This library (especially this release) has been deprecated for the fully open source PopH264. https://github.com/NewChromantics/PopH264

PopMovie

High performance, cross-platform, Movie-Texture plugin for Unity.

• popmovie.xyz
• We welcome all questions, bug reports & feature requests (some features may already exist and be hidden), simply email us at help@popmovie.xyz, send me a tweet to @soylentgraham
• We have public bug tracking & feature requests on our github issues page
• The Github releases page has detailed release notes for all public releases dating back to December 2015
• Unity example projects for the latest release (sometimes more examples than in the store) are on the github page. We welcome pull requests and demo submissions!
• Supports iOS, Android, Windows & OSX. Virtual Reality, common movie files, subtitle(.srt) files, images, Kinects, webcams & cameras, window streaming.

Downloads & Release Notes

Download from the Unity asset store!. This may not be the very latest version as submissions to the Asset store take time to approve.

Below is a list of recent releases and their release notes. (The complete history of public watermarked releases and their release notes are on the github releases page.

• v0.1.9 Current asset store version
• v0.1.8
• v0.1.7
• v0.1.6
• v0.1.5
• v0.1.4
• v0.1.3

Free Watermarked Demo package

• A free watermarked demo is availible to download on Github. This also serves as a Beta release as the releases take longer to make it to the asset store.
• Direct link to the latest watermarked .UnityPackage

Cross-platform Features

• Does as little work in render thread as possible so all platforms can achieve >=60fps
• Multi track support
• Streams audio to AudioSource to allow customisation/positional audio
• No platform specific C# code (Same code in unity for all platforms)
• Very precise sync to allow synchronisation with external audio (as well as sync with audio in movies)
• Performance graph textures which show lag in decoding & aid debugging
• Audio visualisation to aid audio debugging
• NO additional DLL's/runtimes required. Edit: Windows now bundles Directx shader compiler for 32 & 64bit.
• Works in editor!
• Lots of options for tweaking performance & specific video problems
• Not limited to one video at a time
• Synchronised .srt(subtitle file) parser.
• Can Enumerate sources to list all videos, cameras, devices, windows that can be used with the plugin
• Can be used independently of unity with the C interface or as an osx framework (enquire for details)
• Various image format support (GIF, TGA, PNG, BMP, PSD)
• Realtime Window capture on windows & osx
• Bink support on a per-contract basis (contact for details for windows, PS4, OSX, ios & android.

Android Features

• OpenGL ES 2 & 3.
• Video decoding with or without opengl surface backing.
• Load files from APK (streaming assets), OBB files(patches), non-compressed zip/jars, persistent data, or anywhere accessible by file system (eg. sd card)
• Multithread rendering support
• Multiple track support (except mpegts files, see issues)

iOS Features

• OpenGL ES 2 & 3 (Metal coming soon)
• Video decoding with or without opengl surface backing.
• File seeking forwards & backwards where supported

OSX Features

• OpenGL (legacy and 5.3 GLCore) support (metal coming soon)
• Hardware video decoding
• Multiple video & audio track support
• Audio support
• KinectV1 support
• Video camera support
• window: protocol allows capturing contents of other windows
• File seeking forwards & backwards where supported

Windows Features

• OpenGL (legacy and 5.3 GLCore) support
• DirectX 11 support
• Hardware video decoding
• window: protocol allows capturing contents of other windows
• video camera/webcam/microphone support
• File seeking forwards & backwards where supported
• File-streaming from HTTP urls

PS4 Features

• PS4 is only availible on a per-contract basis currently due to SCEE lisencing. Contact for details
• Decode with native/OS video decoder
• Camera support
• All other streaming and cross-platform (images, subtitles) features

Bink Support

• Bink is availible on a per-contract basis, requiring a RAD Bink lisence first. Contact for integration details

Supported Platform versions & devices

This is not a definitive list as the requirements and limitations can vary between devices & os, graphics card, but quite comprehensive. Corrections welcome!

• Windows 7 32 & 64 bit
  • Limitations: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd797815(v=vs.85).aspx
• Windows 8, 8.1, 10 32 & 64 bit
• Android API level 16 and above (4.1 Jelly-bean)
  • Limitations: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html
• OSX 10.7+ 32bit, 64bit & universal builds
  • h264: Up to Profile level 4.1.
  • h264: Level 5.0 decodes very poorly
  • h265: Not supported by OS. (as of 10.12)
• iPhone 5s+, iPad Air2/Retina, iPad Mini
  • iOS6+
  • h264: 4k / 60fps / High Profile level 4.1
• iPhone 5C, 4S
  • iOS6+
  • h264: 1280x720 / 30fps / High Profile level 4.1
• iPhone 3GS, iPad 1,2
  • iOS6+
  • h264: 1280x720 / 30fps / Baseline Profile level 3.0
• iPad 1,2
  • iOS6+
  • h264: 1280x720 / 30fps / Main Profile level 3.0
• iPad 1, 2 & iPhone 4,4s,5,5c
  • iOS6+
  • h264: 1280x720, Baseline 3.1, 30fps

Open source! (ish)

While PopMovie itself is not entirely open source, a huge amount of the code uses SoyLib, an open source C++ library for a variety of platforms. We endeavour to release more and more of the code as open source as time goes on.

Planned todo list

This is a list of our high-priority upcoming features

• Metal support for iOS & OSX
• Directx 12
• HLS streaming across all platforms
• HAP codec support
• Kinect & Kinect2 for windows
• Full animated gif support
• Stream simple files (images, subtitles) directly from HTTP
• Stream movie files from HTTP (windows already supported)

Quick start guide

We have provided some simple movie playback components with full power, but lots of common code written for you. If you want much more refined control, or want to handle multiple video & audio streams, consider writing your own (even using PopMovieSimple as a base), the interface is still quite simple!

The simple way

• Create a new game object in the scene and attach a PopMovie/PopMovieSimple.cs component
• Create a RenderTexture texture to draw the movie to, or select a normal texture2D texture and set it on the Target Texture field
  • If using a Texture2D you must set this to be writable in the advanced settings.
  • If using a RenderTexture you must set the Depth Buffer setting to No Depth Buffer.
• Set the Filename field to...
  • To your filename Yourfile.mp4, and the c# code will try and resolve it to a fully qualified path, look for it in streaming assets, or your persistent data path for files downloaded with WWW.
  • Specifically to a special folder; streamingassets:YourFile.mp4 or persistentdata:YourFile.mp4
  • For Android you can use apk:YourFile.mp4 which will explicitly load from the assets (streaming assets) in the APK, or if you have a downloaded/store updated OBB file it will look in there for the latest version
  • Again for android, sdcard:YourFile.mp4 looks specifically in the external storage for your file
  • A window-capture name window:Notepad or window:*. This is only for windows or OSX
  • A webcam or other device (microphone, phone camera etc) device:isight or device:mic or device:*
• Play! Your file should load, (An exception will be thrown if it fails), auto play, and be drawn to your target texture. You can check this in the inspector. Then assign your texture to a material, cube draw to the UI, or do whatever you want with it!
• If you want to adjust any elements (for example change aspect ratio of a UI element). Use the GetMeta() function to find width & height information.

Capturing Cameras & Devices

PopMovie also captures from OS camera & capture devices. This includes microphones, phone cameras, web cameras and other devices

• Prefix the Filename field with device: to capture.
• device:* will capture from the first device it finds
• device:MMP for the HTC Vive camera (This needs to be enabled in SteamVR's settings first!)
• device:isight for iMac monitor Cameras
• device:mic commonly gets a microphone for most platforms

Capturing Window contents

On windows and OSX PopMovie has the ability to capture window contents and display them to your texture in realtime.

• Prefix the Filename field with window: to capture
• window:* will capture the first window with a name it finds (good for testing)
• window:notepad will capture notepad if it's running
• Window names don't have to be exact, window:Unity should capture unity's display.
• OSX's window capture is currently occluded by other windows. If you want to capture a window, whilst another window sits on top, you will see the other window's contents. This does not apply to Windows
• Window capture on Windows7 can sometimes be slow. This doesn't affect Unity's framerate, but can make applications or the contents seem laggy.
• On Windows, there is an option named Include Window Borders which allows you to capture the whole window (Title bars, Minimise, close buttons etc), or just the client area
• On Windows, you can get the full title and HWND value from PopMovie.GetMeta()

Features & options

Split audio channels

• Added in v0.1.9
• When this option is enabled, channels from streams are split to produce additional faux streams containing just that channels data. This allows you to place one Audio Source component (and therefore, position, audio mix, volume) for every channel. This works for multiple audio streams.
• For example, splitting a stereo stream produces audio stream 0 (the original), 1 (Left) and 2 (Right).
• A mono source would produce 0 (the orignal) and 1 (a duplicate of the original as there is only one channel)
• Two stereo sources would produce 0 (original of stream 0), 1 (original of stream 1), 2 (Stream0 Left), 3 (stream0 right), 4(Stream 1 Left) and 5 (stream1 right)

Problems and solutions

In many situations enabling debug logging with PopMovie.EnableDebugLog will reveal problems, or hints as to any unexpected behaviour. Please check this first!

It may have unintelligible information though, so check the common problems below, or... submit an issue to our GitHub issues page (or check if it's a known problem)

You can also send us an email directly. You may have a file format or weird movie encoding that we haven't come across yet. If nothing below solves your problem, let us know and we can fix it, and update this documentation.

Any relevant debug output will be extremely useful.

• editor.log & console output
• adb logcat -s "Pop" output for android
• OS and Unity crash dumps
• crash and console output from Xcode or devices on iOS & OS X.

My texture is a big gradient colour

• This usually indicates a runtime error. Internal shaders may not compile on your platform, or there was a problem decoding or copying the texture, turn on debug logging and you should see a message. This is quite rare now, so please email us if you cannot fix the problem!

An exception is thrown when I create my PopMovie class/when PopMovieSimple starts

• There was an error opening your file, or creating a decoder. Check the exception's .message as to what the problem is. Often the message will have OS specific errors, if these don't make sense, email us and we will try to make the errors more clear.
• The most common cause of this is the wrong filename! Double check your spelling (remember, all files on platforms other than windows are case sensitive)
• Streaming assets can be a special case for android. If your files are going to be in an OBB or APK, try using apk:yourfile.mp4.
• see other filename prefixes in the PopMovie class for special handling.

My build crashes on startup or: how I learned to love DllNotFoundException

• On OS X this is a known issue when building a 32 bit (x86) app. Although PopMovie is built as a universal binary, it's not working. You should really be building a 64bit application anyway! We understand some other restrictions could be in place though (other plugins which HAVE to be 32 bit), let us know if this is the case and we can fix this as a priority
• Windows is also currently 64 bit only, but this will be less trouble to correct, same as above, contact us if this is a priority for you. This should yield DllNotFoundException. If we have linked PopMovie with a 32 bit Dll, or one missing from your system you may also get this error when building 64 bit, we want to fix this!
• Android is currently only built for Armv7. If you have an x86 device, let us know and we can work with you to get it working.
• The Android based Epsom BT moverio is a known Armv7 device that mysteriously cannot find our library at bootup.

My texture is quite visible, but the colours are all messed up or everything is misaligned

• This suggests we are not merging the raw decoded image format correctly. A few options may fix, or help debug this by toggling the following options, turn off MergeYuv, use Force Non-planar output, turn off Use Hardware decoder, turn off Use pixel transform. Let us know if any of these fix, or don't fix your problem and we can look into it.

I cannot hear any audio

• OnAudioFilterRead in unity 5.0 on OS X in-editor sometimes doesn't output any sound, even though data is there. Some things restore it like Debug.log(AudioData[0]) or reloading scripts. Newer versions of unity don't seem to have this issue

Audio doesn't sound correct

• As of 0.1.7 this should no longer be an issue on any platform. Please contact us or report a bug if this is the case!
• Previous answer: If the source sample rate or channel count is different from the project's audio settings, the sound won't be remuxed and will sound slow, fast or echo'y. (some platforms try to do this automatically in the hardware AAC/MP3/etc decoder) Enable debug logging to confirm the mix-match. To fix, change the your projects audio settings or re-encode the video. (Future versions will remix the audio at runtime, but the quality may not be as good)

iOS Fails to compile with undefined symbols _VTDecompressionSession...

• Although the UnityPackage is setup so that when you build the ios xcode project, it should add the VideoToolbox.framework, sometimes it doesn't.
• If you get linker errors similar to the following, then under your project's target, under Build Phases, Link Binary with Libraries, click [+] and find VideoToolbox.framework and add it. This should exist from iOS sdk 7.0 onwards.
  • "_kVTDecompressionPropertyKey_RealTime", referenced from:
  • "_VTDecompressionSessionCreate", referenced from:
  • "_VTDecompressionSessionCanAcceptFormatDescription", referenced from:
  • "_VTDecompressionSessionDecodeFrame", referenced from:
  • "_VTDecompressionSessionInvalidate", referenced from:

Gifs are not animated

• The current implementation of .gif handling only extracts the first frame of gifs. There is a new .gif decoder which essentially works, but is still slow with very large sizes, and still needs work to align frames, use alpha-compression, and generally needs moving to GPU.
• This may still work for your case though. For the filename, use
  • experimental:yourfile.gif This currently limits you to only file access. If you require this to be accessible through HTTP or another protocol (eg. sdcard: apk:) then let me know and I can make this more public.

CodeSigning on iOS fails

• When archiving an ios project (for ad-hoc or store builds), if you get the vague xcode error; An error occurred during export; codesign failed you may see in Summary that PopMovieTextureOsx.bundle is in the list of Binary and Entitlements. If this is the case, simply remove (or disable) the OSX PopMovieTextureOsx.bundle from your xcode project. Often unity will automatically lump this in with the iOS projects it generates.

My Vive camera (MMP) isn't found

• By default, this device is now disabled. Enable it in SteamVR, Settings, Camera and it should then be availible to PopMovie. The device name is device:MMP

My problem isn't listed!

• send us an email to help@popmovie.xyz, or submit an issue to the github issue tracker.

Additional thanks

• @JonathonForder & @Dave Johnson for art and support
• Benji for the majority of the work on the new Demo_Movie player example