[Released] AVPro Movie Capture

Latest version 4.6.4 - Released 8 May 2021

The video capture Unity plugin solution for professionals.
AVPro Movie Capture is a plugin that allows advanced capturing and rendering from within Unity and standalone builds, directly to disk as AVI/MP4/MOV/PNG file.

Features include:

• *NEW* System-wide audio capture (Windows only)
• *NEW* Ambisonic capture to WAV
• *NEW* Offline audio capture support
• *NEW* Direct3D 12 support (D3D12 / DirectX12)
• *NEW* Unity 2020 support
  
• Windows, macOS and iOS support
  
• Very easy to use
• Optimised for high performance
• GPU hardware encoding
• Real-time capture and offline rendering
• Rendering to 8K resolution
• Works in the editor and also in standalone builds
• Use any video codec you want
• Equi-rectangular capture for 360 degree VR (mono and stereo)
• Omni-directional stereo (ODS) support for VR renders
• Bitrate and encoding options
• Motion blur rendering
• Linear and Gamma colour-spaces supported
• Can capture alpha channel for creating transparent videos
• Records audio directly from Unity or from a system recording device

Downloads, documentation, videos etc available on our web page

Download the free trial package HERE

Purchase the full versions at the Asset Store:

• Full edition (includes iOS, macOS and Windows editions)
• iOS edition
  
• macOS edition
• Windows edition

We would love to hear your feedback:
Post issues to our Github Issues page, or reply to this thread

- The RenderHeads Team

 

Awesomeness!

If it is anything like the AVPro QT stuff we can't wait to play with it!

Also, unsure if this functionality is present, but it'd be super great to have the ability to record with an alpha channel (creating an alpha channel by removing background). Congrats on the release!

d

 

Do you also support the IOS platform?
In other words. Could I generate a video file on an iPad?

 

It seems to me the vid's are captured in the editor, not the buikd..

I'm quite interested by the way, may be picking this up later..

 

Looks like it only supports windows. Would have been nice if you had specified that so I didn't have to dig through the docs to find it.

 

The plugin currently only works on Windows PCs however we are interested in doing a port to Mac/iOS. I've added "Windows only" to the original post now so people don't have to trawl through the docs

@ThomasQ: The capture happens either in the editor or in the build - it's up to you.

@droderick: I haven't tested alpha support but we are capturing RGBA32 so in theory with a codec like Lagarith that can capture alpha it should support alpha

 

Hi Andrew, I sent you an email regarding performance but have not received a reply. It works great but compared with fraps, it's about 30% slower. I'm capturing at 20fps where in fraphs I can capture 30fps. I can send you test scene if required.

 

Thanks imtrobin, I'm busy working on your email now I'm putting together some guidelines for getting the best performance out of it and trying to automate this in the capture.

It would be great to see your test scene! What resolution were you trying to capture at?

In general to get the best performance:
1) Disable vsync.
2) Set the pixel format to YCbCr422_YUY2.
And to get a bit more speed out:
3) Set window resolution to a power of 2 size, like 1024x512.

I hope that helps.

 

Sent you a PM on test scene

I'm capturing at 1280x720. Fraps can capture 22 fps but AVPro captures at 15fps

I have a few questions

- What would happen if there are multiple cameras? Often we have one camera for UI, one for particles

- Can you make option to capture at half resolution? That would help to make it faster, hopefully.

 

imtrobin: thanks for the scene I'll give it a go.

If you have multiple cameras then it's best to put the plugin script on the camera that will render last. If you add it to one of the other cameras then it will just grab the rendering of that camera.

I have a new update coming soon with many more features, including an option to easy capture at half/quarter resolutions.

 

Imtrobin: Just to let you know....I just tried to email you but it bounced saying your mailbox is full....

 

Yeah, I have a small mailbox size, and someone sent me a big file, were u sending me a large file too? I cleared it already,

 

Hey all, just wanted to let you know we have released a new version of the AVPro Movie Capture plugin for Unity with lots of new features and improvements.

Update: Version 1.2 Released - 4 February 2012 - major changes:
- Added ability to capture GUI.
- Added audio capture.
- Added resizing to half, quarter, eighth resolution.
- Improved capture performance and smoothness by only preparing the frame capture data when the encoder requires it.
- Automatic disable of vsync helps performance.
- Rounding to multiple of 4 resolution to help codec compatability.
- Added ability to set target frame rate (15, 24, 30, 60).
- Added ability to set own file name.
- Video codecs can now be configured.
- Fixed various minor bugs.

There's a new demo on the website to try. Let us know what you think!

-RenderHeads

 

Is this on assetstore already? It only shows 1.11

 

Have submitted it..it's just awaiting review so should be up in a few days.

The demo on our website though uses the latest version 1.2.

 

Version 1.2 is finally up on the asset store

 

Hi Andrew

I see Unity 3.5 has released, it has access to a directx pointer, so AV Pro can be as fast as fraps, in fact probably can be an independent of unity as well. Any chance of update?

 

Has anyone tested the alpha channel capture yet? This would be great for capturing a video into AE and creating sprite sheets...

 

I just ran a quick test and indeed I can capture lossless RGB with Alpha from Unity!

To do this:

1) Use Lagarith codec
2) In the unity component make sure "Use fast pixel mode" is disabled so that it captures that full RGBA instead of just RGB.
3) In the Lagarith codec config make sure it's set to RGBA.

That's it

 

Hi imtrobin,

I'm currently looking into Unity3.5 support.

It seems that the DirectX pointer it exposes is only for the Direct3D device and not for the texture so I dont' think this really helps

-Andrew

 

From the Direct3D interface, you can get the frame buffer data, no?

 

Good point! We'll look into that - it should certainly speed things up.

 

I've just been running some tests with the new Unity 3.5 native graphics API access and it's looking pretty good so far

Here are some rough results with me trying to capture 1280x720 at 60fps:

Old method: Main Thread 25ms, Render Thread 8ms, Capture performance around 30fps
New Method: Main Thread 1ms, Render Thread 8ms, Capture performance 60fps+

It's a little bit more tricky to code but the results are worth it so we'll be working on getting a release with this support soon.

-Andrew

 

This looks really cool! Does the license allow this to be used in a PC build or only for use inside Unity? It would be pretty cool to provide players with a way to record game sessions for Youtube, etc.

 

Yep of course, it can be used for anything... you can let your players return their game to file, or if you're making an interactive installation you could return webcam to disk...

So yes you can use it inside Unity and as a stand-alone PC build.

-Andrew

 

This looks really awesome!! Well done

When do you think iOS will be supported? Is it something that is possible?

 

We're looking into possible Mac support...iOS is something we don't know much about yet...

 

Just submitted version 1.4 to the Asset Store.

The new version has support for Unity3.5's direct graphics API access, which means faster and smoother captures!

-RenderHeads

 

I do video editing on my computer so I have 28 video codecs installed. As a result, I can't even see the audio options in the demo at my highest resolution (1440x900)!

I was able to try the demo on another computer so I know audio recording works, but it would be nice to test on my main computer. Is it possible for the next demo to have a scroll bar on the GUI so options aren't cutoff? Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to quit the demo unless it's running in windowed mode.

 

Nixter, thanks for the feedback.

We've updated the demo on our website now with scrollbars, a few more options and the new Unity 3.5 faster capture. There's also a Quit button now

-RenderHeads

 

I downloaded the new demo. I can test audio on my main computer now. Thanks for the quick response!

 

We've just created a little video that shows the simplest way to use the plugin in Unity.

 

Ignore:

 

No, scratch that. I listened again and it is in stereo. Still there does seem to be a quality difference. Is that only volume or is it being recorded at a lower audio rate?

 

Yeah, it's the volume.

The audio is recorded at 44.1khz, 16-bit stereo.

I'm not sure why the volume is slightly lower in the recording...Might be something we'll have to look into for the next update.

 

OK, glad to hear that. I'm looking forward to trying this out in release versions of my game, but I gotta build it first!

 

I purchased and downloaded AVPro, yesterday. I have it attached to the main camera in my scene, and am using the “x264vfw - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec” codec.

The plugin will create an AVI file (only when the project is built, not in dev mode). However, there is no video captured. When I play the AVI in VLC, it will progress the time line, but no video renders. I tried opening in VirtualDub and in Windows Movie Maker, and both report errors with the AVI.

Attached is a screenshot of my settings

 

Hi Phil,

Sorry about the delayed response, we've been really busy this end.

We have also had problems using the “x264vfw - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC” codec and would recommend either using another codec or trying a different version of this codec. To get the best captures we normally use the Lagarith codec and then convert to H264 as an offline process, however you may not be able to do this depending on your situation.

Also, you may like to rather use the "SceneMovieCapture" script instead of the camera one it usually gives better capture performance.

Let us know how it goes,

Andrew Griffiths

 

Hi! We've just released an update version 1.5.

Changes:
1) Improved smoothness of captures significantly.
2) 64-bit Windows support added.
3) Added GUI to easily set up recordings (taken from previous demo scene).
4) Added code to detect dropped frames during encoding.

You can try the new demo here

We are currently working on:

1) Universal audio capture

If you have any feature requests please let us know.

Thanks
-RenderHeads

 

I was able to get it to record my two demo scenes by using the SceneMovieCapture instead of CameraMovieCapture, and by setting the codec to the Lossless codec. Only the Lossless codec worked. The file is large (about 10MB per second), but VirtualDub compresses it well afterward.

Thanks,
Philip

 

I have recently purchased AV Pro Movie Capture and tried to use it to record my Unity Application. The video recording is fine but I could not record any audio into the movie. The application is running on my laptop which has RealTek High Definition Audio drivers. Under the Recording tab in the Sound window in Control panel, I have only two devices listed: Microphone and Stereo Mix. Speakers exist only as a Playback device. Is there anyway for me to record audio using AV Pro Movie Capture?

 

@fisyher Yes, you should be able to select the "stereo mix" recording device and your audio will be recorded.

 

Wow, this asset looks great. I think I'll buy it. I've got three questions though:
- is it possible to render without GUI icw the SceneMovieCapture script?
- is there an option to show/hide mouse in video caption?
- does it work on mac's allready, or when are you planning to?

 

Hi proso,

The SceneMovieCapture component captures everything including full GUI so it's not possible to capture without GUI... For that you'll have to use the CamearMovieCapture component which doesn't capture GUI.

There's currently no option to show/hide the mouse cursor.

This plugin is for Windows PC only and we currently don't have a plan to support Mac

Thanks for your questions

 

Thanks. What is the difference in performance between SceneMovieCapture and CameraMovieCapture. Is it big? Will the show/hide cursor function be possible in the future? And how is the support?

 

@proso: The support is excellent Currently the cursor is not captured as it's a hardware cursor and isn't rendered on the GPU. If you want to capture a cursor you can write a little script that draws a cursor texture at the current mouse position each frame. We may add an option to do this automatically in the future as it's handy if you want to record the user activity or even record a tutorial video.

SceneMovieCapture and CameraMovieCapture are mostly the same but the difference comes in how they capture the frame data from Unity:

SceneMovieCapture is the faster one (from Unity3.5 and later) as it accesses the GPU frame buffer (DirectX/OpenGL) directly and doesn't use Unity scripting to handle grabbing the pixel data and passing it to the encoder. Since it accesses the final image it also includes the GUI.

CameraMovieCapture uses Unity to read the current RenderTexture for the camera it's attached to and passes that to the encoder. This has higher CPU overhead but it lets you capture from individual cameras. The GUI is not rendered into this capture.

I hope that helps explain things

 

Hi there's a new version of AVPro Movie Capture out! Version 1.6:

+ Added the ability to pause and resume movie captures
+ Capture resolution can differ from Screen resolution now, so your screen could be 1080p and you can capture to a 720p file
+ Inspector: displays capture rate and has buttons (start, stop, pause) to control capture
+ Multiple optimisations = lower CPU usage = better performance
+ GUI layout improved to be more compact

Cheers
-Andrew

 

Hi,
Okay, so, little problem here, hope you'll be able to help me out.

Let's start by the beginning. Before buying the plugin I tried your demo EXE with succes, first with x264 and after installing Lagarith Lossless Codec, it also worked with that. So far so good.
(The dropdown selection doesn't work though.. whatever plugin I choose, it was always the same that stayed selected and thus the only one useable)

After buying the plugin, I imported it in an empty project, opened the demo scene and tried creating a capture once again.
And while I don't have any errors (both in editor as in build), the only thing that gets created is a 64Kb file with nothing in it...
So it currently doesn't get me anywhere...

Even had this problem occur? (btw I use Unity3.5.5f3)

 

Joyrider,

Thanks for reporting the bug with the demo, I've updated the demo so that codecs can be selected and also updated the version of the Asset Store.

I'm not sure why your video files are coming out at 64KB since I just repeated the steps you mentioned and it's working fine here. Did you move your plugins folder into the root directory?

Perhaps try again with another codec (Lagarith ideally) now that I've fixed that bug.

Let me know if you have any more problems. Thanks,

 

A new version 1.62 of AVPro Movie Capture has been submitted to the Asset Store (still pending their approval). This update fixes some bugs that somehow snuck into the last release (1.6). The demo have also been updated on the website to fix issues with the demo related to not being able to select recording codec. Thanks,