Roku Direct Publisher

[highlander_bob]

I do not know if this is the proper forum for this, but I need help with live stream feed validation.  The problem is that when Roku validates the DP feed, it is doing it when a live event is not scheduled, nor being streamed to.  Therefore, feed fails, feed gets dumped on the update for Roku boxes, and client does not see their live event on their Roku channel, and I get yelled at.  IA m trying not to get yelled at as much.

Does anyone know of any way to get that live stream to either "pass" during feed update, or is there some way to flag out live video so that the feed update takes my word that there will be an event for it.  I have a huge kludge workaround which requires me to actually stream to scheduled live events during the time window when Roku checks the feed, or alternatively, stream to the scheduled events sometime during the day and then manually bump the feed update.  All this seems silly.  

Anyone have any ideas how to do this?  DP has been a great thing, but if this is a true limitation of the system, I am going to have to dump major dollars to develop custom Roku channels again, on top fo the money I have spent to smooth my data for DP.  Validating VoD makes perfect sense for UX, but the whole live thing is frustrating beyond belief.

Anyone?  Bueller?

Cheers,
Bob

[mitchstein]

DP doesn't support live feeds... However....

I have a successfull livefeed going through DP..

The problem you are encountering is because Roku checks at what appears to be random times (but everytime when updating a feed) that the url to the video is good.

For instance, my live feed is http://mydomain.com/live.m3u8

if the file does not exist DP flgs it as a bad video url and removes it from your channel lineup.
it will also do this check at many random times through out the day.. So the feed index file MUST also exist even when the feed is down, otherwise it will disapear from the channel lineup until roku rechecks its status which appears to be random times..
What I did is setup an old pc with vmix, it streams 24/7 to my unreal media server that server creates an hls (.m3u8) stream 24/7..
Then I just add an input to the old vmix computer with the source of my live feed when I broadcast live events, when I'm not broadcasting a live event it simply streams a list of videos...

The only otherway to workaround the issue I dound is to tell everyone expecting a live show is to goto (on thier roku device) settings, system, update, check for updates. and then go back to the channel and the feed should be there (providing they do this after you start the live stream)...

That of course is alot more work then just using an old pc to keep the live feed always on...

[mitchstein]

Oh yeah, the index file MUST exist, however the .ts files do not, so I suppose (but haven't tried) that you could just create a dummy index file, maybe point it to a live soon jpg or something and then let the live stream replace the file once you start the stream up... maybe you can write a script that checks if the file exists and if not creates it...

[destruk]

"mitchstein" wrote:
Oh yeah, the index file MUST exist, however the .ts files do not, so I suppose (but haven't tried) that you could just create a dummy index file, maybe point it to a live soon jpg or something and then let the live stream replace the file once you start the stream up... maybe you can write a script that checks if the file exists and if not creates it...

Innovative solution.  Good work. 🙂

[37mediagroup]

Is that true about the deleting videos that don't work?  How quickly would that happen?  I mean, within a few hours or over the course of days. If one were to livestream would updating it that morning be sufficient?