Convert Your Media Files

The Roku player will only play certain media file formats, so your media files might have to be converted to a different format before they can be played on the Roku player. Here are the available formats:

Don't let all of this scare you. We will guide you through it. Your music and photos are probably already in the proper formats. If not, there a many free software programs that can do the conversions for you. I recommend Audiograbber for converting CDs and audio files to MP3 format. For photos, FastStone Photo Resizer will batch convert photos to JPG, and also resize them. It is a good idea to resize large photos to a smaller size. Large photos will cause delays in navigation in Roksbox, and will not look any better on the screen. A good size for displaying photos on the Roku player is 1024x768 pixels.

If your video files are already in MP4, MOV, M4V, or WMV format, then they might play without any conversion. If not, then they will need to be converted. We will guide you through converting your video files to MP4 format. If you prefer one of the other supported formats, then you can use your preferred method to do the conversion.

We will use a free software program called HandBrake to convert to MP4 format.

Click on the HandBrake link above to download and install HandBrake. After you download and install HandBrake, open the program by double clicking on the HandBrake desktop icon. The first time you use HandBrake, you should set a default destination path. To do this, go to Tools -> Options -> General Tab -> Default Path. Type in or browse to the default path you want to use to put your converted videos in. This could be your web video folder or some other folder that you want to hold your converted files. In this example, we are using the web server videos folder under the media folder. This way we won't have to copy the files there later. In the Format field, remove the part that says -{title}, so that it just says {source}. Also, uncheck Always use iPod/iTunes friendly file extension (.m4v) for MP4.

Click Close to close the HandBrake Options window. Next, click the Source button at the top left side of the HandBrake window, then click Video File

Browse to the file you want to convert, then click the Open button. The Destination field will automatically be populated with the path and filename. If you have an HD TV, you might want to deinterlace the video to give you a better picture. Click the Video Filters tab, click the Decomb button, then click Default (HandBrake recommends Decomb instead of Deinterlace).


You are now ready to start the conversion. Click the Start button at the top left of the screen. A status window will appear showing the progress of the conversion. On slower computers, this process could take some time to complete. When the conversion is complete, the status window will disappear and you will be returned to the HandBrake main window. If you are finished converting files, you can exit the HandBrake window by clicking File -> Exit.