Vimeo and Roku Direct Publisher Issues accessing Video URL’s
- Rob Davenport
- April 10, 2020
- 1:50 pm
- Posted in Announcements
For the last few weeks we have received a massive increase in tickets regarding Vimeo hosting and Roku Direct Publisher. I wanted to take a minute to address the issue. I will be adding updates to this post as more information becomes available.
UPDATE April 20, 2020:
We are getting reports of some channels are back to working with Vimeo. It sometimes helps to resubmit your Feed URL in the Direct Publisher settings, then wait for a few hours and your feed should start working again.
For those of you enquiring about our new Direct Publisher replacement, we are hoping to have a beta ready for All Access Pass members next week. April 28 is the current planned date but that may slip as we hammer out the bugs.
If you need an All Access Pass click here!
UPDATE April 13, 2020:
It appears that Roku is having some more issues with Direct Publisher that seem to extend beyond Vimeo’s service. We are now getting reports of missing videos even though the feed checks out and the videos are hosted on other services.
Instead of waiting for the system to be fixed, we decided it was time to do something about it. We’ve spent all weekend working on a solution to help you switch your Direct Publisher channels to a SDK channel without coding.
… and we are including it in the All Access Pass without any charge!
We were working on this in the background with plans to launch in the fall but due to the current issues with Direct Publisher we decided to change gears and get the “new product” ready ASAP.
We are still hashing out the details of the product so stay tuned for further announcements!
What is the Problem?
We have no first hand information from either company regarding the issue. What I am about to detail was gathered from dozens of posts and emails from various places.
It appears that Vimeo has updated how their system handles security. This wasn’t a problem for most OTT apps. The only exception seems to be Roku Direct Publisher which is having a hard time working with these new security routines from Vimeo.
To make matters more complicated only certain channels are being affected. Most of the reports we have received directly have come from new channels that are in the “Unpublished” state.
How do I know if I'm affected?
This error only affects using Roku Direct Publisher with Vimeo Pro/Business. Fire TV Creator and Roku SDK apps continue to function as normal.
When you go to Roku’s developer dashboard and open your channel’s feed status you will see the following error:
items have error: Required video url is unreachable
You may see this error on all of your videos but you also may see specific videos not working.
What can I do to fix the issue?
Currently the only options you have is to contact both Vimeo and Roku to let them know you are also having the issue -or- switch to a different video hosting provider.
Unfortunately that is all the information we currently have. As always if you have any questions feel free to comment below.