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Question Can Unity Recorder start recording during a play mode session?

Discussion in 'Audio & Video' started by bitinn, Jun 11, 2021.

  1. bitinn

    bitinn

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2016
    Posts:
    961
    Hi all,

    Having used Unity Recorder a lot I see one very annoying usability problem:

    - I would really like to record whenever I need during play mode
    - But the 4 Record Mode either force me to plan my recording time, or require me to record the whole gameplay.

    Is there a chance for "on demand recording" feature? I feel it is sorely missed.
    (many users ending up using external tools that capture screen output instead).

    Thx
     
    bitinn, Jun 11, 2021
    #1

  2. cguertin

    cguertin

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2019
    Posts:
    83
    Hey @bitinn! The Recorder also allows you to start a recording after entering playmode.

    You'll first want to configure you Recorder settings like from the Recorder Window. Once your settings are ready, you can enter Playmode like you normally would to test your game (using the "Play" button at the top of the Editor).

    After you are in Playmode, you can then start a Recording anytime you like using the "Start Recording" button from the Recorder Window. If you have the recording mode set to 
    Manual
    , then you will need to click the "Stop Recording" button again to stop the recording. If you have "Frame Interval" or "Second Interval", the recording will stop automatically at the end of the range (in this case, frame zero is the first frame after clicking the button to start recording).

    If you want to stay in Playmode after the recording is done, you'll also want to make sure to disable "Exit Play Mode" in the Recorder window.

    Please let us know if this is not working correctly on your end. Cheers!
     
    cguertin, Jun 14, 2021
    #2
    orenwang likes this.

  3. unitybru

    unitybru

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2020
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    225
    Because of determinism, we force all the frames before your recording to be played, meaning that if you want to record 45 mins-47 mins of your project, you still need to wait for the first 45 mins to play.

    We are investigating other possibilities to avoid you having to wait. There might be technical reasons that make it impossible to do "on the fly recording" (e.g. audio recording requires a change in the audio setup of Unity), but I have logged your request nevertheless in our tracking system.

    Thanks
     
    unitybru, Jun 14, 2021
    #3

  4. bitinn

    bitinn

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2016
    Posts:
    961
    Hey thx, I just tried this on a Unity 2020 LTS with Recorder 2.5.5 on macOS, it did work.

    But I wasn't able to start capturing middle way through play mode on Unity 2019 LTS on Windows, the recorder window just grey out, but never starts capturing.

    I will try Unity 2020 LTS on Windows again tomorrow. I wonder if it's a feature introduced beyond a certain version of Unity or Recorder?
     
    bitinn, Jun 15, 2021
    #4
    cguertin likes this.

  5. cguertin

    cguertin

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2019
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    What version of the Recorder are you using with 2019 LTS?

    We had a bug in version 2.2.0-preview.4 where the Recorder window would "hang" when starting a recording after entering playmode. This sounds very close to the behavior you are seeing. It should now be fixed since version 2.3.0-preview.3 but let me know if you are still having the issue in recent versions of the package.
     
    cguertin, Jun 15, 2021
    #5

  6. bitinn

    bitinn

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    Surprise surprise, we were on exactly that 2.2.0 preview release.
     
    bitinn, Jun 17, 2021
    #6
    unitybru and cguertin like this.

  7. Elsiehar

    Elsiehar

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2021
    Posts:
    3
    I am using timeline and when I use purely play mode the characters are correct, but when I start recording they are in different positions. Has anyone come across this issue and know of a reason/solution?
     
    Elsiehar, Jun 24, 2021
    #7

  8. Cor1979

    Cor1979

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2009
    Posts:
    65
    Any progress on this? I'm coming from the world of animated tv shows and offline rendering. Its routine to start a render hundreds of frames into a shot to pick up dropped/bad frames. Unfortunately, recorder makes that extremely painful if not impossible. I'm using path tracing with samples set to 1024. I have to wait hours overnight for it to catch up to the desired frame, only to discover the next morning the frame is still bad. Multiply this across multiple shots and it eats a ridiculous amount of time on our render farm.

    I understand what you're saying about determinism for recording gameplay, but for animated content where everything is determined by animation clips authored in Maya, this seems needless.
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2022
    Cor1979, Jan 25, 2022
    #8