Roku Animated Poster

Component for providing animated posters

Installation

FIRST! Please take a look at: https://github.com/georgejecook/Animated-GIF-Roku-Demo

it might be that is more suitable for your needs.

Using ropm

Use the ropm package manager for roku

ropm install roku-animated-poster

suggestion: use a shorter prefix:

ropm install ap@npm:roku-animated-poster

Usage

Follow these steps:

1. Declare an animated poster
2. Set the spritesheet uri
3. Set the tile offsets for animation
4. Play!

Declare an animated poster component

In XML

Declare your animated poster with the target width and height!

without prefix:

  <rokuanimatedposter_AnimatedPoster
      id="poster"
      width='240'
      height='240' />

using ap prefix:

  <ap_AnimatedPoster
      id="poster"
      width='240'
      height='240' />

In Brighterscript

without prefix:

  poster = createObject("roSGNode", "rokuanimatedposter_AnimatedPoster")
  poster.width = 240
  poster.height = 240

using ap prefix:

  poster = createObject("roSGNode", "ap_AnimatedPoster")
  poster.width = 240
  poster.height = 240

Set the spritesheet Uri

Animated poster works by moving a larger image, inside of a clipped group, to create the effect of an animation.

You need therefore need to supply the poster with a spritesheet, which is, multiple images in one image, with all of the animation frames for your image, as such:

Note: Be careful to note you can easily blow out texture ram, by loading too big of an image.

Set the tile offsets for animation

Provide the Animated poster with an array of [x,y] values for each frame of your animation, e.g. for the image referenced here:

  poster.frameOffsets = [
    [0, 0]
    [240, 0]
    [480, 0]
    [720, 0]
    [960, 0]
    [1200, 0]
  ]

Note: the offsets can be any x and y within the image.

Play!

Use control, duration and loopMode (valid values: once, loop, ping-pong) to control your animation. e.g.

  poster.duration = 0.1
  poster.control = "start"

Notes

Animated posters are a workaround for a missing Roku SDK feature. They are intended for use for icons, gamification, and UX flare. This implementation is a reference implementation only, and can be greatly improved. The real solution for animated images on Roku, is ask Roku to add this missing feature to their SDK, with proper gif support.

Performance

Animated poster performance is suprisingly good. You can get > 100 animated posters on a 9200x, without any glitches, and as many as 30 on a roku 1. However, you should take care to ensure the quality of your app's performance when using this component.