Roku Developer Program

[astudios]

hello,

i'm a new roku developer and i have a simple question.

many of our videos are still in 4:3 format. but we have the roku connected to a 16:9 tv. when we attempt to play one of our videos using the "simplevideoplayer" sample program, it is stretched pretty badly. is there any way we can tell roku to play the video and maintain the original aspect ratio of the video itself? we are streaming the H.264-encoded video via the HLS protocol.

thank you!
steven

[Anonymous]

It should be maintaining aspect ratio. Is the TV's 'wide' mode set appropriately?

[astudios]

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
It should be maintaining aspect ratio. Is the TV's 'wide' mode set appropriately?

Yes. It is. In fact, I cycled through the various display settings from FULL to WIDE to ZOOM, etc. I have it usually set on FULL. I have it connected via HDMI.

Is there any way in the SDK to explicitly specify the aspect ratio of the video?

Thanks
Steven

[Anonymous]

"astudios" wrote:

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
It should be maintaining aspect ratio. Is the TV's 'wide' mode set appropriately?

Yes. It is. In fact, I cycled through the various display settings from FULL to WIDE to ZOOM, etc. I have it usually set on FULL. I have it connected via HDMI.

Is there any way in the SDK to explicitly specify the aspect ratio of the video?

Thanks
Steven

No, you can't explicitly set the aspect ratio. Is the Roku set to HD or at least 16x9 output? If you want to send me a link to some sample content that demonstrates the problem, we're happy to take a look.

Patrick

[astudios]

"RokuPatrick" wrote:

"astudios" wrote:

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
It should be maintaining aspect ratio. Is the TV's 'wide' mode set appropriately?

Yes. It is. In fact, I cycled through the various display settings from FULL to WIDE to ZOOM, etc. I have it usually set on FULL. I have it connected via HDMI.

Is there any way in the SDK to explicitly specify the aspect ratio of the video?

Thanks
Steven

No, you can't explicitly set the aspect ratio. Is the Roku set to HD or at least 16x9 output? If you want to send me a link to some sample content that demonstrates the problem, we're happy to take a look.

Patrick

Yes. The ROKU is setup for HD (16x9). Here's an example of what I'm trying to stream through ROKU:

http://media10.sa-media.com:1935/myapp/ ... ylist.m3u8

I am playing it with the "HLS" stream type (Apple's HTTP Live Streaming) and it is coming off of a Wowza Server. If you view it on a WIDESCREEN (HDTV), you'll see how it stretches across the entire screen. It is a 4:3 video so there should be black bars on the sides. I have the latest firmware update on the ROKU too.

Thanks for looking into this for me. I'm kind of stuck.

Steven

[Anonymous]

Just confirmed that it's playing back wide. Looking into it.

Patrick

[astudios]

were you able to find any solution to the aspect ratio issue? i'd really love to solve this. my video size is 400x300 which should be a standard 4:3 aspect ratio. but when i play the video (via wowza HLS), it stretches it to fill my entire 16:9 screen. i have the roku in HD mode.

any help would be appreciated.

thank you,
steven

[RokuKevin]

How was this video encoded? We normally read the resolution information encoded in the sequence headers in the transport stream. This works on most video we encounter, but I tested your stream and concur that it seems to be 4:3 content playing at 16:9 on our box.

Do you have any more info you can share about how you encoded it?

Thanks,

Kevin

[astudios]

sure thing.

it was encoded with FFMPEG with H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec. 30fps, 500kbps video, 48kbps audio, with H.264 baseline presets. but i also tried it with an MP4 encoded with microsoft's expression encoder 4 pro and it also did not get the aspect ratio right.

btw, i just tried to access the same MP4 file directly on our web server (via ROKU) but NOT going through the Wowza HLS streaming and the 4:3 aspect ratio works! bottom line is that the ROKU implementation of the HLS does not appear to be handling the aspect ratio correctly..?

hey, while i have you here, one more thing... when we try to stream via wowza HLS to the ROKU box, it stops (every time) at around the 17min mark. we've tried it with a bunch of other videos -- same result. but when we point the ROKU directly to the MP4 file on the webserver (do not use HLS), it works just fine. perhaps another issue with the HLS implementation on the ROKU?

thanks for your help!
steven

"RokuKevin" wrote:
How was this video encoded? We normally read the resolution information encoded in the sequence headers in the transport stream. This works on most video we encounter, but I tested your stream and concur that it seems to be 4:3 content playing at 16:9 on our box.

Do you have any more info you can share about how you encoded it?

Thanks,

Kevin

[astudios]

one more thing.. i just tried streaming a LIVE video stream (using adobe's live flash encoder) to our wowza server and viewing it on the ROKU device via HLS streaming and it works -- but again, it does not maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio. so, it's definitely not anything to do with the ffmpeg encoder we are using for the on-demand (archived) videos.

so, again, the problem seems to be how ROKU handles (aspect ratios) for HLS video streams...?

steven