Roku Direct Publisher

[ILA]

I am newer to the ROKU developer program, and have about 4 videos live in my channel at this very moment.  Earlier in January, I would update my JSON feed with a new video, and then login to my ROKU developer area, click REFRESH on the feed status, and then wait a few minutes to have the video show up on my ROKU device.

At the moment, I update my JSON feed, login to the developer area, and the REFRESH button is missing.

I know the feed refreshes on its own about 4x per day, so I waited 24 hours.  The auto-update did find my most recent 5th video in my feed (says it was properly ingested), but it is NOT displaying live in my ROKU channel.  Any insight as to what has changed in the last couple of weeks or what might be the issue would be great.  Thank you...

http://internetlegalarmor.tv/10367342/c ... /feed.json

[rovidx_media]

I'm assuming this is a published channel?   In that case, you can not manually refresh the feed.   Instead you just have to wait for the update to be triggered.

I have setup a second "test" channel that isn't published, and then I use that to preview my JSON feeds. 

[Baradanikto]

I second the use of a test channel. It's invaluable to test changes.

[ILA]

Thank you both for your responses!  I sincerely appreciate it...  To answer your question, yes it is a published channel.  I will sit tight and wait for ROKU to update.  I will also look into having a test channel.  Thank you...

[ILA]

So I have been waiting patiently.  It has been a few days now since my feed status updated to show 5 items ingested successfully.  However, my ROKU device still is only showing 4 videos.  I have manually done a system update on the device, I rebooted the device, and I even removed/readded the channel.  What could be preventing my feed status of 5 items from translating over to the actual device that is only showing 4 items?

[Baradanikto]

Looking at your feed file, I noticed that you don't specify a Category object.  I've had some customers that have run into similar problems with videos not appearing.  I had them add a category object and the problem seem to resolve.  You might want to let the feed specify the categories instead of specifying them through the portal.

[ILA]

Thank you Baradanikto for the suggestion.  I actually went back and traced my steps with a fine tooth comb, and corrected the issue.  I believe the exact issue was that my bit rate was not correct for the video file.

I host my videos with Vimeo Pro, and I also switched from the 1080P version of the video to 720P.  

So I updated the video file and the bit rate, by the next morning the video was live.  I am going to try 1080P again sometime soon, but that video was so delayed that I really didn't care which version of it went live.  Thanks again for the help!

[rovidx_media]

"ILA" wrote:
Thank you Baradanikto for the suggestion.  I actually went back and traced my steps with a fine tooth comb, and corrected the issue.  I believe the exact issue was that my bit rate was not correct for the video file.

I host my videos with Vimeo Pro, and I also switched from the 1080P version of the video to 720P.  

So I updated the video file and the bit rate, by the next morning the video was live.  I am going to try 1080P again sometime soon, but that video was so delayed that I really didn't care which version of it went live.  Thanks again for the help!

If you are hosting with Vimeo Pro, you should be using the HLS files instead.   When you are using MP4 and your viewer starts a video but only watches 10%, they count the entire MP4 size against your monthly transfer limit.

When you are using HLS and a viewer only watches part of the video, Vimeo only counts the amount of video served.    

Vimeo Pro only allows you 1 TB of transfers per month, so using HLS helps keep you usage low.   Plus it's a better end-user experience.