Video Plays in Engine/Profile Build but Shows Black Screen in Release Build

@REDACTEDUSER

Thank you for taking the time to track down this problem and answer this question. I just tried this on the 1.13 build for Lumberyard and it worked! Hopefully this saves everyone else a lot of hassle.

@REDACTEDUSER

Is this issue remaining in 1.27.1.0? I heard this caused by ffmpeg can not access to inside pak, but Lumberyard passing the video file path to ffmpeg even its in the pak.

Anyway, My situation is similar to this topic, I need to deliver the release build to my customer with video playback in the 3D and I want to encript the video in the pak file instead of regular file for contents protection purpose. But I get black screen on release build.

Any suggestions?

Hi @REDACTEDUSER

AZ::u64 fileSize;
if (!AZ::IO::FileIOBase::GetInstance()->Size(filename, fileSize))
{
    m_LastError.Format("Failed to retrieve file size for '%s'", filename);
    return false;
}

char *buffer = new char[fileSize];
AZ::IO::FileIOStream stream(filename, AZ::IO::OpenMode::ModeRead);
if (stream.Read(fileSize, buffer) != fileSize)
{
    m_LastError.Format("Failed to read %u bytes from file '%s'", fileSize, filename);
    return false;
}
... use the buffer for video playback ...

Here's an example which shows how to use libav to read from memory: https://riptutorial.com/ffmpeg/example/30955/reading-from-memory

Currently the Decoder loads the file using avformat_open_input given the filename path https://github.com/aws/lumberyard/blob/master/dev/Gems/VideoPlayback/Code/Source/Decoder.cpp#L70

I hope this helps, if you're successful , it'd make a nice pull request :slight_smile:

Thank you for pointing me to information, I will take a look and try to implement it. If it will go well then I will send a pull request.

Basically, this approach seems working, with additional issues.

I could load the AVI in the pak with release client, but failed to load MP4. It requires more research for ffmpeg codec handlings, but AVI is enough for us at this moment.

Additionally, LoadVideo function is called at the component Activate timing, that results memory issue on our target platform, so I need to modify VideoPlaybackGameComponent to implement the delay video load eventually.

Thank you.