In UE 5.1 there is a brand new media asset that makes this a breeze. No media player, no material, no complications. It is accessed from Content Browser, right click, Media, Img Media Source. Specify where the image sequence is and that’s it. Drop it right into scene. It will play in PIE and it will also play in editor if you click the controls in details (3rd category down called, Playlist).
This is a game changer for quick easy media playing in game, editor or Cinematics.
Release notes say to use EXR image sequence, but the new 5.1 manual says, PNG, JPEG, etc work also. Alpha channel is supported if it’s there and the size aspect of the auto-generated plane is automatically sized to the media.
Can I ask how you did this? I’m trying to get the alpha channel from a ProRes 4444 video but it’s like it doesn’t exist. I’ve got the AJA plugin installed in the project. At this rate I’m going to have to consider the other poster’s idea of making a 2nd half of the video which is just what’s in the alpha channel, which is a mega pain in the ■■■■.
Just to give a more up to date/alternative reply to this, now that Bink is owned by Epic and included with Unreal, you can simply use that. It works well with alpha layers and everything is included in the engine, so no messing about with exporting separate alpha layers, streaming individual frames or dealing with other codecs and encoding.
The Bink encoding tool/player is to be found in \Engine\Binaries\ThirdParty\Bink in the Unreal installation folder.