VideoController Shows white screen / Video doesn't play

[jmaddox]

I'm trying to setup VamSander's VideoController. When I load the plugin and configure the video directory I just see a white screen. There are no errors in the error log.

I read that the plugin requires the Unity video player. I installed Unity 2018.1.9f2 using the Unity Hub. That didn't seem to help.

I'm pretty new to this. Any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[jmaddox]

Small update here. I've switched to using @FeiFongWong 's plugin VideoControllerUIT as it seems to be the most recent version of a video controller. In the Unity editor I'm able to use the video controller so I don't think I'm missing any dependencies. Now I'm wondering if the problem is with navigating the file system.

I've changed the plugin configuration file ("Custom\Scripts\FeiFongWong.VideoControllerUIT.2\Custom\SubScene\FeiFongWong\VideoPlayerBase\VideoPlayerBase.json" to point to the directory with the video files in it :

"Video Path" : "C:\\Users\\username\\devel\\VaM\\VideoPlayer"

In the error log I see:

!> Attempted to use GetFilesAtPath on a path that is not inside game directory. That is not allowed

I'm confused by this error. The target directory is in the root of my VaM program directory.

 

[FeiFongWong]

Hm, that path doesn't quite look right to me -- the paths the UI config selector generate for me have a structure where everything before the VAM directory uses "/" to delineate directories, and "\\" within the VAM directory, like so:

"Video Path" : "E:/Misc Utilities/RBR/VAM\\VideoPlayer\\"

It's a bit strange to me, but my day job work/general expertise is more in Unix/Mac environments, so I sort of shrugged that off as "Windows is gonna Windows" as long as it worked.

It does occur to me that this makes my sample subscenes and demo scenes significantly less useful now that I'm checking the produced files -- for some reason I could have sworn I had checked and that the package builder had changed that to a relative path like it does with other references, but apparently it doesn't. So, I'll have to play with that and fix it for a future update.

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As for your earlier question about Unity, you shouldn't need to install anything special for it to work. VamSander's original implementation was taking advantage of the fact that VAM exposes access to core Unity facilities in its plugin scripting system. Those facilities are already there, though, included as part of the core of VAM itself.

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But anyway, a few questions to maybe help troubleshoot for your current issue:

What happens when you edit the VideoPlayer atom in the demo scene and use the plugin's configuration script to choose the path manually? Do you get the same white screen result?

If so, what happens if you save your scene, and reload it? Does it load properly then?

What does the path look like in the json files that result from you choosing a path in the config UI and saving?

Is there anything exotic about the files in your directory? From your error it seems more like the issue is more likely a mundane issue of file path definitions, but just in case you might try just putting one or two basic video files (like, simple mp4s ripped from youtube or whatever) in the directory to rule out there being trouble with the video formats or something.

 

[Ludgero]

Getting the same white screen problem with this log:
!> Attempted to use GetFilesAtPath on a path that is not inside game directory. That is not allowed

 

[shadybob56]

I got mine to work. I had to edit the plugin attached to the atom VideoPlayerBase/VideoPlayer, go to the plugin tab and click Open Custom UI and click on Browse to Folder. The first time I did this, I was not able to navigate above the Saves folder under Vam, so that's where I put my VideoPlayer directory. Not even sure that this step is needed for the demo scene, as the UI buttons seem to control where the "channel" folders are located. When I went back to double check this later, I was able to see upto my top level VAM directory, but I decided to just leave it where it is.

Once this is set, you should go to the plugin presets tab and click on Change User Defaults, set to current.

Now, for the example scene to function properly, we still need to edit the atoms for the UI Channel buttons, VideoPlayerChannelControls/UIButton Base Channel, VideoPlayerChannelControls/UIButton Channel 1, and VideoPlayerChannelControls/UIButton Channel 2. For each, go to the Button Trigger tab and click on the settings for Video Path, and modify the default " E:/Misc Utilities/RBR/VAM\VideoPlayer\" that is stored there to the full path for your videos, which still need to be located inside your Vam install somewhere. Once I did that and clicked on a channel button, I had videos playing successfully. I made some screenshots along the way if these instructions aren't detailed enough, just let me know.

Note that I used standard windows style paths with single back slashes, including a backslash at the end of the path.