Movie — Ren'Py Documentation

# Movie

Ren'Py is capable of using libav (included) to play movies using the video codecs:

- VP9
- VP8
- Theora
- MPEG 4 part 2 (including Xvid and DivX)
- MPEG 2
- MPEG 1

and the following audio codecs:

- OPUS
- Vorbis
- MP3
- MP2
- PCM

inside the following container formats:

- WebM
- Matroska
- Ogg
- Avi
- Various kinds of MPEG stream.

(Note that using some of these formats may require patent licenses. When in doubt, and especially for commercial games, we recommend using VP9, VP8, or Theora, Opus or Vorbis, and WebM, Matroska, or Ogg.)

Movies can be displayed fullscreen, or in a displayable. Fullscreen movies are the more efficient.

## Fullscreen Movies

The easiest and most efficient way to display a movie fullscreen is to use the renpypy.movie_cutscene function. This function displays the movie fullscreen until it either ends, or the player clicks to dismiss it.

    $ renpy.movie_cutscene("On_Your_Mark.webm")

On mobile platforms, such as Android and iOS, hardware video decoding is used when `config.hw_video` is true, the default. This is generally much faster, but the list of supported movie formats depends on the platform.

## Movie Displayables and Movie Sprites

The Movie displayable can be used to display a movie anywhere Ren'Py can show a displayable. For example, a movie can be displayed as the background of a menu screen, or as a background.

The Movie displayable can also be used to define a movie sprite, which is a sprite that is backed by two movies. The primary movie provides the color of the sprite. A second movie, the mask movie, provides the alpha channel, with white being full opacity and black being full transparency.

Movies played by the Movie displayable loop automatically.

There are three very important parameters to the Movie displayable, two of which should always be provided.

channel

  A string giving the name of the channel that the movie will be played on.

  This must always be provided, and should never not be left at the default of "movie", and should not be the name of an audio channel. Names should be chosen such that only one Movie will be displaying on a given channel at the same time. Channels provided will be automatically registered using `renpy.music.register_channel()`, if not already registered.

play

  A string giving the name of a movie file to play.

  This should always be provided.

mask
  A string giving the name of a movie file to use as an alpha mask.

Here's an example of defining a movie sprite:

    image eileen movie = Movie(channel="eileen", play="eileen_movie.webm", mask="eileen_mask.webm")

The movie sprite can be shown using the show statement, which automatically starts the movie playing. It will be automatically stopped when the displayable is hidden.

    show eileen movie

    e "I'm feeling quite animated today."

    hide eileen

    e "But there's no point on wasting energy when I'm not around."

A Movie displayable can also be used as part of a screen, provided it is created during the init phase (for example, as part of an image statement.)

    image main_menu = Movie(channel="main_menu", play="main_menu.ogv")

    screen main_menu:
        add "main_menu"
        textbutton "Start" action Start() xalign 0.5 yalign 0.5

Multiple movie displayables or sprites can be displayed on the screen at once, subject to system performance, and provided all share the same framerate. The behavior of Ren'Py when displaying movies with different framerates is undefined, but will likely include a significant amount of frame drop.

## Python Functions

`renpy.` `movie_cutscene`(filename, delay=None, loops=0, stop_music=True)

  This displays an MPEG-1 cutscene for the specified number of seconds. The user can click to interrupt the cutscene. Overlays and Underlays are disabled for the duration of the cutscene.

  filename
    The name of a file containing an MPEG-1 movie.
  delay
    The number of seconds to wait before ending the cutscene. Normally the length of the movie, in seconds. If None, then the delay is computed from the number of loops (that is, loops + 1) * the length of the movie. If -1, we wait until the user clicks.
  loops
    The number of extra loops to show, -1 to loop forever.

  Returns True if the movie was terminated by the user, or False if the given delay elapsed uninterrupted.

`Movie`(fps=24, size=None, channel='movie', play=None, mask=None, mask_channel=None, image=None, **properties)

  This is a displayable that shows the current movie.

  fps
    The framerate that the movie should be shown at. (This is currently ignored, but the parameter is kept for backwards compatibility. The framerate is auto-detected.)
  size
    This should be specified as either a tuple giving the width and height of the movie, or None to automatically adjust to the size of the playing movie. (If None, the displayable will be (0, 0) when the movie is not playing.)
  channel
    The audio channel associated with this movie. When a movie file is played on that channel, it wil be displayed in this Movie displayable.
  play
    If given, this should be the path to a movie file. The movie file will be automatically played on channel when the Movie is shown, and automatically stopped when the movie is hidden.
  mask
    If given, this should be the path to a movie file that is used as the alpha channel of this displayable. The movie file will be automatically played on movie_channel when the Movie is shown, and automatically stopped when the movie is hidden.
  mask_channel
    The channel the alpha mask video is played on. If not given, defaults to channel`_mask. (For example, if `channel is "sprite", mask_channel defaults to "sprite_mask".)
  image
    An image that is displayed when play has been given, but the file it refers to does not exist. (For example, this can be used to create a slimmed-down mobile version that does not use movie sprites.) Users can also choose to fall back to this image as a preference if video is too taxing for their system.

  This displayable will be transparent when the movie is not playing.