I have an application developed with UE5.3 based on DirectX 12. It includes a feature for playing mov files (there is a TV in the scene, and when a button is clicked, the TV will play the video file).
When not using PixelStreaming, this feature works fine.
However, there are problems when running the application on a cloud server without a connected monitor or RDP session.
The application works fine with PixelStreaming, but it cannot play the mov file (the TV screen is black).
This issue only occurs when playing mov files with DirectX 12, while playing mp4 files with DirectX 11 works correctly.
When I connect to the cloud server via Windows Remote Desktop and then stream, the mov video file plays well. At this point, even if the remote desktop is closed, the mov file still plays correctly.
I also tested the VNC connection, and the same problem exists.
I tried installing a virtual display driver on the cloud server, but it did not solve the problem.
This is the driver I’ve tried, which is forked and recompiled from IddSampleDriver.
I know there is way to play mp4 files under DirectX 12, but I would prefer to find a way to make mov files play correctly.
So we’ve encountered issues in the past related to RDP allowing certain PS elements to work.
Basically, RDP just do happens to start a few services that Windows needs to play media, that wouldn’t otherwise have started. For instance the Audiosrv service was necessary in some cases.
If you wanted to confirm which services are being started with an RDP connection you can do the following:
RDP in and look at services.msc to see which services are active.
Restart, then SSH in and do the same, avoiding RDP.
In Powershell, you can run Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Status -eq ‘Running’ } in order to check the running services (this will thankfully work with both RDP and SSH)
You’ll be able to compare the 2 results and see which services are starting with RDP.
As a solid starting point, try Set-Service -Name Audiosrv -StartupType Automatic
I recall that without this service, video playback will fail if the video has audio.
Let me know if this gets things moving for you, otherwise we can look into it further!