Roku Direct Publisher

[mitchstein]

adding ads during playback...

I see in the json information there is "adBreaks"

I'm assuming I would simply add

"adbreaks": [00:15:00, 00:30:00, 00:45:00],

to my json file anywhere between the ID and the last closing bracket for each video? Am I correct, also for a LIVE (24/7) streaming channel is there an easy way to add a commercial break every 10 or 15 minutes forever without putting in 00:15:00, 00:30:00 etc etc etc... for like 48 hours worth of breaks?

[37mediagroup]

I believe so. I thought adBreaks was in the sample url feed but I checked again and don't see it. Thought there was a post about it where I saw the syntax but can't find it. I think that's it though. It's camelcase tho, "adBreaks".

Interesting question about live TV. Not sure how you'd interact an ad break. Even if you did type 00:15:00, 00:30:00 etc it wouldn't work well being live TV it's difficult to goto commercial break exactly on queue. It could be RAF doesn't work with live tv breaks. Are you going thru a vendor like Livestream? Do they offer ad inventory or outsource to 3rd parties who do? Might be worth checking into them if they do.

[mitchstein]

Hmm didn't consider that the end user will miss 30 seconds of the show during the ad playback, oh well it's free for them to watch, lol, maybe Roku can make a way to buffer, google video will make the player buffer the content during the ad breaks they deliver, BUT google then doesn't pay it broadcasters so I pulled my channels from them..

No, I handle all video streaming on my servers. I use Unreal media server to accept a rtmp stream from a computer in my home using VMIX which allows me to setup playlist inputs from a powershell script I wrote/am writting still (the friggin thing is like a classic car rebuild, 20 years later still rebuilding it, lol..) that enables me to change to a feed from a live event at anytime without disconnecting the players or stooping the http hls feed to the end user.

It's a neat setup unreal media server gives you, ingests rmtp, can send out through HLS, IIS Smooth streaming, it's own proprietary format/player, mpeg2-ts and other formats from one feed.. BUT if you are going to play with live feeds create a ram drive and add it to your HTML server as a virtual directory, it will kill a HD in a matter of weeks especially if you run multiple live channels on one server..

[mitchstein]

I just realized something in regards to "live TV" and ad breaks. This is something they would have to program into the direct player code, probably by making a live feed stream type..

They currently appear to stop the current playing file, then play an ad and then resume playing the file where it stopped at before playing the ad. So in my situation it will mean that the viewer will return to the video playing where they left off BUT 30 seconds behind "live" (or how ever long the ad plays for). Until they hit the 10 minute buffer I have on my server for replays, IE a person can pause a live feed on my server and pickup where they left off at up to 10 minutes back.. So no different for the way ads roll right now...

What I think would work well would be to allow the publisher to programmatically (in the json file) tell the player to either pickup where it stopped or skip forward to the current time position (live).. That way "live" feeds that simply play certain videos at certain times (like a streaming playlist) can be etup to pickup at the stopped part, and true live TV  will pickup in real time, it also would be nice for us to be able to add in a pre and post roll to the ads playing. Something, station id we will be returning after these messages, and station id we are now returning to live broadcasting.