I’m encountering an unusual issue with streaming an MP4 video to a TV within my Unreal Engine game. Here’s the scenario:
I have set up pixel streaming from an AWS EC2 server, and everything works seamlessly when a remote desktop connection is active. The MP4 video plays on the TV, and all functionalities, including audio, touch, and images, work as expected.
However, when there is no remote desktop connection to the server, the MP4 video fails to play on the TV. No errors are thrown, the video simply doesn’t play. All other functionalities still work correctly.
I’ve ensured that the pixel stream is fully functional, and all other aspects of the game work as expected.
Has anyone encountered a similar issue or have insights into why the MP4 video only plays when a remote desktop connection is active? I’m particularly interested in understanding any dependencies or configurations that might be affecting video playback in this specific scenario.
Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
I think I can offer a little insight into this issue.
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!
I have tried comparing the Windows services with and without RDP and I do not find any differences, the RDP services are active in both situations, and there are no meaningful differences in the services.
The Audiosrv service was found early to be needed for sound to work, and after I got it running, it solved audio issues.
Currently, I have noticed that when not connected with RDP, the TV in my UE instance shows a white screen, which seems similar to the case if an MP4 is not present. Therefore, my current hypothesis is that the relative paths used to find the MP4 have issues and that the connection to RDP might somehow impact the filesystem. However, when connecting with RDP, starting the video, and then disconnecting RDP, the TV freezes on the last frame of the video and stays like that, indicating some MP4 service issues.