[Released] AVPro Video - complete video playback solution

Hmm...I have no idea.. it should work in Vista.... I guess we will have to get an ISO and do some testing. We'll add it to the TODO list.

Thanks,

 

I'm not sure whether the issues are related. It doesn't look like it. Can you not download the new version and create a new Unity project to test it? Which old version of AVPro Video are you currently using?

 

Which version of AVPro Video is this with? Which Android device+OS? Which version of Unity?
Thanks,

 

Hmm strange. Have you tried some of the HLS streams we mention in the PDF documentation?
It looks like the stream doesn't have enough key-frames, or that the key-frames aren't aligned with the chunks... Is it possible you can change the way that the stream is created?

 

This was seen in AvPro version 1.5.10 with Unity 5.4.2f2 on Samsung S6 phone with androi 6.0.1

This was in AvPro's whatever version was before 1.5.10 with Unity 5.4.2f2 on Samsung S6 phone with androi 6.0.1.
While running on sphere360, occasionally it goes black and logcat shows the stated exception. I have updated to 1.5.10 and error seems to be gone. I just needed to confirm that it won't happen in a released app.

Thanks

 

on android and ios streams looks ok. only windows version of plugin give to us this results. when we check the same stream in VLC on windows, it look good too. so i think its plugin problem, not stream.

 

Could you share the stream URL with us? Email unitysupport@renderheads.com
Thanks,

 

Hi Andrew,

i am already using 1.5.12 with Unity 5.5.0f3. No error messages.
I compiled the project this morning and suddenly the video (BigBuckBunny_720p30) shows up.
With the next build, it was gone again. I don't see any pattern.
I assume it has something to do with the settings for debug or release in Visual Studio.

Perhaps somebody can provide an Hololense example, wich is working in the emulator?

Cheers
Micha

 

Thanks for the reply!

Do you have any ETA on when you'll test it?

 

PS: we started getting reports that it's also not working on computers running Windows XP SP3.
It's giving the same error there as well.

 

Hello,
I bought your asset yesterday and am adapting the video controls demo for my game. In the VCR script Start function I get a message from the "AddListener" saying that "AVProVideo.MediaPlayerEvent does not contain a definition for 'AddListener'". I assume this means that the event system won't work: how do I fix this? (This also happens in the demo.)
I want the videos in the list to autoplay one after the other, so I was using the FinishedPlaying event to increment the list index and start the next video. Is that the best way?
Help appreciated.

 

Hmm that sounds quite strange. Are you importing the namespace "RenderHeads.Media.AVProVideo"?, just as a sanity check

With regards to playing videos one after another, your method sounds good. However, there will most likely be a small delay between the videos since the player requires time to load the video (which occurs asynchronously). Should you wish to have seamless transitions, it may be better to rather have 2 players, one with the current playing video and the other with the next video already pre-loaded, and then switch between the players when you need to play the next video.

 

Yes, the namespace is there...
The event messages do come up in the Console when the demo scene is played, so the AddListener must be working??
This scene does have a worrying habit of crashing Unity, but I don't know if this is the problem.

Is it better to keep all the clips as a single video file, then have an "isLooping" bool, and if this is true, and the video time is within the limits of a particular clip to jump the playhead back to the beginning of that clip? Would that keep the transition seamless?

Thank you.

 

If possible, can you send a code snippet or a demo scene to unitysupport@renderheads.com? Just so we can get a better idea of what's going on.

With regards to your single video seeking idea, it will work, but the speed of a seek operation depends on how your video is encoded. You ideally want many key-frames (low GOP size). The low GOP size also helps with seek accuracy on some encoders as not all of them seek to the exact location.

 

Hi,
You could use the event system, or you could also just poll the MediaPlayer each frame:

Code (CSharp):

1. public MediaPlayer _mp;
2.  
3. void Update()
4. {
5.      if (_mp != null && _mp.Control != null)
6.     {
7.          if (_mp.Control.IsFinished())
8.          {
9.                // Add code here to change video
10.          }
11.     }
12. }

Or you can have a look at the "Demo_imGui.unity" demo scene, which uses "SimpleController.cs" and that code shows you how to use the AddEvent system. The demos should work without any problem - if they don't, please let me know which version of Unity you're using. We've tested in everything up until Unity 5.5.

Thanks,

 

Thank you. I'm using Unity 5.0.0. I've tried the demo on two machines, one is W7 and the other is W8.1, and the same red box appears over "AddListener".
I'll avoid using events for now, and see how it goes.

 

Hello, I've got the cutscenes canvas to play a test mp4 when it should - but how do I force the video to fit the screen?
I'm using a ugui panel with the ugui script. If I check Set Native Size the video is too large and is anchored so that its top right corner is at the centre of the screen. My video is 1068x600, same as the game resolution.
Thanks!

 

Please forget this question! I had the wrong anchor set!

 

Hello,
With the split file method I get a white flash as each clip is loaded, so I'll try the single file method instead.
I used After Effects to encode my frames to an avi, then ffmpeg to encode this to an mjpeg at a quality setting of 5. This leaves an avi of 129Mb. What GOP size would be best for seeking / looping this file? Would you recommend a different video format?

Also, I see that the MediaPlayer script also has the red box over the Invoke event method... Is it safe to merely comment out any reference to the event system?

Thank you.

 

@AndrewRH

I am using latest version of AVPro Video complete on android for a gear VR app. In recent build, I have faced the following problem on
Android 5.1.1 (S6 and Note 5)
Unity 5.4.2f2
Video encoding: H.264. size: 150MB. bitrate : 8Mbps (loadind from streaming assets)

Video texture on sphere isn't visible, can only see black texture. But can hear audio. I tried to debug it using logcat to find out that whenever I play the video, logcat is flooded by following error message:

note: this only appears in Lollipop and works fine on Android 6 and above.
Can be fixed by disabling option: use Fast OES Path from media player inspector. but that only results in device overheating in 3-5 minutes of app usage on Gear VR.

I believe this is related to Android OES Texture Support Issue. Can you please fix this asap or provide alternative which can be used for now. I have tried different combinations of shaders and Fast OES option but nothing worked.

Thanks

 

Hi,

I think the only solution here is to use Unity 5.3.6. Unity seem to have changed / broken OES texture support from Unity 5.4.0 upwards - I'm trying to get them to fix it...

 

1) The smaller the GOP size, the faster the seeking/looping will be. GOP = 1 is the minimum.
2) I'm not sure what the problem could be...does it say anything if you hover your mouse over the red boxes? The event system could be commented out if it's causing a problem, but I've never heard of this before.

 

5.0.0 is old and buggy. My personal recommendation is 5.3.6

 

I'd like to upgrade, but I'm near to finishing the game... Has anyone upgraded mid-project? Does that not cause problems?

 

I just tested the plugin on 5.0.0 and it works with events. Not entirely sure why yours isn't, very confusing. Would it be possible for you to email an example piece of code that isn't working over? Maybe something is missing, but difficult to tell without seeing the code.

 

email address: unitysupport@renderheads.com

 

Okay, we've done some testing on XP and Vista. So I think the issue is that you're using the H.264 codec, and Microsoft only introduced a decoder for H.264 in Windows 7. So if you're targeting older platforms you have two options:

1) Re-encode your videos into a compatible format (something like H.263 or DivX or WMV)
2) Install LAV Filters (I'm not sure if it's XP compatible) as this includes an H.264 decoder:
https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases

Thanks,

 

I've just imported your asset into a backup game version with no errors. I'll test this again and see what happens.

I get the red boxes in MonoDev even in a bare project with only AVPro Video imported, with the hover message:
"error CS0117: 'RenderHeads.Media.AVProVideo.MediaPlayerEvent' does not contain a definition for - "
in VCR.cs AddListener
in MediaPlayer.cs Invoke
in AudioOutput.cs Add/RemoveListener
and I get the same when I import the asset into my project.
Yet - I get the Event messages in the Console...
So is this some glitch in MonoDev?

 

Unfortunately, I can't downgrade to older version of Unity in this project.
How soon shall I expect this to be fixed?
Do you recommend any codecs for video which can reduce overheating (H265, VP8 etc)?
Or would other shaders (Unlit Transparent, Stereo UV) be better in this scenario?
As this only affects the app in Lollipop, do you recommend any workaround for this specific version of Android?

Thanks

 

As I said, it's an issue with Unity, so I don't know if they will ever fix it. We found H.265 worked best...and we of course profiled our apps to make them run as light as possible for long VR video playback sessions. I wouldn't use a transparent shader unless you need it - it's more expensive than an opaque shader. You can probably tweak the ApplyToMesh script to only apply once, instead of every frame.... The OES rendering was essential though....I really hope that Unity fix it soon, but yeah we had built our project in 5.3.6, but I see 5.3.7 is out so I would probably try that..

 

Thanks Andrew!
I will try your recommendations

 

Yes it just sounds like a glitch in Mono Develop - nothing to worry about

 

Hi!

I upgraded Unity to 5.5.0 and AVPro VIdeo to the last version, and I'm seeing that in Android platform, the AVPro Logo is displaying at the beginning of all videos (sometimes for just one frame).

Do you know what may be causing that?

Thanks!

 

Could you take a screenshot of it? Is it perhaps just the icon graphic that's appearing? This is possibly just an editor setting for when there is no frame yet. This shouldn't happen in a normal build. You can also set the "default" graphic to display when there is no texture yet in the component (ApplyToMesh, DisplayUGUI etc).

Thanks,

 

Hello,
I have sets of cutscene videos arranged similarly to your VideoControls demo, except that in my hierarchy the three components, UICanvas, VCR and MediaPlayer are children of separate Game Objects, "Cutscenes 1", "Cutscenes 2", etc. I have renamed the components for each cutscene group (but not the MediaPlayer script). One of these parent objects is enabled at a time at a certain point, the (single) video plays, then that Game Object is disabled.
However, only the video in the first group plays. The others show the canvas with its controls but no video. The Console shows the error eg, "File Not Found ... [backslash space backslash] 2.avi"
I have all videos in the StreamingAssets folder, and swapped them, and they work if they are used by the first cutscene group...
I have Auto Open unchecked, and use each VCR script to supply the video name.
Could you help with this please? I don't understand why the first video plays but not the others...
Thank you.

 

Problem solved... Night's sleep... Mind working... I stripped out the file-loading from the VCR scripts and set the single file in the MediaPlayer scripts. All working. Excellent asset.

 

Hi @AndrewRH,

There is any way to view a YouTube video on AVPro Windows Standalone version through url?

 

Hey @AndrewRH,

Been using AVPro for a while now and wanted to say thanks for all the hard work.

I know AVPro has recently implemented audio-support, and I wanted to know if there were any plans to add support for 1st-Order Ambisonics to allow positional audio for 360 videos.

Thanks again!

 

Hello,
Is it possible to use AVPro Video transparency to create a splash screen which is smaller than the user's desktop (and shows some of that desktop behind the splash)?
I have a scene which fades in / out to show a splash image, but it uses the UI so I can only have a Unity background, not transparency.
Thank you.

 

can this support Linux ?

 

I also need Linux support. I downloaded your trial version But before purchase AVPro, I want to confirm that your plugin have Linux support?

 

Gentlemen. An update. We seem to have managed getting the plugin to work on Vista and XP by installing the CCCP. But now we're facing an issue with playing the video in WebGl on a mac in Safari. Runs fine in chrome and ff, but safari not.
Any clues, anyone? Thx!

 

Please read the FAQ in the PDF documentation for notes about YouTube support.
Thanks,

 

No this isn't possible - this is a limitation of Unity. Unity doesn't support alpha transparency blending with Windows Desktop....

 

Not yet...maybe in 2017...But with Unity's native video support coming we'll have to see if it's really needed?
Thanks,

 

Thanks
We're currently looking into Ambisonics support....Sorry I don't have any more information than that right now.

 

Web browsers are very fiddly beasts.... Which version of Safari are you using? We'll have to try to debug this in the new year..
Thanks,

 

Not yet...maybe in 2017...But with Unity's native video support coming we'll have to see if it's really needed?
Thanks,

 

Thank you @AndrewRH

 

hi,
thanks for replay.
i tried with beta but unity native video not play propyl with HTTP. i submitted bug but thanks for replay.