UE5.3: MP4 Video via Media Player Lags and Looks Blurry in Rendered Frames (Movie Render Queue)

Development Cinematics & Media
, ,
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working in Unreal Engine 5.3 and using Sequencer with a Media Track to play an MP4 video.

Here’s my setup:

  • I imported an MP4 file and created a Media Player + Media Texture.
  • The video is displayed on a plane in the level via a material using the Media Texture.
  • In Sequencer, I added a Media Track and set it up to play the video at runtime.
  • I rendered the sequence using the Movie Render Queue.

The problem:
In the final rendered image sequence, the video on the plane appears noticeably blurry and choppy—it does not play smoothly, even though I’ve set the target frame rate to 30 FPS consistently across the project and render settings.

I’ve double-checked:

  • Project and Sequencer playback frame rates are all set to 30 FPS.
  • The video plays back smoothly in the editor viewport or standalone play mode.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?
Could this be related to Media Player playback timing, texture streaming, pre-roll, or seek frame lag during offline rendering via Movie Render Queue?

Any suggestions or best practices to get clean, synced video playback when rendering media this way would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

2

Video playback with MRQ was not great in 5.3. Things were not smart enough to deal with multiple temporal samples. In 5.5 things are much improved. If you need to stick with 5.3 then its recommended to bake the video out into frames.