Slight delay when webm videos play, why?

[tapanojum]

Hi, I'm having issues with loading videos into my game. The transition from image to video is not instant. There's about a half-second delay where the player sees a transparent background before the video starts. Is there some sort of optimization I need to do? I thought this was normal until I played other Ren'py games where the video playback was instant.

I convert all videos to webm and even the small ones under 1mb in size do this. Any ideas?

Thanks

[isobellesophia]

You might be adding alot of transitions before playing the video or something like that?
Showing the code will help.

[rames44]

Movies have a start image property - if you set that to an image that matches the first frame of your video, that’ll display for a fraction of a second, then merge seamlessly into your video.

That’s the workaround. The underlying reason is that it takes Ren’py a few frames to get its video pipeline going.

[Imperf3kt]

Alternatively, display a black image immediately before the video.
show black should work (black is already defined within renpy internals)

Naturally this won't work if you're trying to blend a scene into a movie.

[tapanojum]

I figured out my issue. I've been using the following syntax for all my video animations this entire time.

Code: Select all

image anim1 = Movie(play="/animation/anim1.webm", loop = True ) 

I've now begun using the following syntax.

Code: Select all

$ renpy.movie_cutscene("/animation/anim_1.webm", loops = -1)

Now there is no delay before the start of the video.

Edit: Although I've spoken to some other Ren'Py users and they still use the Movie(play=) method without any issues.

I don't have any transitions or really any reason for there to be a delay using that first method. I'm thoroughly confused.

Edit 2: I was using

Code: Select all

scene anim1

instead of

Code: Select all

show anim1

Calling the video with show removes any delay in the beginning.

[Imperf3kt]

The scene command uses a transform, Fade. (or Dissolve, I cannot remember which)
This may be why.

[tapanojum]

The scene command uses a transform, Fade. (or Dissolve, I cannot remember which)
This may be why.

Hmm, that's interesting. Whatever transform is being used, it's not actually transforming from the previous scene. It just showed a checkered empty background for half a second before the video starts instantly.

[Imperf3kt]

That's what I meant.
If you had used an image, it would have taken 0.5 seconds to fade to the image. But opacity cannot be controlled on videos so you get half a second of completely invisible followed by completely visible.

[tapanojum]

Sorry, I'm still a bit confused. I've used scene for all my images or videos this entire time. There is no visible transformation between the images, certainly not the 0.5 seconds.

[Imperf3kt]

I'm not currently at a computer where I could copy code to show you from, but the old wiki states that the scene command uses the transition "dissolve"
https://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/re ... enpy.scene

The documentation does not reflect this.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/displayi ... -statement

[rames44]

To the best of my knowledge, if you don’t put an explicit transition in, “scene” does not (or doesn’t any more) include a “dissolve” transition.

[Imperf3kt]

Was doing something completely unrelated and found the section of code I was referring to.

This is found in options.rpy around line 107 (freshly made options.rpy with an up to date renpy version)

Code: Select all

define config.window_show_transition = Dissolve(.2)
define config.window_hide_transition = Dissolve(.2)

the "scene" command makes the window hide and show, so this transform is applied to it.

You can confirm it is there by defining an image named "white"

Code: Select all

image white = "#fff"

and then adding this to your script (assuming your textbox is black)

Code: Select all

    scene white
    pause
    scene white

You can make it more apparent by lengthening the default config.window_show_transition and config.window_hide_transition
Try 1 second.

[rayminator]

you can try it this way

Code: Select all

image anim1 = Movie(channel="anim1", play="video/anim1.webm", start_image="Your_Image", image="Your_Image")

scene anim1

or

show anim1