IO Error: Trying to load a movie

[seamanq]

Ok. The project, it seems, was broken. Dropping your video in the old project gave the same results -- Ren'py couldn't see it. Creating a new project created a few new problems that I will have to figure out, eventually, but the movies are now showing and can be called in the game. Thanks for all your help. What I have is a 9 sec loop. It seems to be "hanging" between each loop. Is there any way to get rid of that hang? Thanks so much for all your help.

 

[Epadder]

No problem, not quite sure about the hanging.

I only really use that one video file I posted in my current project, everything else is just still images.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Ok. The project, it seems, was broken. Dropping your video in the old project gave the same results -- Ren'py couldn't see it. Creating a new project created a few new problems that I will have to figure out, eventually, but the movies are now showing and can be called in the game. Thanks for all your help. What I have is a 9 sec loop. It seems to be "hanging" between each loop. Is there any way to get rid of that hang? Thanks so much for all your help.

Perhaps the format file causes the hanging problems; are you using your original videos or the converted to webm?

Could be that your using a bitrate too high, you can view the bitrate of the videos with VLC or MediaInfo.

 

[seamanq]

It happens with both. The original and the one converted to webm. From research I have done this seems to be a common problem with Ren'py videos, but I read somewhere that caching was possible, but I can't find that article again. Caching would make the problem less noticeable and maybe make it go away entirely.

 

[Porcus Dev]

It happens with both. The original and the one converted to webm. From research I have done this seems to be a common problem with Ren'py videos, but I read somewhere that caching was possible, but I can't find that article again. Caching would make the problem less noticeable and maybe make it go away entirely.

Strange, mp4 or webm videos with a "normal" bit rate wouldn't have to give you problems.

It would be interesting to check what bitrate videos have (in fact, with the conversion to wepm may not have changed this parameter).

And also, after knowing your problems with the renpy project, it would be nice to check that your hard drive is in good health (you can check with Crystal Disk Info).

 

[seamanq]

Brand new hard drive. Been using it about a month now. Bit rate for the MP4 version is 2411 kbps, at 30.30 FPS.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Brand new hard drive. Been using it about a month now. Bit rate for the MP4 version is 2411 kbps, at 30.30 FPS.

Well, it seems all right, I've looked at one of my videos and it has 3.100 bitrate, and I don't have any problem with its renpy playback (it just hangs a little in its Android version).

 

[seamanq]

I can use the photos app to manually loop the animation and it will be very smooth, but then I have a much larger video, which kind of defeats the purpose. The actual animation is 9 frames, and I just want to loop it, which gives a nice sex scene -- when it's smooth, but not so nice when it hangs. What I may do is maybe make a 1 minute movie in photos then just loop that, then the loops would not be so obvious or frequent. I just hate to bulk up the file, however.

 

[seamanq]

I have a 27 sec version that I compiled in Photos that compresses down to 7 MB and only 'sticks' every 27 seconds, so it is barely noticeable. I would have liked to have done it without including such a large file, but my VN with the video is still coming up at around 155 MB, which is pretty lean.

 

[Porcus Dev]

9 frames it's too little, I always make videos of minimum 10 seconds (even if they are loops).

Perhaps is a "IBP" frames related problem... I have this a bit forgotten, but if you want to upload the video, I can try with my renpy to see if it does the same and know if the problem is related to how video is created.

 

[Rich]

Looking at my files, the first one (movie_wild_ride) is an MPEG-4 video using the isom (isom/iso2/mp41) codec.

The second one (movie1) is an AVI using the IYUV codec.

The third one (movie2) an MPEG-4 using the mp41 (mp41/isom) codec

If you read the very beginning of

You must be registered to see the links

, you'll see that those codecs are not among the ones that Ren'py supports.

You'll probably get your best results using VP8 or VP9, Vorbis and WEBM.

When using a converter tool, watch out for bitrate settings. If the default bitrate (or the bitrate you chose) is too small, the converter will try to compress the heck out of it, and quality will go to hell.

I use ffmpeg to do video conversions, but it's a command line tool and not everybody is comfortable with it. It does, however, allow you to specify the output codecs and desired bitrate.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[79flavors]

... and if you don't fancy using a command line tool...

I can wholeheartedly recommend Handbrake.

You must be registered to see the links

Which is a really good user friendly video conversion tool, with a wide range of inbuilt support for the more common codecs.
H.264 with no audio, using variable framerate (constant quality) to minimize file size... no problem.

I would however highly recommend setting "Encoder Profile" and "Encoder Level" both to Auto on the "Video" tab.
If your video has audio, consider setting the Audio Codec to "Auto Passthru" too.
And if you end up using the VFR / Constant Quality settings.... "20" is good, "25" is good enough. The bigger the number, the lower the quality.

 

[seamanq]

If you read the very beginning of

You must be registered to see the links

, you'll see that those codecs are not among the ones that Ren'py supports.

You'll probably get your best results using VP8 or VP9, Vorbis and WEBM.

When using a converter tool, watch out for bitrate settings. If the default bitrate (or the bitrate you chose) is too small, the converter will try to compress the heck out of it, and quality will go to hell.

I use ffmpeg to do video conversions, but it's a command line tool and not everybody is comfortable with it. It does, however, allow you to specify the output codecs and desired bitrate.

You must be registered to see the links

Noted. We already got around that issue (as you can see in the later posts). The latest version is in WEBM with V9 encoding, as recommended on the Ren'py documentation site. Yes, I downloaded ffmpeg, but I am trying to get the first version of my VN out before the end of the year, and the video was one of the last obstacles. I will have a little more time to learn it after the first release drops. The overall problem was that the first project was "broken" and would not see any videos, regardless of the formatting used. Thanks for that tip on the bitrate. On my machine, when I was trying to do WEBM encoding, it was going to hell, so that must explain it. I will know to look for that in the future.

 

[seamanq]

... and if you don't fancy using a command line tool...

I can wholeheartedly recommend Handbrake.

You must be registered to see the links

Which is a really good user friendly video conversion tool, with a wide range of inbuilt support for the more common codecs.
H.264 with no audio, using variable framerate (constant quality) to minimize file size... no problem.

I would however highly recommend setting "Encoder Profile" and "Encoder Level" both to Auto on the "Video" tab.
If your video has audio, consider setting the Audio Codec to "Auto Passthru" too.
And if you end up using the VFR / Constant Quality settings.... "20" is good, "25" is good enough. The bigger the number, the lower the quality.

I will give Handbrake a try. No audio on these, so audio compression is not an issue.

 

[seamanq]

Ok, after working on the storytelling (and foreplay) for the final scene, it finally dawned on me I am overthinking this thing. Most of the games I have seen generally don't go much more than 30 sec without a moan, comment, or something. So I can use those "punctuations" as breaks, meaning that the loop I assembled in Photos should be sufficient. Thanks for everyone chiming in here, and I will post when I have something to show for this all .