A cut rate Roku experience or another month in beta.  Thank you again for all the guidance. 

[ThirdWaveSka]

RESOLVED:
It's only taken a month but I finally have it setup properly. 
To recap: Wavestreaming stream has sending metadata in the mp3 that Roku was playing. The result was bleeps and pops in the music. 

The action taken: First of all dumped Wavestreaming.  Went to Abovecast and used their Shoutcast stream. Next tested the stream in Belltown's SimpleAudioPlayer app.  Once I made sure that the feed was pure. I entered the new stream in an old cloned backup version of InstantTVChannel. Updated that old version to its latest version. Went to the AudioUserAgent in theme (I believe) and changed it from blank or Roku/DVP to ska (any text will do). Saved, packaged, tested in test channel. Audio is great, Metadata shows up just fine. 

Takeaways: First of all, the people on this board are incredible! Y'all have taught me so much.  Second, everyone here is still awesome, it needed repeating. Next, the issue was that the Roku audio player didn't understand what was metadata and what was music. This affected my own channel and my streams on Shoutcast and TuneIn.  The workaround that came from this board was to change that AudioUserAgent. However, when I simply did that change in InstantTVChannel, the stream would not play and metadata did not show up.  Using a backup and the Roku test channel, I found the old version played the metadata and music with artifacts.  The old version did not include a place to change the AudioUserAgent.  However, with the stream being read by Roku, Updating the InstantTVChannel to the latest version allowed me to change the field.  I don't know if the channel was corrupt and therefore couldn't play but regardless. This is the final resolution. It is back up to Roku for testing to go into production. 
If anyone is trying to do a music channel, make sure to user BellTown's SimpleAudioPlayer to verify the stream. The metadata is actually useless for InstantTVChannel. The app uses the filename (Artist - Title.mp3) to poll Last.FM and that pulls the album art, title and CD title down from there.  Lastly, always clone and keep your old packages, It stops you from building the channel from scratch again. 
Feel free to ask any questions. either here or at my ThirdWaveSka.com contact form.
Thanks
Dan

[ThirdWaveSka]

Issue resolved. Details are listed in Sound Artifacts From Wavestreaming To Roku - Resolved

Final entry:
RESOLVED:
It's only taken a month but I finally have it setup properly. 
To recap: Wavestreaming stream has sending metadata in the mp3 that Roku was playing. The result was bleeps and pops in the music. 

The action taken: First of all dumped Wavestreaming.  Went to Abovecast and used their Shoutcast stream. Next tested the stream in Belltown's SimpleAudioPlayer app.  Once I made sure that the feed was pure. I entered the new stream in an old cloned backup version of InstantTVChannel. Updated that old version to its latest version. Went to the AudioUserAgent in theme (I believe) and changed it from blank or Roku/DVP to ska (any text will do). Saved, packaged, tested in test channel. Audio is great, Metadata shows up just fine. 

Takeaways: First of all, the people on this board are incredible! Y'all have taught me so much.  Second, everyone here is still awesome, it needed repeating. Next, the issue was that the Roku audio player didn't understand what was metadata and what was music. This affected my own channel and my streams on Shoutcast and TuneIn.  The workaround that came from this board was to change that AudioUserAgent. However, when I simply did that change in InstantTVChannel, the stream would not play and metadata did not show up.  Using a backup and the Roku test channel, I found the old version played the metadata and music with artifacts.  The old version did not include a place to change the AudioUserAgent.  However, with the stream being read by Roku, Updating the InstantTVChannel to the latest version allowed me to change the field.  I don't know if the channel was corrupt and therefore couldn't play but regardless. This is the final resolution. It is back up to Roku for testing to go into production. 
If anyone is trying to do a music channel, make sure to user BellTown's SimpleAudioPlayer to verify the stream. The metadata is actually useless for InstantTVChannel. The app uses the filename (Artist - Title.mp3) to poll Last.FM and that pulls the album art, title and CD title down from there.  Lastly, always clone and keep your old packages, It stops you from building the channel from scratch again. 
Feel free to ask any questions. either here or at my ThirdWaveSka.com contact form.
Thanks
Dan