Hello,
I’ve created a channel and have been testing it before publishing. My video content is on Amazon Web Services Cloudfront. Once I save my JSON URL it says that the one clip I am testing ingested successfully. When I go to preview the content on my channel there is audio but no visuals, only a black screen. Would anyone have knowledge or experience on correcting this issue?
Thank you
Are you using Roku TV or Old Rokus like Roku 1?
“mosafer” wrote:
Are you using Roku TV or Old Rokus like Roku 1?
I’ve purchased a Roku Express recently.
The only time I have ever seen this issue (and what mosafer is alluding too) is with older boxes. Originally Roku defined HD content as 720. When you would try to play a 1080 file on a Roku 1 it couldn’t play it because it wasn’t capable of playing 1080 files even though it said HD.
You would get the same problem on a Roku Express if you were trying to play a 4K file on it because the Roku Express is only capable of outputting a 1080 file.
I am also getting the black screen while testing. The app splash screen shows, then the app is displayed with the logo and options visible. There is a spinner in the center of the screen for 2 seconds. The spinner disappears and the app fades to black. It appears stuck. Sometimes if I leave the app running it will crash when I press home.
I am trying the channel on a Roku 2 XS and a Roku 3. Both have the same issue.
Rebooting and reinstalling is not working.
The Roku Developer Portal “Preview” shows a screenshot of my app and feed working.
The feed validates in JSON lint tools and on the Roku developer portal.
The TVs that I have tried on are 1080p and the video files are 720p.
I thought it was an issue with the thumbnails, but I tried:
JPG, PNG, 800x450, 1280x720, Http vs Https
I am also suspicious about my hosted site using Cloudflare, as there was an issue with my thumbnails and the feed validation. I moved the hosted episode thumbnails to a non Cloudflare site and the feed suddenly validated. I guess I will try to move a few videos to a non Cloudflare site and reduce the feed to a few items. Currently I have 240 possible videos to show in my channel. Is there a limit?
mikeIFA,
That is very weird. In this case I highly doubt Cloudfare is the problem. The app/channel is hosted and served by Roku. When Direct Publisher reads your feed it stores a snapshot of it on their servers. The only thing the app would do outside of Roku would be load your thumbnails and play the videos. But even if those were not available your app/channel would still load just without thumbnails for playable video…something else is going on with your app.
If you wanted to send me through PM your private app link I will check it out on my end.
@mediadisconnect : The feed iteslf was not hosted from a Cloudflare cached site, but the thumbnails and videos were. The feed would not validate until I pointed the thumbnails to a site that was not cached by Cloudflare. As an experiment I moved 1 thumbnail to another site and was able to get 1 out of 240 thumbnails to download from the feed:
[upload|d3untQwzebvdXHXomYtLYA==]
After I realized this was a issue I moved the rest and was able to get my feed status to validate. The “Preview” works, but just crashes on a physical device.
I tried to isolate the problem by reducing my feed to 1 video. Sadly it still didn’t work. Any insight would be very helpful right about now:
Feed with 1 video:
{
"providerName":"Index Fund Advisors, Inc.",
"lastUpdated":"2017-06-06T23:09:40.153Z",
"language":"en-US",
"series":[
{
"id":"1",
"title":"IFA.tv",
"seasons":[
{
"seasonNumber":2017,
"episodes":[
{
"id":"594",
"title":"IFA.tv - Dimensional vs Vanguard - Show 240",
"content":{
"dateAdded":"2017-05-31T15:30:16.000Z",
"videos":[
{
"url":"https://www.ifa.com/rss/podcasts/index_funds_advisors/video/ifatv/2017-05-31/segment-1.mp4",
"quality":"HD",
"videoType":"MP4",
"bitrate":5000
}
],
"duration":326,
"captions":[
]
},
"thumbnail":"https://services.ifa.com/ajax/roku/thumbnails/594_800w450h.jpg",
"episodeNumber":1,
"releaseDate":"2017-05-31",
"shortDescription":"Dimensional vs Vanguard",
"longDescription":"Why do our 100 IFA Index Portfolios utilize strategies from Dimensional Fund Advisors versus better-known passive fund companies such as Vanguard? ",
"credits":[
{
"name":"Mark T. Hebner",
"role":"host",
"birthDate":"1952-08-16"
}
]
}
]
}
],
"genres":[
"educational"
],
"thumbnail":"https://services.ifa.com/art/images/1350_2017-6-5-10-1-23.jpg",
"releaseDate":"2009-01-01",
"shortDescription":"A Collection of investment videos about Index Fund Investing.",
"tags":"Finance, Education, Investing, Index Funds, IFA"
}
],
"playlists":[
{
"name":"featured content",
"itemIds":[
"594"
]
},
{
"name":"interviews",
"itemIds":[
"594"
]
},
{
"name":"market reviews",
"itemIds":[
"594"
]
}
]
}
“mikeIFA” wrote:
it still didn’t work
Can you be a little less vague about what exactly “didn’t work”?
One suggestion would be to replace your video url with a known DP-friendly video url, such as one of the videos from their tutorial, e.g:
You can do the same with the thumbnails, too, just to verify that your hosting of the videos and thumbnails is not causing a problem.
@belltown : good suggestion I tried it and there is still an issue. I am now thinking that there may be a problem with using a “series” > “season” > “episode” format. I will be trying the shortFormVideo feed type instead.
For Reference, this was the feed I was trying:
{
"providerName":"Index Fund Advisors, Inc.",
"lastUpdated":"2017-06-07T20:19:41.525Z",
"language":"en-US",
"series":[
{
"id":"1",
"title":"IFA.tv",
"seasons":[
{
"seasonNumber":2017,
"episodes":[
{
"id":"594",
"title":"IFA.tv - Dimensional vs Vanguard - Show 240",
"content":{
"dateAdded":"2017-05-31T15:30:16.000Z",
"videos":[
{
"url":"http://roku.cpl.delvenetworks.com/media/59021fabe3b645968e382ac726cd6c7b/decbe34b64ea4ca281dc09997d0f23fd/aac0cfc54ae74fdfbb3ba9a2ef4c7080/117_segment_2_twitch__nw_060515.mp4",
"quality":"HD",
"videoType":"MP4",
"bitrate":5000
}
],
"duration":326,
"captions":[
]
},
"thumbnail":"http://cloudfront.horsenetwork.com/sites/4/2016/08/flickr.com_Sera-Photography_FEATURED-SIZE-800x450.jpg",
"episodeNumber":1,
"releaseDate":"2017-05-31",
"shortDescription":"Dimensional vs Vanguard",
"longDescription":"Why do our 100 IFA Index Portfolios utilize strategies from Dimensional Fund Advisors versus better-known passive fund companies such as Vanguard? ",
"credits":[
{
"name":"Mark T. Hebner",
"role":"host",
"birthDate":"1952-08-16"
}
]
}
]
}
],
"genres":[
"educational"
],
"thumbnail":"http://cloudfront.horsenetwork.com/sites/4/2016/08/flickr.com_Sera-Photography_FEATURED-SIZE-800x450.jpg",
"releaseDate":"2009-01-01",
"shortDescription":"A Collection of investment videos about Index Fund Investing.",
"tags":"Finance, Education, Investing, Index Funds, IFA"
}
],
"playlists":[
{
"name":"featured content",
"itemIds":[
"594"
]
},
{
"name":"interviews",
"itemIds":[
"594"
]
},
{
"name":"market reviews",
"itemIds":[
"594"
]
}
]
}
mikeIFA,
It wouldn’t surprise me there is a problem with the series>season>episode format. While I know others have, no matter what I try I can’t get it to work.
I converted my feed to a shortFormVideo feed (no longer using series > seasons > episodes), but my channel still doesn’t load the thumbnails or videos (black/blank screen).
Me = Frustrated
So, I created a completely new channel and used the same shortFormVideo feed and everything is working now… What!! ???
So the same feed that is used in the new channel works, but my originally converted channel (SDK → Direct Publisher) still doesn’t load the thumbnails or videos (black/blank screen).
Something is seriously wrong with the conversion of my original channel to the Direct Publisher. The analytics, or settings, or geographical region restrictions or something must have gotten messed up and are causing the issue.
@mediadisconnect : I also tried to get my series feed working with my newly created channel, but that didn’t work. So my suggestion would be to try the shortFormVideo content type instead.
I cycled through all of the channel specific property pages of my original channel and saved each page. My original channel now works with the shortFormVideo content type feed. I plan on updating my feed to create categories for each season as a workaround to the series > seasons > episodes feed not working.
Reviewing my original feed I noticed that my series > tags are not part of an array
"tags":"Finance, Education, Investing, Index Funds, IFA"
Should have been:
"tags":["Market Reviews","Interviews","Featured","Index Funds"]
Did the change in tags result in the series > season > episode setup work?
