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Video Unity Recorder update

Discussion in 'Audio & Video' started by ans_unity, Dec 19, 2017.

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  1. ans_unity

    ans_unity

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi everyone,

    We are making an important update to the Unity Recorder available in the Asset Store.

    This second release has a lot of useful features that we hope you will love:

    - Dedicated recorder window
    - Timeline triggerable recording sessions
    - Image sequences: JPG, PNG, GIF, OpenEXR
    - Video files: WebM, H.264 (Windows only)
    - Animation clips
    - Sound with Unity for 2017.3 or later.
    - 360 degree images/video capture for 2018.1 or later

    Let us know if you have any comments or questions.

    Keep on creating!
     
  2. jGate99

    jGate99

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    What about video files for MacOs?
     
    kwolf002 and teexiii like this.
  3. UNITY3D_TEAM

    UNITY3D_TEAM

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    png ,gif format capturing system only working mp4 and png sequence is not working
     
  4. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    I just fetched from the asset store v0.2 of the recorder and using unity 2017.1 and 2017.3, tried all the recorders and they worked fine.
    Which hints at a project specific problem. any chance you can make a tiny project that reproduces the issue and post it as a bug on the git hub project? here is the link:

    https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/GenericFrameRecorder/issues

    thank you,
    -J
     
  5. seamon67

    seamon67

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    Is it possible to trigger a video recording on a standalone build?
     
  6. N1warhead

    N1warhead

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    Im facing a strange issue as well.

    I'm trying to do something for the Neon Competition, but for some reason - my scene (and only this scene) won't record UI Elements.

    I create a new scene - works fine. But something about this scene I just don't get it. Is there something I should be doing that I'm obviously just missing?
     
  7. N1warhead

    N1warhead

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    Finally found a workaround after hours... Not sure if it's what I'm supposed to do though.
    But I had to change the Canvas to Screen Space - Camera for it to work.
     
    ow3n likes this.
  8. jdscogin

    jdscogin

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    Running 2017.2.0f3 and it works better. Makes MP4 which is great. The video is pixelated. Pretty smooth for a few seconds then kind of stops, gets pixelated, then fades into smooth again. Maybe too much on the screen? (can't upload an mp4 file)
     
  9. tcmeric

    tcmeric

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    Any support for mobile for the new recorder asset? I am looking to do screen recordings and then save to the native devices video roll.
     
    cwlarce likes this.
  10. georgeq

    georgeq

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    I'm trying to record a video on Unity 2017.3.0f3 with the following settings:

    Recorder.png

    But the recording stop just after it starts with the following errors:

    recordererror.png

    this only happens when I "Collection Method" is set to "Screen" and "Output format" is set to "MP4".
     
  11. UNITY3D_TEAM

    UNITY3D_TEAM

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    video is working now for me
     
  12. Onigiri

    Onigiri

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    Whatever settings i use, recorder cant record anything and outputs only empty black screenshots and videos. Anyone else have this issue?

    Edited: I think this issue is related to scriptable render pipelines. Recorder dont support them.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2018
  13. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    At the moment, not officially. but certain recorders may work, but none have actually been tested. for example, utj/mp4 on windows might work.

    But it's for certain something that will come. Just no ETA at the moment .
     
    KarlKarl2000 likes this.
  14. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    Movie recording is yet supported for mobile platforms. Will eventually come, but that a ways away yet.
     
    Skjalg likes this.
  15. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    If you use an other type of collection method, but keep Unity/Movie/mp4 you do not get the error?

    if you select "assets" as the destination root path, instead of "absolute", do you still get the error?
     
  16. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    that is limitation with the current mp4 recorder: not being able to manually set bitrate.
    What resolution where you recording at?
     
  17. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    hum, I'll investigate that further. thanks for the heads up.
    If that is a limitation that I can't get around, I'll at least detect it and output a warning with a hint as to how to resolve it.
     
    N1warhead likes this.
  18. jasonm_unity3d

    jasonm_unity3d

    Unity Technologies

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    I have not tested it against SRP, I'll check it out and see what can be done.

    thanks for the report
     
  19. K0n0

    K0n0

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    Hi,

    Running Recorder on 2017.3.03f produces the following error:

    2018-01-05 23_43_32-.png

    2018-01-05 23_43_52-Unity 2017.3.0f3.png

    An empty mp4 file is written to the chosen location.

    Output setting of x1080p_FHD and lower does work, anything higher produces the error.

    Would be happy to try suggested settings.

    Cheers

    ps. In case anyone's wondering; tint caused by Flux.
     
  20. EMOTION-THEORY

    EMOTION-THEORY

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    How would you initiate recording from your own scripts? I couldn't figure out how.

    I'd like to proc an animation in my game, and exactly when I do, I want to call BeginRecording.

    How would I do this? Right now I need to physically click the button in the editor window with my mouse and it's not a great solution.

    Any help is appreciated :')
     
    MohsenneChaverdie likes this.
  21. Rithy-Jim

    Rithy-Jim

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    ReplayKit support for screen recording on iOS mobile. And how about Android mobile? Any suggestion? I need to record on Android device and save to gallery. Thank in advance.
     
  22. RamSteelwood

    RamSteelwood

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    Hi,
    Just gave the latest version of this a quick test, running my project on Unity 2017.3
    It seemed to record video nice enough, but I noticed a couple of little irritations I thought I'd mention.
    The main one is that it seems to re-import the asset every time i open the project and each time i press play in the editor - I'll get an 'importing package' message pop up then a 'Hold on - importing small assets' message each time. Is this normal?
    Other than that - it doesn't remember the input settings between sessions, which would be nice (seems to remember outputs). The ability to save your own little 'presets' would be nice as the asset develops.
    Another request would be to be able to stop the recording, without exiting play. That would just make it a bit more friendly to use for recording little snippets of gameplay without having to restart each time.

    Still, I don't want to sound too negative... of the different assets and methods I've tried to record game footage from in the editor, this seems to be the best and easiest by far.
     
    ans_unity likes this.
  23. ans_unity

    ans_unity

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    Thank you all for the comments, the recorder is still in beta and your feedback is extremely valuable. We are working at improving the UX, removing bugs and other tweaks. Please keep posting on the forum, we are listening. :)
     
    elalala_unity, RamSteelwood and K0n0 like this.
  24. peterahou

    peterahou

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    Cross-platform mobile support is really all I need, so +1 on that feature.

    If anyone's looking for a mobile solution right now, I can recommend iVidCapPro on iOS. It recently went open source and is available here: https://github.com/ThisNetWorks/iVidCapPro
     
    Andrew_Zim likes this.
  25. pha

    pha

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    I cannot record the game play animation, and the only thing that get record is the player transform.
     
  26. anilo

    anilo

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    How come the video that gets recorded is upside down?
     
  27. ventrap

    ventrap

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi Anilo,
    Are you on Mac by any chance (or bad luck) ? If so can you try switching from "Camera" to "Screen/game view" and see if it renders with the correct orientation ? Let me know how it works for you.
     
  28. onHead

    onHead

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    The record movie is flipped horizontally on mac OS.
    After switching from "Camera" to "Screen/game view", I solved this problem!
    Thank you
     
  29. daville

    daville

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    Hi, I have a question, are Render Passes in the working? I would like to be able to export Alpha, AO, Shadows, Albedo, Normals, zDepth and so on.

    I've been tricking it by making custom shaders and rendering the scene with all the objects using a material that emulates the passes I need... but is a lot of work and breaking the scene over and over.
     
    AA-Matt likes this.
  30. bac9-flcl

    bac9-flcl

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    New MP4 recorder seems to be orders of magnitude slower than legacy one - it goes a few frames at relatively normal framerate and then chokes, managing less than a frame per second from that point on, even on very undemanding games being recorded at 30 fps in 720p. Not sure what's up, some sort of unintentional bottleneck with writing of the frames, maybe?

    On another subject, what should I use to smoothly record gameplay with objects moved through physics and FixedUpdate in general? Every single new and legacy recording mode records those objects with varying degrees of choppy movement not observed in normal gameplay - I suppose that's a consequence of time step locking which makes Update-driven stuff easy to record, but probably breaks FixedUpdate movement.
     
    DerLasseHenrich likes this.
  31. baMicah

    baMicah

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    is it up to record on a build?

    i created timeline and add it to the scene, add to it recorderTrack and recorderClip.

    in the Editor everything works fine. both in timeline recording and video window recording and i can see the captured pictures in explorer.

    but i ran into some issues in the build mode. such as (found it in log file):

    1. XInput1_3.dll not found. Trying XInput9_1_0.dll instead
    2. NullReferenceException -
    at UnityEngine.Recorder.RecordersInventory.GetRecorderInfo (System.Type recorderType) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
     
  32. WalkupAndAway

    WalkupAndAway

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    This looks very promising!
    Quick question: Can this asset record audio from the user's microphone in addition to in-game sounds?
    This is vital for use in VR video capture, and if not already implemented, I would highly recommend looking into it!
     
  33. haigeha

    haigeha

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    Unity version 2017.2, no matter how many frames are recorded, the resulting mp4 file is always 32k size, and failed to open, indicating that "Windows Media Player cannot play this file.
    It may be that the player does not support the file type, or does not support the codec used to compress the file.
    The suspicion is that the data is not actually written, but it is not known what caused it.
     

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  34. jeffsarge

    jeffsarge

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    Does this not work with the HD Render Pipeline? I'm in 2018.1 b5 and it works fine with a standard 3D project but when I create an HD Render Pipeline project all of the recorded output is black.
    Any ideas?
    Thanks,
    Jeff
     
  35. Rowlan

    Rowlan

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    Does anyone know how to get the colors right when you create a 360 degree stereoscopic capture? It doesn't matter if postprocessing is on or off, the colors are always too dark and oversaturated. Happens in 2018.1.0.b5 and b6. Using the frame recorder github version from 5 Feb.

    Click the thumbnails for images, they show

    * how it looks in Unity
    * what Frame Recorder saves
    * the Render Texture settings
    * the Frame Recorder settings



    360-02.jpg 360-01.jpg cubemap.png recordersettings.png
     
  36. boorch

    boorch

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    i really wanted to give a chance to this instead of throwing money to some 3rd party asset like helios but as soon as i click recorder > video, unity (2017.3) crashes.....

    i managed to read "importing small assets" for miliseconds before crashing
     
  37. elettrozero

    elettrozero

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    Works nicely but is there a way to set the mp4 compression? The result is very compressed
     
  38. mertakbal

    mertakbal

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    It is a very nice tool. Eager to use the full release.
    here are some problems which I encountered:

    - when I use Unity/Movie recorder, during gameplay I can't hear the audio, even if it is recorded and played in the recorded mp4 file.
    - If I then un-check the Capture Audio, the recording gets just couple of seconds after starting recording unbelievable slow comparable to a crash.

    - If I use UTJ/Legacy/MP4 recorder, the toolbox shows the number of the images recorded correctly but the final file size is just 32 bytes. But I think thats because this method is outdated.

    - If I start the recording after starting the game from unity play button, then it gets very very slow.

    improvement suggestions:
    - saving my presets for recording
    - calling the beginRecord function from within the game
    - being able to pause and continue
    - setting mp4 record quality
    - writing the transform coordinates, which are recorded as animation clips, also as lists of coordinates with timestamps into a txt or csv file...
     
  39. ans_unity

    ans_unity

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    Hi everyone, an update was made to the Unity Recorder on Jan 24th (v 0.2). It's still in Beta and the UI is not yet improved but we had a few important bugfixes we wanted to release. The update is available on the Asset Store so don't hesitate to get the new version to improve your experience!
     
  40. Rowlan

    Rowlan

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    In this version the images are still much too the dark in a 360 degree stereoscopic capture.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
  41. EBiker

    EBiker

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    I am trying to start and stop recording with 2 UI buttons on a canvas. The stop button works fine when starting the record from the manual button in the inspector. The "End Recording()" assignment is shown in the inspector. I can not get the start button to work. Can I get an assignment for the start button in the inspector. I tried bool captureVideo, but it dosen't work.
     

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  42. kwolf002

    kwolf002

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    I have found that the resulting mp4 files are too short (I'm on Mac). The frames are not being generated at an even rate and so I can't use the result
     
  43. jeffsarge

    jeffsarge

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    Doesn't seem to lock capture to an even frame rate. Is there a way to lock this to 30fps? I'm trying to use it for a lipsync project and sync seems to be slipping.
    Thanks,
    Jeff
     
  44. unity_rKjt-T0BDwRCPg

    unity_rKjt-T0BDwRCPg

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    I'm getting an error 'Menu' does not contain a definition for 'SetChecked' in the Verbose.cs script. Im using the 2018.1b version of Unity. I only downloaded the Recorder from the Asset store. didn't change anything afterwards. A known issue?
     
  45. Rowlan

    Rowlan

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    Since nobody of Unity is replying about acknowleding the bugs or providing information about how to work around the problems: Should we even post here? Or should we post issues at github? Posting here feels like a complete waste of time.
     
  46. uUeda

    uUeda

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    It´s not possible call something like "PlayRecord" in run time with a script?
     
  47. ans_unity

    ans_unity

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    Sorry for the lack of feedback but we were recently restructuring our team to to move beyond Beta and release the Recorder v 1.0. We are taking note of your issues and comments and will use them to improve the official release. No official schedule yet but we are talking short term so in the next few weeks.

    Thanks!
     
  48. Rowlan

    Rowlan

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    Apparently this doesn't work correctly in linear color space. It does in gamma color space. At least regarding the 360 video capture. And it seems to not resemble what postprocessing stack v2 (beta) delivers, had to turn it off. Otherwise it's an awesome feature.
     
  49. Mickwa

    Mickwa

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    Hello, recorder works great with timeline, but I have problems with colors when recording mp4. I get a lot of artifacts when recording. They are visible mostly on dark colors and shadows.
    Capturing png:

    I need high quality record even if it will take 1second to capture a frame :) How can I make recording quality better?
     
  50. DominiqueLrx

    DominiqueLrx

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi Mickwa!

    The movie recorder has very little in terms of quality settings, as you have seen. But the little it has was broken prior to version 0.2.0027. So can you please tell me what version you have? If your version is older than this, then you can upgrade and let us know if the High bitrate setting provides the expected quality.

    If not, then your other option is to do your recording using an image sequence instead of a movie. You can then take the image sequence as an input to an external tool of your choice to create a mp4 with a better control over encoding parameters.

    Future work will let you get full control of the produced movie bitrate but we have no ETA for this yet.

    Hope this helps!

    Dominique
    A/V developer at Unity
     
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