MP4 Trim-in Time slowness

[Rogério]

This is a very old question, but apparently so far has not been resolved.
I work a lot with creating video-based soundtracks.
Videos are always in MP4.
Since there are multiple music styles within the same video, I create different projects for each music style, but always using the same video.
The problem is that the more Trim-in time is getting ahead, is slower is the playback.

I there any way to stop this slowness when playing back an MP4 with high Trim-In time?

[Noel Borthwick]

Hi @Rogério Dec this would be a limitation of the Microsoft Media foundation video framework that we use so it could be tricky to address from our side. We haven't looked at video in a long time but we'll schedule some time to investigate again in the future. Thanks for your understanding. The root issue is that MP4 compressed requires prior keyframes to be decoded before the video engine can start streaming. In general most compressed formats including MP3 work that way and are not designed for editing. Some video apps decode to an intermediate format for this reason.

[Rogério]

Thanks for your attention, Noel. 

I'm speaking as a layman, but Adobe Premiere, for example, treats all input video formats transparently, that is, it does not cause any playback delay due to the original video format.
I don't know what "magic" they do, but the fact is that for the user this question should be transparent.
I know CbB is not a video editor, but here is my suggestion to make CbB friendlier for those who work with video-based music composition.

[Jean Corivo]

11 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Hi @Rogério Dec this would be a limitation of the Microsoft Media foundation video framework that we use so it could be tricky to address from our side. We haven't looked at video in a long time but we'll schedule some time to investigate again in the future. Thanks for your understanding. The root issue is that MP4 compressed requires prior keyframes to be decoded before the video engine can start streaming. In general most compressed formats including MP3 work that way and are not designed for editing. Some video apps decode to an intermediate format for this reason.

This is very good news Noel, to know that you are going to focus on developing better handling, video files on Cakewalk.
This is probably the only aspect of the software that is lagging behind the competition, so that Cakewalk can be used in all stages of Post-Production.

I love this software. I use it in conjunction with the VS-700 control surface every day professionally on TV ads, short film or album production. Unfortunately on feature films, because of the shortcomings we know, I have to fall back on ProTools which offers a greater possibility of handling video files. It's a shame, because in every other aspect of the production, Cakewalk offers a greater versatility of implementation tools, for a professional sound result.

Noel, thanks again for the highly professional involvement you put into the development of Cakewalk.
We feel supported.

[msmcleod]

I experimented with a 9 hour MP4 and couldn't reproduce your slowness, but I guess it all comes down to the combination of video / audio codecs. The only thing that took time was the importing of the audio part on first import.

There's a few things you could try:

1. Converting the video into a different format, and perhaps reducing the video part to something like 360p to further reduce CPU load.
2. Splitting the video up into sections.

Once you've got a stereo mix, you could start a new project with the original format to combine everything.

[Rogério]

@Noel Borthwick, one day, when focusing on improving CbB for videos, take the time to fix the problem of start time randomness, that is, every time you play and stop a video, it never goes back to the same frame, always varying a few frames, for more or less.

It's happening with AVI, MP4 and possibly with any video format.

[winkpain]

On 8/13/2019 at 1:48 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

Hi @Rogério Dec this would be a limitation of the Microsoft Media foundation video framework that we use so it could be tricky to address from our side. We haven't looked at video in a long time but we'll schedule some time to investigate again in the future. Thanks for your understanding. The root issue is that MP4 compressed requires prior keyframes to be decoded before the video engine can start streaming. In general most compressed formats including MP3 work that way and are not designed for editing. Some video apps decode to an intermediate format for this reason.

I too would love to see the video aspect functioning better. I can't even get the default engine change outlined here - https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Troubleshooting.08.html    to take hold (changing to Direct Show) in order to deal with Trim In-Out changes.  Thanks for thinking about it!

[scook]

4 minutes ago, winkpain said:

I too would love to see the video aspect functioning better. I can't even get the default engine change outlined here - https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Troubleshooting.08.html    to take hold (changing to Direct Show) in order to deal with Trim In-Out changes.

Chances are the file being loaded cannot use the DirectShow engine. If this is the case rather than error, CbB automatically switches to the Media Foundation engine.

[winkpain]

16 minutes ago, scook said:

Chances are the file being loaded cannot use the DirectShow engine. If this is the case rather than error, CbB automatically switches to the Media Foundation engine.

Ah. THanks. that answers my question on the other post. Sorry for cross-posting.