Roku Developer Program

[benjamin]

Hello all,

I got my feet wet with the Roku SDK and was getting really excited about making a new channel. My videos are all hosted on Brightcove, and since Brightcove and Roku are "Partners," I figured it would be no problem to stream the videos to my channel from Brightcove. Much was my dismay when the Brightcove people informed me that there is a sample channel that can be modified, but it requires the Media API, which is off-limits to me, since I only have the Express I plan. :cry:

I'm afraid I already know the answer to this question, but can someone who has experience with Brightcove tell me whether or not it is possible to stream videos from Brightcove somehow other than through their Media API?

Thanks.

[jcolombo]

Hi,

Not 100% sure, but check into the simple feeds that Brightcove provides - I don't think they require a pro account and maybe you can use those to feed your Roku app!

Check these:
http://forum.brightcove.com/t5/General-Development/Discover-video-still-thumbnail-without-API/td-p/1...
http://support.brightcove.com/en/docs/publishing-rss-feeds#available

Let us know if that works for you!

[MSGreg]

Since you haven't gotten a lot of replies, I'll throw my 2 cents in.

If someone contradicts what I say here, believe them and not me 🙂

What I think you need to look for is direct access to files/folders, each link is called "hotlink". Some providers do this on a file by file basis, but you will be better off with folder access where the relative paths are retained. You can then code your xml files to have all the same prefix, or do what I did and modify the Roku SDK example for reading relative paths.

If Brightcove requires an API to access the raw files, it won't work (well, unless the "API" allows access to the raw files via standard http URLs). The other item you will need is the ability to store xml files, and then retrieve them the same way over standard http URLs.

For example, I have modified the Roku SDK code to permit relative paths in the xml files, and it's working with Dropbox hotlinks to the Public folder. The Dropbox Public folder is available to new accounts created before July 2012. Accounts created after July 2012 will not have the Public folder.

[benjamin]

Thank you both for your very helpful comments!

@jcolombo, I was hopeful when I looked at the links you gave me about the Brightcove RSS feeds, but I'm afraid they won't work after all. The information they contain only refers to video players and not the videos themselves, so that won't allow me to get at the actual video files. It was a nice thought, though!

@MSGreg, I had thought that what you were referring to was impossible in Brightcove, but it turns out that they do reveal the URLs for the actual video files! Here's their information on it:

http://support.brightcove.com/en/docs/b ... #mediaURLs

In looking at my various videos, it appears that they are all in a folder named with my publisher ID, so I think I could make a relative URL from that. The only trick is that Brightcove says these URLs change "from time to time":

The most important thing to remember is that the URLs for images, video files, and renditions are not fixed. Brightcove reconfigures the storage of media assets from time to time to meet requirements of some change in our internal systems, to improve performance, or for other reasons.

However, for $300 a month, I think I can afford to check myself every day to make sure the links are still working, and update the XML file if necessary. On second thought, maybe I could write a program to do that for me!

Anyway, just wanted to post my findings for you and for anyone who may stumble across this thread looking for answers. Thanks again!