Lord Tim

I edited my above post as you were replying. Again, I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm trying to make a point. This is NOT a general issue. It's directly tied to codecs and hardware. I'll answer my own questions above: One MP4 was a h.264 30fps, 720p AAC and played fine with no issues on any machine. One MP4 had unsupported codecs. Another MP4 was high bitrate 60fps 4K. Another one was 4K HEVC with 10 bit colour. On the surface, every single one of these files look exactly the same. They are all MP4. 30fps 720p is going to use far less system resources to play than a high bitrate 60fps 4K file. On my main hardware, they both played fine. On slightly older hardware the 4K file had big issues. Even on good hardware the HEVC one stuttered when it started but it played, but on lesser hardware that didn't have direct HEVC decoding, it was giving me barely 3fps and lagging the timeline. How this stuff interacts with your hardware, and knowing what is actually inside these MP4 files is important to narrowing down what is going on, so you can actually do as you said - leave it to the developers. Without that information, they're just guessing. The bottom line is there's no really good reason to withhold any information that people ask for, even if it doesn't seem relevant on the surface. This could mean the difference between living with a broken or incomplete feature or actually taking steps to getting it fixed. But agreed, let's leave it at that.

OK then, tell me why one MP4 I have here will play in CbB when another one will fail to load and won't produce audio? Or on this same machine, one video will play smoothly, but another one will pause for a second or two before it plays? Or on a different machine, one video that plays smoothly on this machine will stutter and cause all kinds of issues? I know the answer. But without giving you any details, can you tell me why that is, and why all of these videos that are all MP4 files work so differently?

The reason both Erik and I are mentioning system is that is could be codec related (likely is) but some formats need particular hardware to accelerate the decoding, or the CPU will do it, which will cause glitches. I'll say again, nobody can fix anything if "it's broken" is the only thing you'll offer. There's far too many variables to say what actually needs fixing. Obviously something does need work, but with no info, it's just a shell game; one that can be solved with showing the media info of the clip and what your system specs are. We're not trying to be argumentative, we're actually trying to help you get to the bottom of the root cause and give actual data to the Devs to look into it. You don't go to the doctor and say "I'm sick" and then refuse to give any information or participate in any tests, and you wouldn't expect any meaningful results if you did that anyway. This is the same thing. Fixing these issues helps *all of us* that work with video in CbB.

Cheers, all - much appreciated! And yeah, there's so much going on in the mix, the leads are purposely lows rolled off to give things more clarity. In the Cakewalk demo mix (which is slightly different to the one I put up on Bandlab in the OP) I used only Cakewalk effects exclusively, and that included any final mastering effects too, of which some are obviously not intended to be used that way, so bass management was a big thing to keep the low end from turning into mud. I used my go-to mastering chain effects in the mix above but I didn't want to change things too much from the demo so there was still a fair relation to it. ?

Hey guys, here's a fun 80s inspired melodic metal song that I did last year: There's a couple of interesting things about this song. First of all, this was made entirely with drum out-takes from demo sessions from our 2015 What Tomorrow Brings EP, cleaned up and a new song written around it. Pro-tip: Just because you CAN do this, doesn't mean you SHOULD do this - that was horrible! HAHA! But the end results were pretty good at least! What's cool also is that I only used bundled Cakewalk effects to mix this, which was a bit of a challenge - we all have our own favourite effects, but I wanted to see if you could do a pro mix with only what we were given. Apparently you can! Here's the good bit: If you have Cakewalk from version 2022.06 onwards, go to Help > Check for Updates and you'll get a popup toast for demo projects. This song is one of the demo projects, and it comes with a huge PDF with mix notes, lyrics, Australian slang... all of the good things! I cover everything from setting up a mix in a modular way, to FX Chains, Arranger sections, Aux Sub-mixes... lots of stuff. And you get to hear how bad the source drums were before I wrangled them into shape! Yay! HAHA! Anyway, hope you guys dig it! And if you get the demo project, let me know if you get anything useful out of it.

I think you're being a lot more optimistic than you should be here. Like I said, go look at the Vegas forums as a great example of an app that's specifically designed for video, and supports a wide range of formats and codecs still having massive trouble with outliers. As I mentioned earlier, the difference between one MP4 and the next, even ones using the same codec can make or break how a system responds to things. 30fps? Fine. 60fps? Maybe fine. Variable frame rate between 18 and 60? Good luck with that. Something other than AAC as the audio? Will it import? Dunno, maybe? Will this format play without hardware acceleration? Perhaps? Some most certainly play badly without it, if at all (HEVC being a great example of that). This is exactly why we usually transcode or create proxies to make editing go smoother. It's a complicated problem for a niche amount of users in a DAW, as much as I am one of those users and I do agree it should be improved. What Erik was saying is right though - without knowing exactly what you're trying to import in, just saying "but Cubase can do it" is not helpful. But we don't know what format your videos are, that's the point. That's why we say grab Mediainfo and show us the ones you're having issues with. It could be a codec issue. It could be that your hardware doesn't support acceleration of the codec and is decoding using the CPU that's causing glitches in CbB. The more info you can provide, the more the devs can work out what needs fixing in the first place, and the rest of us can help you troubleshoot and give an alternative in the interim.

Maybe a preferences setting could be added as a way to only show the toasts you're interested in? Not worth a UI change, but perhaps something like the Exception Handling Severity setting.

Saying "this works in X app" is kind of meaningless, really. That's great that it does, but all that says is "that app has a different rendering engine" or "it makes these particular codecs I'm using available to it" rather than saying "Cakewalk does NOT render THIS particular clip, and here are the specs." It's easy to assume on the surface that it's a similar app so it must work in a similar way but it's rarely the case. Codecs can vary GREATLY from video to video. Even an MP4 is just a container that could have all kinds of different stuff in it, and then going even more granular, let's say that it's a h.264 MP4, sometimes just having the frame rate as VFR rather than CFR can cause all sorts of problems, even in dedicated video workstation apps. Switching the rendering engine in CbB can help with certain types of video but will absolutely break other types. It's actually quite complex. Video view definitely does need an overhaul, I absolutely agree with that. From what I gather, the video part is mostly unchanged for a VERY long time, and I'd almost guarantee that's due to the layers of complexity I mentioned above. Adding in things like tempo tracks and arranger tracks and all of that stuff extends on the functionality that CbB already has built-in. Working more with video involves many more third-party libraries and low-level integration. Go have a look at the Vegas forums, for example, and you can see what a nightmare this is even with a dedicated video app. That all said, I've had great results with h.264 720p AVC MP4 files, and this is using them to score hour+ long live show mixes. It's definitely frustrating not being able to crop or move the start time, however, but I treat this in the way where it was first introduced - it's a preview to score to, and then you export that mix and import it into a proper video editor. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a to-do list for this stuff already in place, but realistically looking at priorities, those of us (myself included) that actually use the video view as compared to the general functions like articulations/tempo/arranger/UI, etc. that most people would be using in a DAW, and adding in the can of worms this is going to open once they do give it an overhaul, I'd say it's taking a while to make it up through the priorities list.

There is, scroll up for @scook's CbB tools and let them do it for you. Original thread HERE. But yes, it'd be nice to see this integrated out of the box.

From what I understand, there's something complicated in the internal plumbing related to the metronome dating back to when it was first introduced many years ago that makes it hard to treat as an exportable track. I'm one of likely many people who have asked for it to be able to be exported directly, so I'd say it's on a to-do list somewhere. In the meantime, John's method of routing the metronome to an Aux track and recording that track as a regular audio track works well and is what I usually do. The other option is to find a 1 bar groove clip of a metronome and import that to a track and drag it out to the length of the project. Not quite as elegant but it's handy if you have no patience and can't wait for a real-time metronome to record.

Normally with a .reg file, like this export would be, you just double-click it and it gets imported back into the registry automatically.

Yeah, compared to a lot of GUIs for plugins, this comes up as quite small on my machines. I'd suggest there's some kind of UI scaling or low resolution at play here.

On the other hand, CWPA9.x was... well, it was a workhorse in the studio that we recorded our A Rise to Power album but drum editing was horrific. Slip editing wasn't brought in until SONAR 1, so if you cut out a bit of audio, it was simply gone. Need to cut a bit off of the end of something? You deleted it. Gone. Clip fades? Nope - destructive or you had to draw an envelope in. Cutting together a multi-mic kit where the drummer was not exactly accurate and doing multiple takes of sections was something I absolutely don't miss. We've come a long way...!

I have pretty fond memories of 8.5.x, in fact I would often use that for drum comping over SONAR for a while there because the workflow just felt better. The super compact track view was good too when I had a smaller screen, but I tell you what, even going back to SPlat now feels like a massive step backwards compared to CbB now. I couldn't imagine going to pre-X SONAR or earlier now. If I needed something super lightweight, I'd likely throw in Ubuntu Studio and run one of the MIDI editors on that.

Pfft. n00bs! ? This was my setup for years: http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/roland-mc500-mkii/3992 It was awful.

How'd you go with Resource Monitor or Process Monitor? Any clues?

If you just want to run Cakewalk for DOS then the easiest thing is to grab Virtual Box and FreeDOS and run it all in a VM. Then go play Doom

There's a path left over from a previous installation of Cakewalk in your registry. You need to do a Clean Installation, and then you should be able to choose your VST path: https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034066393-Clean-Install-Cakewalk-by-BandLab

Everyone's approach is different for this kind of thing. I personally treat it all as one super long song, if it's a show with a lot of common instruments (which most live shows tend to be). If there's any outliers (eg: if you're using a basic crunch sound on a guitar and one song has a clean sound with a heap of effects pedals), I tend to cut that out and put that on its own track. Project management is the key with this stuff. Drop markers or Arranger sections to show where each song (and each gap between the songs) are so you can see at a glance where you are. Use folders to keep your workspace clean. Use Aux tracks to sub-mix certain elements. Then save revisions as you go. Get your basic tracks imported first and lined up. Save. Do basic edits to clean the tracks up next. Save As a new revision. Rough out any levels and panning next. Save As a new revision. Start sculpting the tracks with EQ, etc. Save As a new revision. By the time you get to doing the actual mix and writing in your automation, you should have a long list of different mix revisions saved that you can go back to if things screw up somewhere. Doing it all in one go like this takes a bit of mental gymnastics to try to focus on what part of the project you need to, but if you're trying to capture the vibe of the complete live show and have consistency between each song, this is the quickest way to get to that point and the easiest to make global changes rather than going "Ah so the bass is a bit too honky, I'll just fix the EQ" on a song and then having to repeat that for 10 other songs - doing it in a global project like this does everything all at once. But in answer to the original question, yes - you use automation to adjust your volume, EQ and effects levels for this kind of thing. Not really too different to doing a single song, ultimately. I've done a few live albums and concert videos and this works for me, but you might find John's way of working works best for you - there's really no single right way to do this.

What is the crash message you're getting, if any? If it's a crash in the plugin itself, there's not a lot the devs can do here and it needs to be reported to the plugin vendor, but it might also be exposing a bug in Cakewalk, so it's important to know what's going on. A crash dump is a really good way to report this to the devs to get to the bottom of it, and this explains what to do:

At least we can still all agree that Monster speaker cables are worth the money, right? ?

I dunno, I'm a metal producer and there's a LOT of crap out there (some of it is mine ?) ?

Yeah, those instructions should do the trick. Whenever I use WASAPI with my laptop's Realtek I'm actually getting better performance than some of the "pro" interfaces I've used with proper ASIO drivers. There *is* a Realtek ASIO driver but this is legitimate hot garbage and doesn't even meet the basic ASIO specs - definitely do not use this, WASAPI is the way to go with a Realtek.

It sounds like it's trying to unload a large synth library or something like that, and not releasing properly until it does (any Baker, feel free to come in and tell me to sit down and be quiet if I'm way off base here!) Try opening up Resource Monitor and have it filter for Cakewalk.exe and see what it does when you exit - that should give you an idea of what's still happening there. A better tool is probably Process Monitor, but it's a bit more complex too. This should at least narrow the reason down a bit to see if anything can be done about it.

The Cakewalk company changed hands 3 times since that version was available, and now the intellectual property is owned by an entirely different company again. This would have been written by Greg Hendershott himself back in the day and it would be extremely unlikely any of the current small dev team would have the source code for it at all, let alone the resources to divert away from their current projects to fix something that's nearly 30 years old. My advice, if you really wanted to do something like this, is to track down Greg and talk to him directly.