Roku Developer Program

[astromo]

Hello All,

I plan to make a private channel. Some of contents are from youtube. Is it possible technically and legal to include Youtube contents in a private channel. Thanks.

[bking007]

I believe it is very much legal to create a private channel that include your own videos.

[gonzotek]

"bking007" wrote:
I believe it is very much legal to create a private channel that include your own videos.

Legal, yes. However it might be a violation of the YouTube Terms of Service to use their hosting in a manner not approved by them. They give the hosting away for free because they can attach ads to videos displayed on the website and embedded on other sites. Some devices, like Apple TV, display Youtube without ads, but my understanding is this is possible because the device manufacturer had negotiated a contract with Google to pay for access to it.

[astromo]

Thank you. I intend to develop a channel as a library of my media (some are video files but some have been shared on Youtube). Please suggest me the command or script that I should start with to insert the youtube link in the private channel.

[timber03]

astromo, I have a channel in development that will do just that. I hope to make it available for beta testing in the coming weeks.

[astromo]

What is a basic script to add the content in the videoscreen? And what is the URL to be used for pointing to youtube contents?

[sftv]

"astromo" wrote:
What is a basic script to add the content in the videoscreen? And what is the URL to be used for pointing to youtube contents?

[belltown]

"astromo" wrote:
And what is the URL to be used for pointing to youtube contents?

You could try this function:

'**********************************************************************************************************************
' ytGetMP4Url - Retrieve a list of MP4 urls from YouTube for the specified video id
'
' Example usage:
'
'   videoId = "S2wAMaM2OYQ"                     ' (required) YouTube Video Id
'                                               '   Alternatively, the full Url of the YouTube video may be specified here
'   timeout = 60000                             ' (optional) Timeout in milliseconds (default: 0 => wait forever)
'   loginCookie = ""                            ' (optional) YouTube login cookie - only required if video requires a login,
'                                               '   e.g. Private or R-Rated videos (default: "")
'                                               '   The login cookie can be obtained by calling ytLoginYouTube
'   mp4VideoList = ytGetMP4Url (videoId, timeout, loginCookie)
'   if mp4VideoList <> Invalid                  ' Invalid returned if no MP4 streams detected
'       sdUrl = mp4VideoList.sdUrl
'       hdUrl = mp4VideoList.hdUrl              ' Will be empty string if no HD MP4 found
'       hd1080pUrl = mp4VideoList.hd1080pUrl    ' Will be empty string if no 1080p MP4 found
'       hlsUrl = mp4VideoList.hlsUrl            ' If an HLS stream is found, set to its index file's Url
'   endif
'**********************************************************************************************************************
function ytGetMP4Url (videoIdOrUrl as string, timeout = 0 as integer, loginCookie = "" as string) as object
    mp4VideoList = {sdUrl: "", hdUrl: "", hd1080pUrl: "", hlsUrl: ""}
    if Left (LCase (videoIdOrUrl), 4) = "http"
        url = videoIdOrUrl
    else
        url = "http://www.youtube.com/get_video_info?hl=en&el=detailpage&video_id=" + videoIdOrUrl
    endif
    
    '
    ' Get the web page containing video information
    '
    htmlString = ""
    port = CreateObject ("roMessagePort")
    ut = CreateObject ("roUrlTransfer")
    ut.SetPort (port)
    ut.AddHeader ("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0 (gzip)")
    if loginCookie <> ""
        ut.AddHeader ("Cookie", loginCookie)
    endif
    ut.SetCertificatesFile ("common:/certs/ca-bundle.crt")
    ut.InitClientCertificates ()
    ut.EnableEncodings (true)
    ut.SetUrl (url)
    if ut.AsyncGetToString ()
        while true
            msg = Wait (timeout, port)
            if type (msg) = "roUrlEvent"
                status = msg.GetResponseCode ()
                print "ytGetMP4Url. MP4 Url Request: Url = " + url + ". status = " + status.ToStr () + ". failureReason = " + msg.GetFailureReason () 
                if status = 200
                    htmlString = msg.GetString ()
                    print "htmlString=" + htmlString
                endif
                exit while
            else if type (msg) = "Invalid"
                ut.AsyncCancel ()
                print "ytGetMP4Url. Timeout"
                exit while
            endif
        end while
    endif
    
    '
    ' urlEncodedFmtStreamMap contains any mp4 urls
    ' TODO: Check if 1080p support has been discontinued
    '
    urlEncodedFmtStreamMap = CreateObject ("roRegex", "\x22url_encoded_fmt_stream_map\x22:\x22([^\x22]+)\x22", "").Match (htmlString)
    if urlEncodedFmtStreamMap.Count () > 1
        commaSplit = CreateObject ("roRegex", ",", "").Split (urlEncodedFmtStreamMap [1])
        for each commaItem in commaSplit
            maVideoUrl = CreateObject ("roRegex", "url=(.+)", "").Match (commaItem)
            if maVideoUrl.Count () = 2
                videoUrl = ut.Unescape (maVideoUrl [1])
                print "videoUrl: " + videoUrl
                pair = {itag: ""}
                ampersandSplit = CreateObject ("roRegex", "&", "").Split (videoUrl)
                for each ampersandItem in ampersandSplit
                    equalsSplit = CreateObject ("roRegex", "=", "").Split (ampersandItem)
                    if equalsSplit.Count () = 2
                        pair [equalsSplit [0]] = equalsSplit [1]
                    endif
                end for
                if Left (LCase (videoUrl), 4) = "http"
                    urlDecoded = ut.Unescape (videoUrl)
                    if pair.itag = "18"
                        mp4VideoList.sdUrl = urlDecoded
                    else if pair.itag = "22"
                        mp4VideoList.hdUrl = urlDecoded
                    else if pair.itag = "37"
                        mp4VideoList.hd1080pUrl = urlDecoded
                    endif
                endif
            endif
        end for
    endif
    
    '
    ' If no mp4 urls, check for live (HLS) feed in the hlsvp attribute
    '
    if mp4VideoList.sdUrl = "" and mp4VideoList.hdUrl = "" and mp4VideoList.hd1080pUrl = ""
        ' If no mp4 video streams were found, search for a live stream HLS manifest (.m3u8) file
        hlsvp = CreateObject ("roRegex", "hlsvp=([^(" + Chr(34) + "|&|$)]*)", "").Match (htmlString)
        if hlsvp.Count () > 1
            hlsUrlDecoded = ut.Unescape (ut.Unescape (hlsvp [1]))
            mp4VideoList.hlsUrl = hlsUrlDecoded
        endif
        if mp4VideoList.hlsUrl = ""
            mp4VideoList = Invalid
        endif
    endif
    
    if mp4VideoList <> invalid
        print "ytGetMP4Url. sdUrl="      + mp4VideoList.sdUrl
        print "ytGetMP4Url. hdUrl="      + mp4VideoList.hdUrl
        print "ytGetMP4Url. hd1080pUrl=" + mp4VideoList.hd1080pUrl
        print "ytGetMP4Url. hlsUrl="     + mp4VideoList.hlsUrl
    else
        print "ytGetMP4Url. No Video Streams Found"
    endif
    
    return mp4VideoList
end function

[astromo]

belltown, thank you so much. I can start from there.

[buenafe]

Belltown, ditto. Thanks. I've been pounding my head trying to understand how other channels did this. I'm trying to go to the next step. I'm trying to integrate your function to the simplevideoplayer.

Function displayVideo(args As Dynamic)
....
url = "http://youtu.be/nGeKSiCQkPw"   ' The URL for the video
mp4Urls = getMP4Url (url)             ' Get a list of all MP4 URLs
sdUrl = mp4Urls.sdUrl
....
'Swap the commented values below to play different video clips...
 urls = [ sdUrl ]
 qualities = ["SD"]
 StreamFormat = "mp4"
....etc.

I get a bug when running this. (I don't have Roku access while I type this message - I'll update this post later).

I did notice that the generated sdUrl variable seems to be correct because I can cut-and-paste the URL to a web-browser to test.

I do notice that the URL contains ampersands "&" . Do I need to replace these with "&" i nthe brightscript code?