Playing passthrough videos with ALPHA channel via DLNA

[deleted]

BursVR Yep you gotta move it to the Q2 storage so it works properly. You can find the same topic here https://forum.sexlikereal.com/d/4566-alpha-passthrough-how-does-it-work/

BursVR

Thanks for the confirmation and for the link. That's really unfortunate. This alpha passthrough is such a nice feature, but they ruined it with this bug 🙁

SchnuppiLilac

BursVR Not sure if possible for you but you could also just stream these videos in the app until there is a fix

BursVR

Yeah, I know about the streaming, but I wouldn't download the file if streaming was an option for me 🙂 My internet connection is not that great, which often ruins my experience, and I also have to lower the resolution.

DLNA is a perfect solution for those with bad internet and low free space on their headsets. From my dev point of view, I'm really curious how difficult is to solve this, as the team didn't come up with anything after months of acknowledging it really is the bug inside the app.

Rakly3

This is a technical codec and container related 'issue' (limitation). But it's quite a lot to get in to. It's not something we can easily 'fix' as it's not a bug. We are working on / looking in to workarounds.

Rakly3

BursVR Actually, I have to correct myself.
'alpha channel' threw me off a bit.

An alpha channel and chroma key are two different things. I get what you mean now. But I also can't say with certainty why the chroma key functionality isn't working over DLNA.

mp4, like jpg, don't support alpha channel by default. There is a way to do it, but it's very specific and not widely supported. mkv for example does support alpha channel. - With mp4 it's easier to go with masking. But this requires pre-processing of the video.

Likewise, mp4 does not support spatial sound, mkv does. (Don't confuse with surround sound)

BursVR

The chroma key is working fine over DLNA, tho all the values are initially set to zero. So when I play the video for the first time, I have to match all these values to the ones that are set automatically when streaming the same videos from your servers.

It's the alpha channel type of video that I'm having issues with. I'm having a hunch it's due to the way it's "packed" inside the video frames themselves (around the spherical picture that later gets rendered), instead of being packed as a separate layer and processed individually. That seems to be something that DLNA protocol doesn't like very much. But that's just me and my understanding..

Rakly3

BursVR Ahh yes, that's masking.
Wasn't even aware we had scenes with it publicly available yet.

BursVR tho all the values are initially set to zero.

This is because the video file does not have this data, but when streaming, the app gets these from the SLR server.

Bluesmessiah

BursVR I was thinking the same thing. Tried it on a few different vids as my streaming is at times less reliable than DLNA and it would be nice to have the passthrough versions saved.

BursVR

Bluesmessiah Yeah, I agree. This issue still hasn't been fixed, so for chroma key you once have to set the values, and the next time the app will remember them. But for the videos using alpha channel passthrough, the only "workaround" is to copy the files to your headset and then play them from there. Which is not very convenient as transferring 30-40 GB can take time, and/or you might not have enough free space (especially on 128 GB headset models).

Bluesmessiah

BursVR
In another thread, "SLR_Sandy" stated " Hey, fix for this is coming in next release, you will see the A button when streaming locally." that was 3 weeks ago. I'm assuming she meant DEOVR release.

BursVR

Bluesmessiah Right, DeoVR app. But release/approval times can vary greatly between platforms, especially for the Pico where a tiny change can take a week or even more to be verified by the Pico staff. That's something that would get an instant effect on the Quest platform - I give them that, tho I'm a hardcore Pico fan 🙂

BursVR

The issue is finally fixed! At least on the Pico platform. Thanks to the team behind it..