When I follow the tutorial at Play a Video File | Unreal Engine Documentation in UE4.15, The editor keeps crashing when I play video in the editor, play the level with media playing, or pretty much whenever I touch the video textured plane (scale, rotate, move). UE14.5 just chokes and dies.
I changed to UE 4.14.3, and the media framework now works without crashing. I guess media player is not ready for prime time in 4.15. MP4’s still mostly don’t work. I converted my mp4’s to wmv, and they play quite well in 4.14.3.
I still see the problem with codecs others have reported. Regardless of the UE4 version, not much will play with this framework, even with the numerous codecs loaded on my system - UE4 only plays a few formats, keep in mind that mp4 is just a wrapper for streams encoded in various formats. YMMV with mp4 on this framework - don’t expect it to work because the extension is mp4, its what’s inside that counts. I am sticking with wmv for now - it always seems to work.
So I attempted to reproduce your crash using a number of various playback methods and was not getting a crash. I also went into our database and took a look at the crashes you have been reporting and commenting about the Media Player. I created a template test project and posted it on the forums which you are free to download to test the media framework playback.
I just tested it in 4.15 and none of the functionality causes it to crash on my end, but perhaps you are doing something different. I noticed you were working in VR as well, and looking at the logs points to:
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat'
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file for asset '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat' while loading ../../../../../Jim/Documents/Unreal Projects/VR_Vive_controller/Content/addmedia.umap.
LoadErrors:Error: Error /Game/addmedia : Can't find file for asset. /Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat'
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file for asset '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat' while loading ../../../../../Jim/Documents/Unreal Projects/VR_Vive_controller/Content/addmedia.umap.
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat'
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file for asset '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat' while loading NULL.
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat'
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file for asset '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat' while loading NULL.
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat'
LoadErrors: Info Failed to load /Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat.Player_Video_Mat Referenced by Shape_Plane_2
LogLinker:Warning: Can't find file for asset '/Game/Movies/Player_Video_Mat' while loading NULL.
These warnings mean the framework is looking for your referenced media player material, but it is returning NULL. This usually means you have an empty variable reference so be sure you all your variables you are using have the appropriate reference.
Let me know if you are able to provide me with steps to reproduce the crash on my end, or if you have further questions.
In case of crashes, please always provide the log file, so we can see the callstack. Otherwise it’s impossible to say what’s going on.
That being said, there is one known issue with media players crashing in 4.15. For reference, it was fixed in CL# 3302510, which missed the deadline for the 4.15 release, so it will be in the upcoming 4.15 Hotfix. If you’re blocked by this problem, and if you’re able to compile the Engine from source code, you can apply this GitHub commit. That will fix the crash.
I ran your tutorial code with UE4.15, and it seems stable so far. I probably hosed something in the project by rearranging folders, deleting stuff, etc…
There is still one issue, however. The mp4 movie you supplied won’t run on my system. I converted it to .wmv, and it plays fine. I can open your tutorial MP4 with windows media player on my system, so I presume the correct codecs are present. Its puzzling that the UE4 media framework is not able to use the codec. The common thread I am seeing with mp4’s that won’t play on my system is that the audio is encoded with HEACC. Wmv transcoding is a workaround I can live with for awhile though.