Roku Direct Publisher

[RayMyers]

Has anyone been able to make Wistia video hosting service work using a Roku Direct Publisher Feed?

I can make everything work except one thing:

• Channel created - all the logos & titles are perfect


• Categories work as intended


• Thumbnails, duration, descriptions, etc. all work well


• NO errors are returned after ingesting the feed.


• Channel shows on Roku - I can navigate through all the categories and videos

But videos will not play.

After you click "play" - the interface briefly says "Loading" - then shows a button labeled "Play Again"- but nothing played.

Here are things I have tried:

• Update settings in Wistia to allow ANY domain or IP address to view the video


• Tweaked several settings in my feed including quality (settled on UHD), videoType (settled on HLS)
  
  

I tried using the Stream/RAF Tester Tool from Roku - I was able to make it load some simple MP4 videos, but nothing using HLS

• The error message was:  Error:  Video Playback Error: malformed data StreamURL:  https://....

The things I'm trying to learn are:

1. Has anyone done this before?  If so:


2. What are the settings used in the Direct Publisher Feed?


3. What domain or domains must be whitelisted to allows Roku access to the videos?

Help sincerely appreciated.

[tim_beynart]

First things first, you need to set up observers for the errors coming off the video node in your app, then check the telnet log.
UHD/4K seems like it would be a problem, at least during troubleshooting.
We use HLS 24/7, so it definitely works. I would check to see if Wistia is using some kind of tokenization on the manifests and/or segments.

[tim_beynart]

I just noticed you are using Direct Publisher, do you even have an app to sideload? Or is this 100% hosted by Roku? I am unfamiliar with DP.

[RayMyers]

HI, Tim - and thank you for your reply.

Wistia handles all of the details of adaptive streaming automatically - and states only that it outputs in an HLS format.  Since they are 3rd party, I will not have access to their server logs - only their analytics - which shows now play activity on the test videos.

In my previous request for assistance form Wistia they stated only that Roku is not a "supported" platform - but that I may be able to make it work - but I'm on my own for figuring it out.

I will see how they respond to if they are "using some kind of tokenization on the manifests and/or segments"

Thank you again!

[Bobtv18]

Hi, is there any updates on being able to use Wistia videos on Roku?  Thank you

[RoyalPetBox]

I was able to get this to work. I'm not using direct publisher, (I coded my channel), but I figured out how to get the HLS video URL properly formatted in my content feed XML file. Here it is:

url="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/medias/XXXXXXXX.m3u8"

Replace the XXXXXXXX with the last digits of the share URL (shown in Wistia when you click "share" for the desired video, then copy the code after medias/ and insert in place of the x'es )