Roku Direct Publisher

[Rebekah1]

I'm a first-time developer, currently using Direct Publisher, as I am not a coder. I have a group of 13 videos that I'd like to make available for streaming through a Roku app. I thought this would be a simple process, just get a feed from Vimeo, but I'm running into some issues with captions, and I can't seem to find a solution.

Basically, I'm not getting any captions on the Roku app. I contacted support, and they said that they aren't getting subtitles in the feed from Vimeo. So, I contacted Vimeo support, and they told me that they don't currently support captions in their feed for Roku. But...it's required by law for me to include captions? So, I guess I'm just confused as to why Vimeo advertises this as a simple process, but most developers can't actually use that feed because they don't support captions (I believe there are some exceptions for shorter videos, I've got 13 30-minute videos in the form of a TV show).

As I said above, I'm not a coder, and I'd like this process to be as simple as possible...but I also don't have the budget to pay someone else to develop this app for me. Are there any solutions/workarounds that I'm missing? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get captions to show up on my videos?

Thank you in advance for your help!

[Rebekah1]

Thank you so much for your reply! I believe what you're referring to is "burned-in" captions - I'd really like to give the viewer the option to show captions or not, so I don't think that this solution is going to work for my situation.

What I want to do may not be possible with my current setup, but if anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears!

[Rebekah1]

Okay, not what I wanted to hear...but thank you for your expertise! I appreciate you taking the time to help me with this. Hopefully Vimeo/Roku will update their support for captions soon!

[freetochoose]

another option you have is to get a caption making software. My company uses it and it has worked fine for years on our old channel. We created .srt files from our videos using captioning software. 

We are trying to build a channel using the Direct Publisher software now and are running into caption issues. I am currently trying to find out what the issue is but there isn't much info on it unfortunately.

Have you found an answer to your problem? We too have our videos hosted on vimeo.

[Rebekah1 · Accepted solution]

Yeah, so, unfortunately it's an issue with Vimeo - for some reason, the feed they provide doesn't supply caption information to Roku (no idea why - it works just fine with AmazonFire TV...) We have captions uploaded to our videos on Vimeo, but they don't translate through the feed. Ultimately, we had to hire a company to code a new feed for us - they took Vimeo's MRSS feed and turned it into a JSON feed, which we can add .srt caption files too. It's a cumbersome solution for such a simple task, but once we got it up and running, it works!

[Baradanikto]

Let's clear up some confusion here.  You don't need to use the SDK to incorporate captions in your Direct Publisher channel.  DP does support a Caption object.  I've used it and it worked.

[freetochoose]

I can't seem to get my captions to work in DP. I am using the same captions that I used  with my SDK channel (same link and everything). I tried the format that was shown. I will post example below

{
"id": "21",
"title": "Sweden: Lessons for America?",
"shortDescription": "It’s been suggested that Americans would be better off if the United States had a more socialist economy, like Sweden. Do the Swedes know something that we don’t? Sweden: Lessons for America? delves into the economic and social landscape of the Swedish scholar’s homeland. Join him to see that the lessons to be learned from Sweden on Democratic Socialism may not be the ones you expect.",
"thumbnail": "https://freetochoosenetwork.org/roku/ftc/images/broadcasts/sweden.jpg",
"genres": ["documentary", "educational"],
"tags": ["", "", "", "", ""],
"releaseDate": "2018-09-08",
"content": {
"dateAdded": "2018-09-08T14:14:54.431Z",
"duration": 3403,
"videos": [{
"url": "https://player.vimeo.com/external/271911115.hd.mp4?s=28e072c9ea9d582bf733a014e0f603c0d0a5120a",
"quality": "HD",
"videoType": "MP4"
}],
"captions": [{
"url": "https://freetochoosenetwork.org/roku/ftc/srt/sweden.srt",
"language": "en",
"captionType": "CLOSED_CAPTION"
}]
}
}

[Baradanikto]

I can't seem to get my captions to work in DP

Does this mean that they do not display?  Have you set closed captioning on?  I recently checked my channel to ensure that CC works and it does.

[freetochoose]

yes i have them set to always on. Does anything look weird in the code in my previous message? It's starting to drive me crazy

[Baradanikto]

I don't see a difference between what works for me and what does not work for you.  That leads me to think that it's an issue of file permissions.  Make sure that the file on your site is accessible in a public manner.  You may need to look at system logs to determine why the file is not seen by Roku.  Otherwise, you may want to contact Roku Partner Success for their assistance.