DirectVideo Android is a replacement for the built in Unreal media player, optimized for performance. By directly rendering video to Unreal textures using Vulkan, it enables playback of high resolution and 360 degree video content without frame drops. It is possible to play multiple high resolution videos (e.g. on Quest 3, I can play 8 2K videos).

The performance gains are sometimes ridiculous - for example on both Meta Quest 3 and a mid-range phone (Oppo Find X3 Neo 5G with Snapdragon 865), I can play 7680x3840x30fps video while maintaining full engine frame rate (72fps on Quest and 60fps on phone). Using the built in player, the game fps drops to under 14 fps and the entire game stutters; it is just not possible to play high resolution video using Unreal's default player.

This is pretty much a drop-in replacement - just add the plugin, then make sure your media sources are set to use DirectVideo as the player (or just disable the Unreal default Android Media Player plugin).

Right now only local content is supported, either from assets or local storage. It might work with streaming video, but it is untested right now.

This is priced at $99.99 as an introductory special. Similar plugins for Unity cost $200 plus, and as far as I am aware this is the only plugin for Unreal.

Updates:

V1.1 - Support for encrypted video files embedded in .pak file.

V1.2 - Fixes to multiple video loading.

V1.3 - R10G10B10 format support for better colour rendering.

V1.4.1 - Fixes for videos without sound, more accurate looping, and rate setting for videos without sound.

V1.5 - Faster start / seeking / looping, support for pure audio file playback (without video), bugfixes.

V1.6 - Improved color space rendering to make video brightness consistent with Android default player.

V1.7 - Smoother seeking

V1.83 - Improved performance on Meta Quest 2, support for clear background when closed.

V1.84 - Fixed non-looped playback

V1.85 - Colour rendering altered to be more consistent with Unreal default mediaplayer.

V2.01 - Fixed black-screens on some devices. Added DirectVideoMeshRenderer

V2.05 - Made it output end of video events etc. consistently with the built in media player.

V3.01 - Major update:

• Support for multi-track video files.

• Fixed crash on Pico headsets.

• Audio now runs through the standard mediaplayer path, which means you can add a MediaAudio object if you want more control over it in the mixer etc.

More reliable handling of headset removal / putting back on

V3.02 - Support for UE5.2

V3.06 - Support for UE5.6 (beta). Version checking of implementation library. Fixes to weird looping if video has negative timestamps and intermittent crash in development mode with vulkan validation layer enabled.

v3.10 - Fixes for timing bugs in UE5.5 and 5.6. Smoother looping. Workaround for weird vulkan bug on some Snapdragon chipsets / driver version.

v3.11 - Better latency correction for audio processing.

v3.12 - Improved support for multiple video playback, and more efficient culling of direct mesh rendering when offscreen.

v4.0 - Support for fallback videos in the case that the device can't play high enough resolution. Settings for logging etc. editable in Project Settings.

v4.1 - Seeking and track fixes from fuzz testing.

v4.1.1 - Support for disabling fallback by giving empty fallback pattern

v4.2.0 - Time stretching support to allow rate changes on videos which have audio. Note, because this adds slight latency and could potentially use slightly more CPU, this must be enabled for your project in Project settings / Plugins / Direct Video Android.

v4.2.1 - Fix to intermittent crash on Pico devices