Roku Developer Program

[greubel]

I've received a couple of complaints about videos getting black bars with 2.8
and there have been rumblings in the forums about it also.

I'm currently on 2.7 but I upgraded one of my boxes to 2.8 for this demo.
Same movie, same TV but in different modes with 2.7 and 2.8 software.

Please check out the difference - http://www.chaneru.com/Roku/Roku%20Update.html

Anyone know what can I do to fix it ??????

[TheEndless]

There's nothing you can do right now. Roku is aware of the issue and is working on it.

[RockyFord]

Even money Roku says it's an encoding problem. Probably something to do with the anamorphic setting.

Just a guess.

[astudios]

actually, in our application, it seems that 2.8 fixed the aspect ratio problem. before 2.8, all of our 4:3 videos were being stretched on a 16:9 screen. but now they are maintaining their proper 4:3 aspect ratio. so, we're glad whatever they did seemed to fix the issue for us. see our thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=30672

bottom line, roku, if you're looking into this issue to fix it, i hope it doesn't break for us!

p.s. we are using wowza to stream our videos (VOD). we are also using wowza to stream our LIVE videos -- adobe encoder and wirecast.

thanks,
steven

[dynamitemedia]

yeah i just found that HLS is not working with my channel or even adding it as a simple video player

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=33646

i added the .m3u8 in my channel and no good and tried also with the examples and its just looping oddly

do we know exactly what is going on with this and what is wrong with 2.8

its weird that some Devs seem to be more in the loop on some of this stuff

[kbenson]

"dynamitemedia" wrote:

its weird that some Devs seem to be more in the loop on some of this stuff

I brought this up recently: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=33651

[dynamitemedia]

yeah i remember seeing it somewhere.... its not so much being part of beta either, but knowing what these bugs are when we are being asked.

i think each Dev should know these issues, because if you haven't noticed we are the ones getting the blame for this stuff and when it doesn't work.

and for the people who do not frequent the forums to find out what is the problem, I would say we get 90% the blame from those folks.

[kbenson]

In the end, there's little Roku can do to make sure the developer channels function fine for each release. The best solution really is for developers to be part of the beta program, and to know well in advance of when the beta is to go live. There's enough people in the beta program that getting some good test coverage shouldn't be too hard. If not enough people in the beta have access to a channel that requires payment, a few temporarily free accounts should get some testers (and may actually turn into paid accounts later).

I've actually spent a fair amount of time thinking about this (I've posted about it more than once, and I tend to try to posit solutions in my posts), and the more complex the solution is (such as allowing users or devs to choose one of the last X firmware releases for their unit) all have significant drawbacks. Just including the developers in the beta and lots of open communication with them about the status of the beta releases is the easiest solution all around, and puts very little pressure on all involved (read as easy to implement and follow, little to no implementation time).

[Anonymous]

We think we've identified the issue with the squeezed video and are working to get a fix released ASAP.

Patrick

[Arwen]

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
We think we've identified the issue with the squeezed video and are working to get a fix released ASAP.

Patrick

Thank you.

In my case, I only have 3 music videos, (from a DVD I own), and 1 movie,
(also owned), that I have transcoded with Handbrake. These worked fine
with 2.7, but got the very wide vertical black bars and compressed image
with 2.8.

If Handbrake, (or others), are doing something wrong, like with the header
information, let us know. I'd gladly re-encode if their is some option I am
missing or need to remove.