Why 'Video status' event is not firing?

Archived
1

I am interested seeing video status event to know if the video has started playing, but it looks like the event is not being fired.

In RokuSDK_v41/examples/source/videoplayer/source/appVideoScreen.brs, it has:

if type(msg) = “roVideoScreenEvent” then
print "showHomeScreen | msg = "; msg.getMessage() " | index = "; msg.GetIndex()
if msg.isScreenClosed()
print “Screen closed”
exit while
…
elseif msg.isStatusMessage()
print "Video status: "; msg.GetIndex(); " " msg.GetData()

But when running the example on my roku box, I have never seen the status message. For example, the following is copied from telnet:
url: http://rokudev.roku.com/rokudev/example … tivity.xml
Request Time: 60
Show Feed Parse Took : 21
ButtonPressed
ButtonPressed
showHomeScreen | msg = Stream started. | index = 1
Unexpected event type: 20
showHomeScreen | msg = | index = 0
showHomeScreen | msg = Playback interrupted by user. | index = 0
Unexpected event type: 15
showHomeScreen | msg = | index = 0
Screen closed
Button pressed: 2 0

The video plays fine, but I have not seen any ‘"Video status’ message.

Thanks.

2

showHomeScreen | msg = Stream started. | index = 6

That IS a status message

While it is playing you will see this:

showHomeScreen | msg = | index = 60

where the index is the position in seconds in the video.

  • Joel
3

‘Stream started’ is a different event. The video is not showing on the screen when ‘stream started’. It looks like roku starts to download the video when this event happens, but normally it takes a few more seconds of buffering before the video starts to play.

I am interested in the event that can tell me if the video is actually showing up on the screen.

4

This appears to be what you get when the image actually first shows on the screen:

?“message:”;msg.getmessage();" Type:“;msg.gettype();” Index:“; msg.getindex();” data:";msg.getdata()

message: Type: 6 Index: 0 data: 0

so msg.gettype() returns 6, which is the same as what msg.isplaybackposition() would give you, in otherwords, you get a playback position of 0 with a message type 6.

  • Joel
5

To expand on that a little bit:

if type(msg) = "roVideoScreenEvent" then
?"******************************************MESSAGE**********************************"
?"message:";msg.getmessage();" Type:";msg.gettype();" Index:"; msg.getindex();" data:";msg.getdata();" playback pos? ";msg.isplaybackposition()
?"******************************************MESSAGE**********************************"

Output when video shows:

********MESSAGE
message: Type: 6 Index: 0 data: 0 playback pos? true
********MESSAGE

6

Thanks. I saw the event with type 6 for mp4.

But I am not able to see any status for HLS stream. The only even I saw is ‘stream starts’. Is there a way to tell if the video starts playing for HLS stream?

7

I tried many ways, still not able to see status message for http live streaming (hls).

Any one knows if it is possible? If it is not available now, I highly recommend Roku to add one, there are lots of creative things people can do while video is buffering.

8

isPlaybackPosition and isStreamStarted both work with HLS.

Are you calling SetPositionNotificationPeriod() on your roVideoScreen? If you don’t, isPlaybackPosition will not fire.

9

Thank you Chris!

Yes I did not call SetPositionNotificationPeriod, and it works after I added it.