will LÖVE2D allow video in the future?

[smoking bunny]

whilst i know this is not do-able right now, which is a shame as it cuts out cool stuff you could implement into games. but would future development of LÖVE2D see this in the future?
it would be good if we could handle even just 2/3 format types, say .mov, .mp4 and something that similar to how .ogg works for music

im not looking to play a 3 hour video in 1080 or anything, just to be able to handle short clips here and about would be good. whilst you could just make frame images of what you want, or even code it out. the ability to have some simple video playback would be great.

anyhow, just a question to ask.

[slime]

There's a good chance of that, yes.

The trouble is with the video codecs and libraries for decoding them. Some of them have patents associated with them. Some of them are not feasible for use in all platforms LÖVE supports. Some of them have questionable quality or low efficiency when decoding. Most of the libraries have sub-optimal APIs that either don't integrate well with the structure of games / LÖVE or have bugs or important missing features.

If video playback is added, it will likely support only a single format, which might be different on mobile implementations of LÖVE compared to Windows / Mac / Linux.

[smoking bunny]

thats good to know, thanks. it would be good to have something in the end, though do understand the limitations that can be pushed and pulled

there was one codec i was working with in openframeworks for a bit, made by the guys who make VDMX, vidvox
here is the codec, open-source and very nice
https://github.com/vidvox/hap

this may or may not be of interest

[Jasoco]

Maybe .webm? That's supposed to be open sourced and free with no royalties, isn't it?

Though to be honest I'd rather not have bloated game files and just take advantage of making in-game cutscenes. But the option would be nice.

[smoking bunny]

i did make a really quick 9 second, mp4, 1980x1080 scene with some text going from side to side, just to see if it would be quite big. that ended up being only 74kb. so pretty small.

i think it was from playing some super meat boy an other things like that that do have cutscenes, which with meat boys were flash scenes. that i feel that LÖVE2D would feel more 'complete' with video access in. though some of those scenes in meat boy are much longer than 9 seconds. but as you said @jasco, the option would be nice

but all in good time i guess

[josefnpat]

I've seen MJPEG used commercially. It's being used in HDF.

For more information on using video, see this: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=53456&p=130530

[Jasoco]

i did make a really quick 9 second, mp4, 1980x1080 scene with some text going from side to side, just to see if it would be quite big. that ended up being only 74kb. so pretty small.

Just some text? Probably on a single color background that doesn't change? Of course it's only going to be 74kb. Video files reuse parts of the frames that remain the same. The higher the compression the more tolerance they have for choosing which parts to reuse. Of course a single static background with only some text (Which also doesn't change) moving across the screen is only going to be 74kb because that's nothing complicated to store. It's only storing a small section of the background and the text string in its database of "pieces of the video to use as puzzle pieces" so when it's displaying a single frame, 99% of it is going to be that same background piece tiled all over the screen. This is how video compression works. The more different unique parts of a frame there are, the bigger space the frame is going to take in storage. (i.e. the more parts of the frame it needs to stow away to put together later.) If you up the compression, it'll decide to use other parts of other frames that kind of look like what it needs to show and instead just use that part even though it's not from the same frame. And if you keep upping compression, you end up with something that looks really bad compared to the original source because you're now just basically making an entire video from rearranged pieces that had nothing to do with what was originally on screen there.

It's why animation like The Simpsons or Family Guy are a lot easier to compress. A lot of the screen in those shows is solid colors. So it only needs to store a section of the white part of Homer or Peter's shirt once and can use it again on, say, Brian's Prius (Which is white) or a cloud (Which is white) or anything else solid white. But live-action is a lot more complicated because there's a lot of shading and shadows and complex architecture. So videos of live action are going to take up a lot more space if you want them to look presentable.

If you want to actually store video of actual video stuff, then you're going to end up with a much bigger file. Even for 9 seconds.

If all you want to do is display some text sliding across the screen on a static background, you don't need a video file.

And if you are making a game and want to have animated drawn characters, you'll still save a lot of space by just using the comic book panel style and just have each frame a separate image. Or each character a separate image and just mix and match.

Video support in a game engine like Löve is not really necessary. Even in a modern 3D engine it's not necessary. Only lazy game developers like the people who made Max Payne 3 (Which consists of 90% HORRIBLY UNCOMPRESSED VIDEO FILES OF IN-GAME CUTSCENES AND TAKES UP 40GB!) or people from the '90s when video on a computer was new, (The FMV revolution!!! Look at those highly compressed, 16-color, low-framerate, low-resolution video files in Sewer Shark and Night Trap! The future is now!) use video files for cutscenes anymore.

For a game developer, it's a lot more effort just to make the video file when you can much more easily just do it in-game.

[slime]

The video in HDF's menu is pretty rad.

[smoking bunny]

@slime
aye, that menu is nice. tasty even

@jasoco
very true, it was just a single color. so yes it would be small
but i dont think that the majority of users here, if not all, are going to put 40gb of video files for cutscene. unless they are making a game called 'cutscene - the game' [actually thats a good/bad idea for an annoying game ]. im not starting an argument by the way, so please dont take this as one
but i feel [personally] that people who are using LÖVE [or any language and development environment] may want something like this, because maybe they cant do what they want in an in-game way. so that option of video would be good.

whilst i do agree that it is not good that game developers have gone to lengths of using 90% cutscenes. i doubt that the people here, or really people who want to make their own games would do that, because thats why they are making games. if they were not, then they would just carry on playing, sorry, watching COD

anyhow, heres to the future

[davisdude]

I think video would be nice, but should not be a priority, in my opinion.

Also looking at the last post, I just see