Wistia on Direct Publisher

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1

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.

2

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.

3

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.

4

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!

5

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

6

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 )