Hi there,
I’m the author of GPU video playback plugin from Unity world, and now researching the market to see if there is need for that kind of plugin for UE.
There is already support for that codec (HAP) in UE, but I see that it’s pretty limited (just 2x4k@60FPS), and not sure how goot it is (I see that there the multi-threading isn’t being used there for example from the code which means it will be slow).
Anyway, here is the list of features which I have implemented for Unity plugin:
— Low CPU usage. Frames are mostly decompressed on the GPU.
— Play 4k @ 120 fps, 8k @ 60 fps or 10k@60fps videos, play tons of smaller videos at once. Extremely fast frame-precise seeking.
— Playback speed control. Reverse playback support.
— Scrubbing support.
— Alpha transparency videos.
— Async nature of decoding.
— Smooth playback and seamless looping.
— HDR content support.
— Very high quality possible with BC7 texture format.
More on the codec:
— DXT/BCx textures are used internally (codec is intra-only, so the datarate is quite high, something like ProRes, but also heavily depends on the content). File sizes are big.
For example 8K@30FPS video can be around 280Mb/s.
— Fast NVME drive recommended.
How many people would be interested in such a solution? It’s usually used for media installations, 360 VR experiences, projection mappings, VJ’ing, etc, but also possible for games maybe.
Would be nice to hear from Unreal community.
