Direct Video Android (Beta)

DirectVideo Android is a replacement for the built in Unreal media player, optimized for performance. By directly rendering video to Unreal textures using Vulkan, it enables playback of high resolution and 360 degree video content without frame drops.

The performance gains are sometimes ridiculous - for example on both Meta Quest 3 and a mid-range phone (Oppo Find X3 Neo 5G with Snapdragon 865), I can play 7680x3840x30fps video while maintaining full engine frame rate (72fps on Quest and 60fps on phone). Using the built in player, the game fps drops to under 14 fps and the entire game stutters; it is just not possible to play high resolution video using Unreal's default player.

This is pretty much a drop-in replacement - just add the plugin, then make sure your media sources are set to use AndroidVulkanVideo as the player (or just disable the Unreal default Android Media Player plugin).

Right now only local content is supported, either from assets or local storage. It might work with streaming video, but it is untested right now.

This is priced at $99.99 as a beta special. Similar plugins for Unity cost $200 plus, and as far as I am aware this is the only plugin for Unreal.