This is an archive of my old blog (2008–2013), kept online because people still use it. XNA has been discontinued; MonoGame is its open-source successor, and the techniques still apply. Comments are closed.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 Video Sample

Here’s a sample on how to use the new support for video files in XNA Game Studio 3.1.

All you have to do is add the video file (wmv) to your Content project, and you’re ready to use it with a few lines of code.

The sample loads a video containing a montage of XNA games, released some while ago. After loading it, you can view it in 4 ways (use spacebar/gamepad A to change):

  • simple
  • full-screen
  • using a post-processing shader (reusing some code from Dark Codex’s tutorials)
  • on a rotating sphere object

Here’s some screenshots:

VideoSample 2009-06-11 21-37-40-68 VideoSample 2009-06-11 21-37-41-48

VideoSample 2009-06-11 21-38-04-88

And here’s the sample: VideoSample.zip

P.S. If a video file you have doesn’t work from the first try, try re-encoding it with Windows Movie Maker.

4 comments on “XNA Game Studio 3.1 Video Sample”

  1. Any word on the recipe needed to create the WMV? I've tried several of my own WMVs and get complaints when compiling the project.

  2. There's some solutions for it in the forums (but they're offline right now). I only encountered problems with 1 video, and then re-encoded it with degault settings in Windows Movie Maker, and it worked. So I'm afraid I don't have any "magic recipe" for the videos :(