Question the video player does not guarantee first frame

Depending on the platform you are working on, it is possible the first frame we receive is not actually the first video frame in your file. We are dependent on platform SDK, and they all have their issues. The best solution would be to add some padding at the start. Not sure what you are using to move frame by frame, but I recommend using VideoPlayer.StepForward for this as VideoPlayer.frame sometimes is not precise enough.

 

I assume you are using a Rendertexture or Material Override? We never fill the texture with any colour. So if you see a brief flash of a grey, you probably show the renderer before the VideoPlayer has the time to update the texture.If you are using RenderTexture, you can fill the RenderTexture with transparency like this.

Code (CSharp):

1. void Start()
2.     {    
3.         rendTex = new CustomRenderTexture(rendTexWidth, rendTexHeight, RenderTextureFormat.ARGB32, RenderTextureReadWrite.Default);
4.         rendTex.initializationMode = CustomRenderTextureUpdateMode.OnDemand;
5.         rendTex.initializationSource = CustomRenderTextureInitializationSource.TextureAndColor;
6.        
7.         rendTex.initializationColor = new Color(1, 0, 0, 0);
8.         rendTex.autoGenerateMips = false;
9.         rendTex.useMipMap = false;
10.         rendTex.Initialize();
11.      
12.         material.mainTexture = rendTex;
13.  
14.         _videoPlayer = gameObject.AddComponent<VideoPlayer>();
15.         _videoPlayer.renderMode = VideoRenderMode.RenderTexture;
16.         _videoPlayer.targetTexture = rendTex;
17.  
18.         _videoPlayer.clip = clip;
19.         _videoPlayer.Play();
20.     }

If you are using Material Override, you need to find a shader that is invisible with no texture in it, like the Standard/Fade shader. Otherwise, you can hide/show the renderer using VideoPlayer.frameReady or wait for VideoPlayer.IsPlaying to be true. If you go with frameReady you need to enable it with VideoPlayer.frameReadyEventsEnabled

 

Weird. We are not doing anything other than blit the image in the RenderTexture. To be clear, even with the RenderTexture, you still need a material that allows the alpha channel. Like the Fade Rendering mode.

If you use the VideoPlayer.frameReady beware, we don't have the control over when the Texture will be blit because all this is done asynchronously. So if you press play, you could wait for one frame to make sure at least one frame was applied, and it should remove the brief flash.

Or do you mean now that some frames are missing at the start?

When you call Play, WaitForFirstFrame will wait for the first frame to start the playback. Otherwise, the playback will catch up to where it should be. So if you call Play at t=0 and get the first frame at t=1, the VideoPlayer will jump to t=1. If WaitForFirstFrame is enabled, with the same scenario, the player will start at t=1, but VideoPlayer would still be at t=0. In both case, the VideoPlayer player start at t=1 but WaitForFirstFrame allows to say you don't want to skip frames.