Roku Direct Publisher

[horrornightstv]

I have added videos to the json file when I click on the video it says retrieving file for 1 second then goes back into the app and does not play the video and gives no error.

[Baradanikto]

If your feed file was ingested without errors, your problem is probably related to access permissions on your server. If you use Amazon S3, you can use their logging feature to determine the problem.

[horrornightstv]

I fixed the issue I changed video files from mp4 to m4v and it plays no problem now.

[tomjoht]

I think I'm having this same problem. I'll try converting my mp4 videos to m4v.

[tomjoht]

Yep, changing to m4v worked! Thanks. Anyone know why MP4 videos won't play?

[newchannel]

I had no problem adding mp4 videos to my json until today. Will try to change it over to m4v.

What program did you use to convert from mp4 to m4v?

[Baradanikto]

As a test, today, I uploaded an mp4 video to my Amazon S3 storage.  The video played correctly on my test channel.  However, I think I may know what is causing the problems reported here.  My video content providers use YouTube to share their videos.  They've given me permission to download their videos and show them on my channel.  Before I can load them to Amazon, I "re-code" them using Nero.  It is my speculation that if you use a video source, like YouTube, that does not allow direct streaming from their site (their TOS does not allow it) to the Roku, you'll run into these types of problems.  If you use Amazon S3 for your video server, you should be able to turn on logging and see the actual cause of the video not playing.  I'm guessing that those who have converted their videos from mp4 to m4v are "re-coding" as I am.

[newchannel]

Late last night I was able to get my mp4 video to play. I didn't have to change it to m4v. I had made a mistake on my end yesterday when I went to upload the video from the file that had not been converted yet. 

[tomjoht]

Ahh, I think you might be right about the coding issue from Youtube. I initially had the videos on Youtube but downloaded them from Youtube to my local machine. Do you think Youtube adds some kind of encoding that makes it problematic to play the videos on another platform? I'll try recoding them. When I converted from mp4 to m4v, I just used http://www.convertfiles.com/. The videos are all really short, so it wasn't a huge hassle. I'll use the same tool to convert the m4v's back to mp4 and see if it fixes the issue.

[tomjoht]

you were right! i converted my videos to mp4 with that same little online converter, updated my feed and channel, and now everything plays! thanks a bunch.