[Released] AVPro Video - complete video playback solution

Have you set the Audio Output in your Media Player inspector -> Platform Specific -> Android to use 'Facebook Audio 360'?

 

Playback is not disabled in builds in the trial version - the videos will just be watermarked.

Have you tried placing your media in the StreamingAssets folder on Mac? Please see this page about the StreamingAssets folder in Unity and this page about loading media in AVPro Video.

If you're building from a Windows machine there's a chance that the reason your video isn't playing is because it's not supported on Mac. Please see here for supported media in AVPro Video - please ensure that the container format, video codec and audio codec are all supported.

Finally, this troubleshooting guide might be useful as well.

 

When you say it's not playing in the scene is it throwing an error? What size it it? What platform are you using and which version of AVPro Video? And what FFmpeg command are you using to convert to the alpha packing video?

 

Hi All,

AVPro Video version 2.2.0 has just been released!

Changes include:

General

• Improvements
  • Video preview in MediaPlayer editor component can now be collapsed by clicking on the title
  • Documentation for file offset and HLS AES-128 and 10-bit support
  • Added new documentation for video encoding notes
• Changes
  • AudioVolume property now clamped to 0..1 range
  • OpenMedia() method added to MediaPlayer component to allow opening of the currently set media
  • Added option to MediaPlayer component Global Settings to allow Ultra Edition features to be hidden which can help Core Edition users
  • Editor scripts for Platform options refactored

• Fixes
  • Fixed bug where media would auto-play in some cases when it shouldn't
  • #893 Fixed missing stereo macro in AVProVideo-Unlit-Transparent shader
  • Internal Asset Store links corrected
  • Fixed formatting in RecentMenu script for URLS with " _" character sequence

Windows

• Improvements
  • New experimental Windows-only Ultra Edition feature BufferedFrameSelectionMode allows for control over when frames are displayed in Media Foundation API which allows for smoother playback and synced local media playback
  • New experimental Windows-only Ultra Edition feature MediaPlayerSync component for keeping multiple MediaPlayer component in sync
  • UpdateAllTextures render thread event now only runs from a single MediaPlayer which improves performance when you have many players
• Changes
  • NotchLC and Hap codec support in the MediaPlayer component is now disabled by default and needs to be enabled in the Platform Specific section or via platform options. This improves performance and loading time of non-Hap/NotchLC media
  • Added options to disable support for Facebook Audio 360 and Text Tracks in Media Foundation which can reduce loading time
  • MediaPlayer.SeekToLiveTime() is now public

Android

• Improvements
  • Upgraded ExoPlayer from version 2.14.0 to 2.15.0
• Fixes
  • #910 Fixed GrabAudio() issue where audio channel data order could be incorrect with more than two channels

iOS / macOS / tvOS

• Improvements
  • Added support for generating 10-bit textures from 10-bit videos (Ultra edition only)
  • #887 Added Play without buffering option to reduce latency when starting playback from a network source at the risk of an increased chance of playback stalling
• Fixes
  • #918 Fixed crash when calling MediaPlayer.Close() due to race condition
  • #922 Fixed crash when a MediaPlayer instance is present and using UIImagePickerView

WebGL

• Fixes
  • #923 Fixed broken seeking

Download Links

Editions

On the Unity Asset Store we've made several editions of AVPro Video available so you can pick the one that's best for your project:

• Core Edition

• Core Windows Edition
• Core Android Edition
• Core macOS/iOS/tvOS Edition​

• Ultra Edition
• Enterprise Edition (contact us for multi-site licensing / support options)​

You can read this page to learn more about the features, pricing and upgrades for the different editions.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL VERSION HERE

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs or feature requests! We're looking forward continuing to support this product into the future and adding more features.

Thanks,

 

Is there an example or script for accessing video file from Oculus Quest 2. I have external(SD) in Unity set and I have the video working in StreamingAssets, but when I sideload the file to the root directory on the Oculus and set the video player path it doesn't work.

 

FYI, I was able to make it work. Here are the steps for others on Oculus Quest 2:
Uploaded file via sidequest and placed in root file
set mediaplayer absolute path to "/sdcard/<filename>"
Set edit->project settings->player->write permission->external SD
Oculus->Tools->Create Store-Compatible Android Manifest file
Edit the file that is assets/plugins/android/androidmanifest file

Here is mine:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:installLocation="auto">
<application android:requestLegacyExternalStorage="true" android:label="@String/app_name" android:icon="@Mipmap/app_icon" android:allowBackup="false">
<activity android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen" android:configChanges="locale|fontScale|keyboard|keyboardHidden|mcc|mnc|navigation|orientation|screenLayout|screenSize|smallestScreenSize|touchscreen|uiMode" android:launchMode="singleTask" android:name="com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayerActivity" android:excludeFromRecents="true">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
<meta-data android:name="unityplayer.SkipPermissionsDialog" android:value="false" />
<meta-data android:name="com.samsung.android.vr.application.mode" android:value="vr_only" />
</application>
<uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.vr.headtracking" android:version="1" android:required="true" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/>
</manifest>

 

Hi, is it possible to play gifs from url?

Edit:
If I play .mp4 extension it works great, but for example this produces error:

[AVProVideo] Error: Loading failed. File not found, codec not supported, video resolution too high or insufficient system resources.

 

If you play the AVPRO 3D sample and add a Unity->UI->Button, any UI will render "fuzzy" and you have to close one eye to see the image. Any suggestions to render a "2d" inside the 3D Sphere?

 

Not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps you could provide a screenshot of 'fuzzy'?
It's best to report these on GitHub as that is where our technical support team look at issues:

https://github.com/RenderHeads/UnityPlugin-AVProVideo/issues

Thanks,

 

Gifs are not supported i'm afraid. You can find the list of supported media here:
https://www.renderheads.com/content/docs/AVProVideo/articles/supportedmedia.html

Thanks,

 

Hi All,

AVPro Video version 2.2.1 has just been released!

Changes include:

iOS / macOS / tvOS

• Improvements
  • #931 Added option to use a single player item. This can help reduce network usage for remote videos but will cause a stall when looping
• Fixes
  • Fixed issue with HLS assets continuing to play when looping has been disabled
  • #930 Fixed issue with texture properties not being applied

Download Links

Editions

On the Unity Asset Store we've made several editions of AVPro Video available so you can pick the one that's best for your project:

• Core Edition

• Core Windows Edition
• Core Android Edition
• Core macOS/iOS/tvOS Edition​

• Ultra Edition
• Enterprise Edition (contact us for multi-site licensing / support options)​

You can read this page to learn more about the features, pricing and upgrades for the different editions.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL VERSION HERE

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs or feature requests! We're looking forward continuing to support this product into the future and adding more features.

Thanks,

 

Hi

I'm using the trial version of AVPro version 2.2.1 to buy it after testing.
I have an .mp4 video that needs to be played looped.
Problem I have is , there's a slight pause at the end of the video, before it loops back again. It's not long but it's still very noticeable.
I know the video doesn't have any pause and I have tried with different videos and they all produce the same result.
Is that due to me using the trial version? If not, what can I do to fix it?

 

Hi,

It's not a limitation of the Trial version. Your video encoding needs to be adjusted to help it achieve fast looping. This is generally done via:

1) Adding more key-frames (or all key-frames)
2) Reducing encoding features (eg B-frames)
3) Removing the audio track (even if it's silent)

We have some notes about encoding here. You may want to read the part about encoding for Fast Seeking

Thanks,

 

Great I'll try those.
Thank you.

 

Having an issue with a Mac plugin EntryPointNotFoundException: AVPPluginMakerPlayer
Class is AppleMediaPlayer.cs line 96. Any idea on what maybe going on?

_player = Native.APPluginMakerPlayer(_playerSettings);

 

Well looks like there's a typo in the above, should be _player = Native.AVPPluginMakePlayer(_playerSettings);
Are you sure you haven't edited the file accidentally at some point?

 

I did not edit the file I was looking at my mac and typing on the pc, the exact is _player = Native.AVPPluginMakePlayer(_playerSettings); I was just trying to get you a reference to the error and sometimes the class might change sorry about the typo. Also this project has been worked on for awhile before I started but any information regarding the above would be great.

 

so we added keyframes to every frame and then encoded the video using the command in the fast seeking section of the link https://www.renderheads.com/content/docs/AVProVideo/articles/encoding-notes.html , and I also limited unity's fps to be 30, which is the same as the video.

It's still having a pause at the end right before the loop starts again.
Doesn't make sense at all as the video loops in unity's video player without any pause.
Is there anything else we can try ?

 

If you're using the latest version of AVPro Video on Windows then you can try disabling some of the features:

https://www.renderheads.com/content...media-player.html#platform-specific---windows

Disable these options:

• Use Stereo Detection
• Use Text Tracks
• Use Facebook Audio 360

You could also try enabling

• Low Latency

I hope that helps?

 

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. Unfortunately those didn't solve it. It seems that the pause is a little less than before, but it's still there and noticeable.

 

If the project has been worked on before you started there's a chance the plugin scripts have been edited or something is missing. It might be worth importing the plugin from the package manager into a fresh project checking it against the files in your project.

 

Hi!

We have the following scenario/problem:
We have multiple videos that move in and out of the visible area and to save CPU/GPU we would like to only pause the decoding of a video when it isn't visible while the time etc. continues to run. So when a running video becomes visible decoding can be enabled again and it continues at the correct frame. A kind of culling so to speak.
We are using the latest Ultra Edition (2.2.1) on Windows 10 with Media Foundation and DirectShow playback. We tried temporarily disabling Native.Update(_instance) in WindowsMediaPlayer.Update() what almost worked with Media Foundation. Decoding really seems to stop and the time continues to run but looping a video doesn't work as the time just runs past the end of the video and after enabling the Update() method again the videos need several seconds to render the frame at the current time. With DirectShow (LAV Filters) disabling the Update() method doesn't stop decoding the video.

So is there a method for achieving this behavior or is there some API you could expose or would you consider adding something like this in a future release?

Sadly, pausing the videos and keeping track of the time ourselves is no option in our case as our scenario is quite complex with multiplayer/multiple views and video controls being distributed over the network as well and so on ...

 

Hi All,

AVPro Video version 2.2.2 has just been released!

Changes include:

Windows

• Improvements
  • Added skipping of buffered frames in ElapsedTimeVsynced buffer selection mode when Unity drops frames to prevent buffer becoming full and then flushing
  • Hap/NotchLC decoder can now drop frames to keep up with real-time playback
  • Hap/NotchLC playback has reduced memory and GPU usage via removal of creating and blitting an extra full frame texture
  • Hap/NotchLC improved texture mipmap generation support
  • Several D3D12 improvements for Hap codec support
  • #948 Added support for PCM float-32 audio to Hap/NotchLC Custom MOV Parser
  • #947 Hap decoder now supports videos that have dimensions that aren't a multiple of 4 (but at a performance cost)
• Fixes
  • #915 Fixed Hap/NotchLC paused videos not being able to seek once they reach the end of the video when using Custom MOV Parser
  • #914 Fixed Hap/NotchLC playback rate greater than 1.0 not working, now supports range of 0.0 to 4.0
  • Fixed Hap/NotchLC videos containing special characters in the file name would not be opened by the Custom MOV Parser
  • Fixed Hap/NotchLC playback ending too soon when tracks had different durations when using Custom MOV Parser
  • Fixed DirectShow mute state being overridden by setting the volume

Android

• Improvements
  • Added documentation notes about how to support 'Minify' build option

macOS

• Fixes
  • Fixed issue with Hap video playback not generating textures

iOS / macOS / tvOS

• Fixes
  • #943 Fixed issue with muted flag not being applied when creating the player

Download Links

Editions

On the Unity Asset Store we've made several editions of AVPro Video available so you can pick the one that's best for your project:

• Core Edition

• Core Windows Edition
• Core Android Edition
• Core macOS/iOS/tvOS Edition​

• Ultra Edition
• Enterprise Edition (contact us for multi-site licensing / support options)​

You can read this page to learn more about the features, pricing and upgrades for the different editions.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL VERSION HERE

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs or feature requests! We're looking forward continuing to support this product into the future and adding more features.

Thanks,

 

Not really sure that's possible. Continuing to play the video won't save any performance. Could you not pause and resume as need be? i.e. run a clock and then seek to the correct frame

 

I really would like to use openvideofrombuffer but says only supported with windows and direct show api can we not have this in Android IOS etc..

 

Hello everyone! Im looking for advice on how to handle several video content and Media Players.

I have different videos which are synced, and I have to show only one of them depending on the user selection. Which would be the best approach, have several MediaPlayer components; or have just one and change the source?

Thanks in advance!

 

Does this feature request match your requirements?

 

How exactly are your videos synced? It's generally best to have as few MediaPlayer components as possible. See our PlaylistMediaPlayer Demo that shows how two MediaPlayer's can be used to switch between items seamlessly. Another option is to concatenate your videos into one and seek to the correct frame when need be.

Does that help?

 

Hey TerryRH!

I have three 360 videos of the same situation from different point of views, which were all recorded at the same time.

I want the user to be able to move between the different POVs, and the moment they jump to a new one, the new video starts where the last one left. Therefore, moving between positions seamlessly.

So, the best approach would be to use 2 MediaPlayers, and change the media content using OpenMedia? Should I preload all the videos in some way?

Or do you think is better to merge the videos into one, use only one Media Player, and use a seekfast?

Today I have only 3 povs, but most probably Im going to have more in the future

Thanks for your help!

 

The best results will be achieved if you have everything in a single video. It depends on the platform though and whether they're streaming or not. I recommend opening an issue on our Github support as it's easier to keep track of conversations there and figure out the best approach.

Thanks,

 

Occasionally I am having an issue where video playback seems to lockup.

I am streaming several videos from network (one at a time), and use a single player to play all of them, unloading the previous video before loading in the URL for the next. Most of the time the playback is working fine, but every once in a while the video streaming stops (sometimes the audio comes back, and sometimes it doesn't). This is running on iOS, using HEVC encoding with 720p/0.8MBps, 2s keyframe. No errors seem to be thrown when this occurs; the videos simply don't seem to load.

While I'm not ruling out an issue on our server I wanted to also check here and see if this is a known issue that I can address.

 

Hi All,

AVPro Video version 2.2.3 has just been released!

Changes include:

General

• Fixes
  • #956 Fixed issue with portrait horizontally mirrored videos not being transformed correctly

Android

• Improvements
  • New shader added Unlit-Transparent-OES
• Fixes
  • #966 Fixed compile errors in some of the InsideSphere-OES shader variants

iOS / macOS / tvOS

• Fixes
  • #974 Fixed issue with playback rate not being reported correctly when maximum playback rate is greater than 2
  • #977 Fixed issue with volume not being applied after the player has been created
  • #974 Fixed issue with playback when max playback rate is set to > 2 and the media has an audio track
  • #953 Fixed issue with URLs being invalid when whitespace is present at the end

Download Links

Editions

On the Unity Asset Store we've made several editions of AVPro Video available so you can pick the one that's best for your project:

• Core Edition

• Core Windows Edition
• Core Android Edition
• Core macOS/iOS/tvOS Edition​

• Ultra Edition
• Enterprise Edition (contact us for multi-site licensing / support options)​

You can read this page to learn more about the features, pricing and upgrades for the different editions.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL VERSION HERE

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs or feature requests! We're looking forward continuing to support this product into the future and adding more features.

Thanks,

 

I recommend you post this to our GitHub so our support team can assist you:
https://github.com/RenderHeads/UnityPlugin-AVProVideo/issues

Thanks,

 

Hi, i'm having an issue with displaying two 3D videos at the same time.
I'm using AVPro 1.11.7 on Oculus Quest 2.

I have a sphere where i'm displaying a 360 top/bottom 3D video on the inside using ApplyToMesh and the InsideSphere Unlit Transparent shader.
Then i have a world space canvas inside the sphere where i'm displaying a "flat" left/right 3D video using Display uGUI and the UI/Stereo shader.

When i look at the scene in the headset, the world space canvas appears slightly offset to the left in the left eye, and slightly right in the right eye, which creates a sort of ghosting effect along the edge of the canvas that's a bit disorienting.

My first thought was that this is just normal due to perspective of the different eyes seeing the canvas as a 3D object, but then i realized that this doesn't happen when i show a 2D video on the sphere. With a 2D video on the sphere and a 3D video on the canvas, it lines up perfectly in both eyes. It only happens when the video behind on the sphere is 3D, which makes me think that a small tweak to the shader will probably fix it.
But i only have very limited experience with shader coding, so i'm not sure what to change.

Here's a pic that shows how it looks in the headset.

 

Hi there,

Could you please log this issue on our Github page here, filling in all the relevant info on the template so we can best assist you. Including the videos you're using would be very helpful.

Thanks!

 

I've submitted an issue.
Also i noticed that it doesn't matter what is on the canvas in front of the sphere. Any object in front of the 3D video causes the issue.

Thanks

 

We use AV pro video for android on oculus quest 2 using the standard renderer. If we upgraded to URP in our current project does the AV Pro shaders that will play the videos come with URP shaders?

 

Most of the AVPro Video shaders are unlit and so shouldn't need to be upgraded/should just work on URP.

We don't currently have a lit URP shader, as no one has asked for one. But we could think about adding one if there was interest.

Does that help?

 

Hi All,

AVPro Video version 2.2.4 has just been released!

Changes include:

Android

• Fixes
  • Fixed compile of GLSL OES shaders using alpha packing due to use of `lerp` instead of `mix`
  • Fixed GLSL OES shaders not sampling packed alpha due to missing implementation
  • #968 Fixed OES InsideSphere shader displaying upside-down when High Quality option was enabled

Windows

• Improvements
  • NotchLC decoder no longer rounds to 8-bit, now uses the full 10-bit
• Fixes
  • #991 Fixed bug in WinRT parsing of program-date-time as it was using Windows 1601 epoch instead of 1970 epoch

iOS / macOS / tvOS

• Improvements
  • #1001 Added support for changing `preferredMaximumResolution` after player creation
  • Fixes
  • #995 Fixed issue with uninitialised GCHandle
  • #853 Fixed crash caused by overrelease of a video texture in UnityGfxDeviceWorker

iOS

• Improvements
  • Better handling of video playback when the application resigns active

Download Links

Editions

On the Unity Asset Store we've made several editions of AVPro Video available so you can pick the one that's best for your project:

• Core Edition

• Core Windows Edition
• Core Android Edition
• Core macOS/iOS/tvOS Edition​

• Ultra Edition
• Enterprise Edition (contact us for multi-site licensing / support options)​

You can read this page to learn more about the features, pricing and upgrades for the different editions.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL VERSION HERE

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs or feature requests! We're looking forward continuing to support this product into the future and adding more features.

Thanks,

 

Hello. Just started using AVPro Video in my game (Windows only, PCVR, video is playing back in a Unity UI super simply). Pushed a testing build live to make sure things worked for users, and I'm getting fragged decoding on Radeon RX6800s and RX6700XTs (Driver Version 21.11.3). It makes the videos look like this: https://imgur.com/a/PX1wQOj

Video plays back (thus far) correctly for everyone else.

Do you know what could be going wrong here?

 

Not sure offhand, have you tried updating your drivers?

 

Hi

I've got a couple of questions regarding audio in AVPro.

So you can push the audio to a unity sound source so that it can be placed positionally and use the audio output in Unity. The issue I'm having is that I want to do this so that I can place the speakers in a 5.1 setup and have 3D sound for video is 5.1 audio. The audio push although uses the position of the sound source to output the sound it doesn't use it's positional location so it will increase and decrease in volume based on the distance but it doesn't pan left and right based on the position. Is there any way to get it to do this or is the "use unity audio source" not really using the audio source?

To clarify the final use. I would like to be able to have 5.1 audio be in positional locations for people watching films in VR. Being able to pipe each track to a speaker location would work well for that if it worked as expected.

Hope that makes sense.

All the best

Phil

 

I am experiencing a new problem with the AVProVideo 1x. This worked fine for a long time but is now encountering GPU errors.
As another previous user has listed here:
https://github.com/RenderHeads/UnityPlugin-AVProVideo/issues/429

AVProVideo is causing the error:
Execution of the command buffer was aborted due to an error during execution. Ignored (for causing prior/excessive GPU errors) (IOAF code 4)

It seems to be caused by the combination of ShaderGraph shaders and the URP, I think. The shaders I do not think I can replace, and unfortunately in this case I also cannot use the uGUI feature.

Is there a known way that I can treat this?

AVProVideo 1X
Unity 2021
XCode 13

 

**SOLVED**
In this case, I was finally able to hunt down the problem, which was , in fact that the camera in the scene had HDR setting deselected ("off" in Camera/Output). When "Use pipeline settings" was selected there was no more error.

 

Hi Phil,

Yeah, this won't work for this reason. It should be an easy feature to add, so we'll look into doing so. Please follow our updates on this here.

 

Hi All,

AVPro Video version 2.3.0 has just been released!

Changes include:

General

• Improvements
  • #1036 New option `Support Positional Audio` added to `AudioOutput` component

Android

• Improvements
  • #1010 Updated ExoPlayer from version 2.15.0 to 2.16.0
  • #1025 Added x86_64 build to support Chromebooks
  • #1025 Enabled x86 and x86_64 builds on Android for newer Unity versions
  • #983 Open / Close commands using the MediaPlayer API now run on another thread making these methods asynchronous preventing stalls
  • #960 Audio buffering performance improvements
• Fixes
  • #1024 Fixed global reference table overflow issue

iOS / macOS / tvOS

• Fixes
  • #1020 Fixed issue with playlist player not working when auto progress is set to true
  • #1029 Fixed crash when unloading a player instance
  • #1031 Fixed issue with the log being spammed by load failed messages
  • #1032 Fixed issue with seek to time being incorrectly scaled when maximum playback rate is greater than 2
  • Fixed issue with distorted audio when playing back media which uses the AAC-HE-V2 audio codec and the player's audio output mode is set to Unity

Windows

• Improvements
  • Added slightly more buffers for NotchLC decoding to improve stability

Download Links

Editions

On the Unity Asset Store we've made several editions of AVPro Video available so you can pick the one that's best for your project:

• Core Edition

• Core Windows Edition
• Core Android Edition
• Core macOS/iOS/tvOS Edition​

• Ultra Edition
• Enterprise Edition (contact us for multi-site licensing / support options)​

You can read this page to learn more about the features, pricing and upgrades for the different editions.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL VERSION HERE

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs or feature requests! We're looking forward continuing to support this product into the future and adding more features.

Thanks,

 

We had some time and it was easy to implement, so this has been added today in 2.3.0

Thanks,

 

Thanks great to hear I'll start working on an update for Whirligig and if I have any issues I'll let you know.

 

If I want to use URP with Vulkan is that supported for AVpro video on android?

 

AVPro Video doesn't support Vulkan - OpenGL ES must be used instead