Hi developers, I am new to hololens and unity. I want to run 3D videos (obtained in Dicom format) on my hololens device. I will appreciate if someone can help me in :
Hi!
In order to bring video files into Unity, they must first be converted into a format that the editor can handle. These formats will vary depending on your editor’s platform and from there, if needed, the editor will convert the file into a format supported by the target system. Ideally, you will produce these video files using the H.264 or VP8 codecs, as these are the ones supported almost everywhere. We have a bias towards H.264 as it is often supported in hardware on many platforms. In terms of filename extension, this translates roughly to .mp4 or .mov for H.264 and .webm for VP8.
So for converting the Dicom files into one of the accepted formats, you’ll have to experiment a bit. I see online there may be tools to do this, or you can export into an AVI from a Dicom viewer. AVI files should work on Windows as it’s part of the natively supported video formats on this platform. If not, then another round of conversion using a more general tool (such as ffmpeg) would bridge the gap. But whatever you do: try to find a path that minimizes the number of conversions as each operation will degrade your source a bit.
Once you have a video format that Unity understands, you can just drag and drop it into Unity’s Assets folder so it can be ingested as an asset. From there, drag-and-dropping the resulting asset into your scene (any empty spot in the hierarchy or viewer will do) will create a VideoPlayer component into the game object. Hitting Play in the editor will start playing the movie file.
At this point, you can start experimenting with this video by building this “game” for HoloLens and see if the video plays correctly. You can report back here with results from your experimentation; we’ll be able to guide you if anything doesn’t go as expected.
Hope this helps!
Dominique
A/V developer at Unity.