Reference Player Tool

The Locodrome Reference Player Tool is an Unreal Editor Utility Widget that makes it a little easier to get and use reference video in your project.

It displays an image sequence in a separate widget window, which you can dock anywhere in your layout and is synced to the Sequencer - so as you scrub back and forth, it keeps them synchronized. You can switch between different reference videos, and there is a text filter to target available media files in case you have a lot in your project.

Since the video might not start exactly where you want it to, you can also Unsync the player from the Sequencer, scrub the slider to where you want it to start and then hit Sync to reconnect them. The widget will remember your sync point for a particular combination of image sequence and level sequence, and will be setup correctly the next time you open Unreal.

I have a few more features (retiming the reference video, for example) - but if you have ideas for features you’d like to see, do let me know!

Here's a short video showing how it works:

NOTE: This widget only works with Unreal 5.4 or newer, and only accepts Image Sequences - not video media sources - Unreal is much more performant with Image Sequences, and uncompressed EXRs work best. I convert all videos with the free command line utility FFMPEG.