Known issues and limitations

This page lists some known issues and limitations that you might experience with the Recorder. It also gives basic instructions to help you work around them.

Recorder doesn't work when running the Editor in batch mode

Limitation: When you launch the Unity Editor from the command line with the -batchmode argument, the graphics pipeline is not initialized. In that context, the Recorder cannot capture frames properly and the recording never starts.

Recording slowdown with concurrent Movie Recorders

Limitation: The Unity Editor playback process might substantially slow down if you perform concurrent recordings with multiple Movie Recorders, particularly with large image resolutions (full HD or higher).

Workaround: The recommended use case is to limit yourself to one Movie recording at a time. Ensure that you have only one active Movie Recorder in the Recorder window and no Movie Recorder Clips in Timeline, or vice-versa. If you need to keep concurrent recordings for some reason, you can still set up lower resolutions or try different encoders.

Targeted Camera recording is not available with URP 2D Renderer

Limitation: Recorder cannot capture images from a Targeted Camera in URP 2D projects. A capture pass that Recorder requires is missing in the renderer.

Workaround: As an alternative, you can capture from the Game View or from a Render Texture Asset.

ActiveCamera recording not available with SRPs

Limitation: The use of a Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) in your project prevents you from setting ActiveCamera as the source of the recording in the Movie Recorder and the Image Sequence Recorder. This render pipeline limitation applies to all SRPs including Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Universal Render Pipeline (URP). For the same reason, the AOV Recorder, which requires HDRP, doesn't include the ActiveCamera option by design.

Workaround: You can use a Tagged Camera for the recording. In your project, add a Tag to the camera you want to record through. Then, in the Recorder Settings, select TaggedCamera and specify your camera's Tag.

Audio recording limited support

Limitation: The Recorder currently supports only the recording of samples from the Unity built-in audio engine. As such, it cannot record audio from third-party audio engines such as FMOD Studio or Wwise.

Workaround: For a movie, you can record the third-party audio output in WAV format through another application, reimport this recorded file into the Unity Timeline, and then use the Recorder to create the final movie with audio. Alternatively, you can use any video editing software to recompose audio and video.

Limitation: Only Mono or Stereo audio recording is supported. If the project uses more than two audio channels, Recorder Clips that include audio are skipped during Play mode, and, in the Recorder window, Recorders that include audio cannot be started.

Workaround: In Project Settings > Audio > Default Speaker Mode, select Mono or Stereo depending on what the encoder specified for the recording supports.

ProRes encoding not supported on Windows Arm64.

Limitation: The Movie Recorder doesn't support ProRes QuickTime encoding on Windows Arm64.

MP4 and ProRes encoding not supported on Linux

Limitation: The Movie Recorder doesn't support H.264 MP4 and ProRes QuickTime encoding on Linux.

Limited support of AA/TAA in AOVs

Limitation: The Beauty AOV is the only AOV that you can currently record with Anti-Aliasing (AA) / Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) enabled on your recording camera.

Color artifacts in AOV recordings when TAA is enabled

Known issue: If you record multiple AOVs while the recording camera has Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) enabled, the recorded outputs might contain unexpected color artifacts. For example, some areas of a Beauty pass might include artificial colors coming from the data recorded for a Normal pass.

Workaround: If you need to record a Beauty pass with TAA enabled on your recording camera, you should record it through its own recording session, separately from any other AOVs.

Recording discontinuous animations results in continuous animation curve

Limitation: When you use a single recorder to record an animation sequence that includes discontinuities (for example, camera cuts), the Recorder interpolates and smoothens all discontinuities in the resulting animation curve, as it is by design in Unity. However, this process alters the expected discontinuities in the recorded animation.

Workaround: To keep discontinuities while recording animations, you need to perform several recordings between the cuts. For example, you could set up several Recorder Clips in Timeline, relative to the source animations you need to record.

UNC paths not supported as output locations

Limitation: The Recorder output file path field doesn't support Universal Naming Convention (UNC) strings for targeting shared network folders.

Workaround: To target a shared network folder as the output location, specify the path to a drive you previously mapped to the network folder you're targeting.

Building a project with Recorder tracks generates errors

Known issue: When you build a project that includes Recorder tracks in Timeline, Unity throws an error in the Console. Recorder tracks are not supported in standalone builds, but Unity can't disable them at build time.

Workaround: Before building a project, make sure to delete or disable any Recorder tracks present in Timeline.

Recorder does not capture any custom cursors

Known issue: When you record a video where you use a custom cursor set with Cursor.SetCursor, the cursor doesn't appear in the recordings.

Workaround: To make sure that the Recorder captures your custom cursor, you have to:

Simulator view recording not supported

Limitation: The Movie Recorder and Image Sequence Recorder can only record the Unity Editor output rendering view in its Game state, and not in its Simulator state. If the Simulator view is selected when you start recording the Game View, the source window automatically switches to Game view.

360 View recording issues and limitations

The Recorder doesn't fully support 360 View recording. Here is a list of known issues you might encounter:

  • If you record a 360 View in projects that use the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), the rendered cube map might have artefacts that make its boundaries visible. One way to work around this issue would be to disable post-process effects such as Shadows, Bloom, or Volumetric Fogs.

  • The Recorder doesn't support stereoscopic recording in projects that use any Scriptable Render Pipelines (SRPs). The Stereo Separation property has no effect on the recorded views, which makes the rendering identical for both eyes.

Overexposed frames when accumulating path tracing

Known issue: If a scene contains an Exposure post-process in an automatic mode, during accumulation the exposure is re-evaluated on every sub-frame. If Adaptation is set to Progressive, and path tracing is enabled, the added time to change the exposure can result in images that are incorrect (too bright/overexposed) because the first sub-frames are noisy.

Workaround:

  1. Depending on where Exposure is set, go to the HDRP Global Settings window or the Volume component override in you scene.
  2. Under Volume Profiles (or Volume), expand Exposure.
  3. Under Adaptation, set Mode to Fixed.

Path-tracing limitations in HDRP apply to Recorder Accumulation

Limitations to path tracing in HDRP also apply to path tracing in Accumulation. See Path tracing limitations.

Poor image quality if motion blur is applied in HDRP and Recorder Accumulation

Limitation: The HDRP motion-blur post-process is applied on the final image, so it is applied on top of accumulated motion blur. This creates undesirable results.

Workaround: Disable motion blur in HDRP before recording motion blur using Accumulation.

Path-tracing quality problems when capturing motion blur

Limitation: Motion-blur accumulation settings can negatively affect path-tracing accumulation. For example, a short Shutter Interval reduces the number of path-tracing samples accumulated.

Workaround: Disable path-tracing overrides on volumes in your scene.

Poor image quality if anti-aliasing applied in HDRP and Recorder Accumulation

Limitation: Recording accumulation while anti-aliasing is enabled in HDRP may have unintended effects on image quality.

Workaround: Disable anti-aliasing in HDRP before recording with Accumulation. Enable Anti-aliasing in Accumulation instead.

Progress bar is visible on frames when Accumulation is enabled

Known issue: The Accumulation progress bar is sometimes visible at the bottom of a frame.

Workaround: Leave the Game View visible at all times for the whole duration of the recording.

Jagged edges when rendering alpha with DLSS enabled

Known issue: Nvidia Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) does not support alpha channels. Thus, if you enable DLSS in HDRP Project Settings and you record a movie or image sequence through a camera set up for transparent background rendering, you might get jagged edges at the transparent area in the output images.

Workaround for upscaling: To upscale an image with a transparent background, use Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) Upscale.

Workaround for anti-aliasing: To apply anti-aliasing on an image with a transparent background, several options are available depending on your context and needs:

  • Disable Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) in your Project Settings and set up your Recorder for accumulation with Anti-aliasing enabled, or
  • Enable Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA) in your Project Settings, or
  • Render at a higher resolution and use a shader to downsample with a filter (Bicubic, Lanczos, etc).

Different Cameras with different Display targets lead to black output

Known issue: Certain camera outputs are black when cameras have different TargetDisplays. This occurs when you set up recorders with Targeted Camera as the Input Source. The Game view triggers the render loop of all cameras that target the same Display number. If no Game view is configured for a specific Display number that is set on a Camera, it does not render.

Workaround: Open another Game view and set it to the Display number that you need to capture.

Impossible to capture multiple Game views at the same time

Known issue: Recorder does not handle a configuration with mutiple Game views as Input Source. Recorder assumes that there is only one Game view and gets the one that has the focus at the moment the Editor enters the Play Mode.

Workaround: Set the Input Source to Targeted Camera or Render Texture Asset.