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Supported media formats

Introduction

Pixotope uses the Unreal Engine media framework for file-based video input.

Please refer to the Unreal documentation's section on best practices for how to set up file and streaming based playback of video: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/WorkingWithMedia/IntegratingMedia/MediaFramework/HowTo/

For rendering and output to file based video, Unreal now supports professional codecs such as Apple ProRes and Avid DNx. Please refer to the UE4 documentation to learn how to best output to these formats: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/WorkingWithMedia/IntegratingMedia/MediaFramework/HowTo/ExportProMedia/

Recommended file based video format for playback

Recommended Codec

Recommended Container

HAP

.mov

H.264

.mp4

HAP Codecs for playback

Pixotope supports the playback of video files encoded using the HAP codec.

Please refer to UE4 documentation on setting up playback of HAP encoded videos: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/MediaFramework/TechReference/index.html#hapcodecplaybacksupport

HAP is a set of video codecs that perform decompression using a computer's graphics hardware, substantially reducing the CPU usage necessary to play video. It has become the standard for high-performance, high-resolution movie playback on media servers, for live video performance and event visuals. It includes support for alpha channels.

There are four different flavors of HAP:

  • HAP has the lowest data rate and reasonable image quality

  • HAP Alpha has the same image quality as HAP and supports an alpha channel

  • HAP Q has improved image quality, at the expense of larger file sizes

  • HAP Q Alpha has improved image quality and an alpha channel, at the expense of larger file sizes

Learn more about using HAP here: https://hap.video/using-hap

Using FFmpeg to encode HAP video

For HAP movies use the following command:
CODE
ffmpeg -i yourSourceFile.mov -c:v hap outputName.mov
For HAP Alpha movies use the following command:
CODE
ffmpeg -i yourSourceFile.mov -c:v hap -format hap_alpha outputName.mov
For HAP Q movies use the following command:
CODE
ffmpeg -i yourSourceFile.mov -c:v hap -format hap_q outputName.mov

Encoding a set of images to HAP using FFmpeg

Export to HAP directly from a .tif sequence with alpha using FFmpeg:

CODE
ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2 -s 1920x1080 -i test%02d.tif -vcodec hap -format hap_alpha -pix_fmt rgba test.mov
  • -i is where you set the pattern for the image sequence naming (where "%02d" means that zeros will be padded until the length of the string is 2, i.e. 01…20…30… and so on. If no padding is needed, use pic%d.png or %d.png or similar)

  • -r is the frame rate (fps)

  • -s is the resolution

  • and the output filename is "test.mov"

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