It’s been 11 months and Roku and Vimeo still hasn’t figured out why my channel doesn’t work. The videos are up loaded and categorized, made public, all descriptions filled on my Vimeo. On Rokus end it looks like everything is right as well. But when I actually go on my channel on Roku, you can see the videos but when I press play it doesn’t work. I have no idea what’s going on. Can anyone please helpy channel is DMV TV 2.
It’s possible you have a logic error in your feed file. Roku does not do a good job validating your feed file.
If possible, please post your feed file so that it can be inspected for errors.
Hi thank you for your reply.
How do I find the feed file?
On my direct publisher I only see feed status and feed Url. Thank you for any specifics.
That depends on what you are using to create the feed file. It sounds like you might be relying on Vimeo to output your feed. I don’t use Vimeo, so, I can’t tell you where to look. However, there have been plenty of posts on this forum indicating that Vimeo tends to output a single feed file for every showcase you define. That won’t work in Roku. You’ll need to combine them into one feed file.
@Baradanikto thank you. Yes I use Vimeo, my feed Url is https://vimeo.com/showcase/10225839/feed/roku/be1a1b1d39
But my friends have a channel on Roku using Vimeo as their host and the videos works for them. For some reason i don’t understand why this is happening. Neither does anyone else. Thank you.
Your feed file contains errors. See below:
2023-03-05 11:38:30.4938 ERROR '803612878' contains an incorrectly formatted 'ReleaseDate'. Setting date to '2023-03-01'.
2023-03-05 11:38:32.0049 INFO Feed file opened with 1 items.
2023-03-05 11:38:32.0049 INFO Loaded 1 Short form videos.
Per the Roku JSON spec, the ‘ReleaseDate’ field is defined as:
The date the video first became available. This field is used to sort programs chronologically and group related content in Roku Search. Conforms to ISO 8601 format: {YYYY}-{MM}-{DD}. For example, 2020-11-11
More importantly, the feed file contains only one Short Form Video called “Welcome”.
Thank you for looking. with these errors, How do I fix this? And I only uploaded one video to see if it works. I tried uploading other videos as well and still never worked. But if you had any solution that’d be great. Thanks again!
You have two options.
Get access to the feed file from Vimeo and correct the errors. Then, resubmit the feed file to Roku.
Don’t use Vimeo to manage your feed file. There are plenty of alternatives on this forum that can be used to create and manage your feed file.
Thank you so much. I have contacted Vimeo about this error and will wait to see what they say. Would you think this is the only reason my videos are not playing? Is there something I’m missing? Is there a limit to file size that can play on Roku, etc? I really appreciate your help.
Roku does not do a good job of identifying problems in feed files. I know that they are pretty strict with adherence to the Direct Publisher Spec. That’s why it’s important to clean up all potential problem areas. Any simple error can prevent your content from not streaming.
There’s no limit to the length of content you can play.
Vimeo’s date format works fine, Rokus JSON spec is out of date. There has to be some other error.
Well something certainly is up. The feed has one 35 second video that doesn’t play on roku, but does play on VLC. Yet your channel has 3 videos that dont play, none of which is the welcome one listed in the feed.
1080p videos in our channel will not play on ROKU Express devices (failures occur on a 3930 Roku Express and 3931RW Roku Express+). The videos will play on Roku Ultra & Streaming Stick+ but on Roku Express devices there is only a black screen or continuous “loading” message.
Try removing the 1080P videos from your feed. I know that sounds ridiculous, but after several support tickets and no resolution from ROKU, that’s the only thing we could do to make our videos playable (in 720p).
@Channos I had done different videos in 4k, ultra 4k, cinema 4k, 1080p and none of them worked. If you look on DMV TV, those are all in c4k but nothing plays. Vimeo actually sent me a message on email saying they cannot help and are going to discontinue Vimeo to roku and not give me a refund. Where can I post this.
Yes, I have had the same problem with Vimeo Discontinuing support for Roku. I have set up my own Web-based channel as a temporary solution, using Vimeo as the feed. https://adratv.com
Now I am trying to set up the Roku Feed again using WP Smart TV Word Press Plug-in, but I am getting the same release Date Error from the Roku Direct Publisher in the “Feed Status”. I am now starting to wonder if Roku changed something in their JSON feed specs that has caused this problem which led Vimeo to give up. Can you imagine trying to fix thousands of feeds?
As I look at my JSON feed, created by WP Smart TV Plug in, I see that they do have the date in the correct format: Here is the snippet -
validityPeriodStart":“2023-05-23”. WP Smart TV is sending the right date format.
The only thing that I can think might be happening here is that Roku is looking for this correct date under “ReleaseDate”. Because there, WP Smart TV says
“releaseDate”:“18 hours ago” which would be the wrong format…
Any Thoughts on this??
Yes go to Vimeo, click on a video and go to advanced settings and click on the distribution and choose a link resolution that is compatible with your Roku. Keep choosing a link until you find one that works. If this doesn’t help ig:kaymaker_
Be careful making assumptions regarding what Roku accepts in the feed file. “validityPeriodStart”, according to the JSON Feed Spec, should conform to the following format:
validityPeriodStart string Optional The date when the content should become available in ISO 8601format: {YYYY}-{MM}-{DD}T{hh}:{mm}:{ss}+{TZ}. For example, 2020-11-11T22:21:37+00:00
Please refer to ISO-8601 as a reference. The Roku process that ingests your feed file is pretty poor at identifying errors and associating them with a specific area of your feed file.
