Cakewalk video problem!!!

[Marcelo Andino]

I'm scoring a short film and my problem is that when I press play and the video is loaded into the project, there is a second delay until  the project starts playing, which is incredibly annoying. There seems to be some problem with a video decoder (LAV splitter and LAV decoder) Cakewalk is using for this, because I tried it in Studio One, and playback is perfectly smooth there. The only problem is that I yet don't know my way around Studio One, that's why I'm not working on the project on that daw. I already tried editing the AUD.INI txt file, to no avail. Cakewalk has never been great at working with video, but I have to get the work done and I don't have the time right now to learn a new DAW.  Any thoughts? 

Operating System
    Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
    Intel Core i9 9900K @ 3.60GHz    
    Coffee Lake 14nm Technology
RAM
    32,0GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 1066MHz (15-15-15-36)
Motherboard
    Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI-CF (U3E1)    
Graphics
    LS27A70 (3840x2160@60Hz)
    4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (ZOTAC International)   
Audio
    RME Babyface Pro

Edited August 14, 2023 by Marcelo Andino

[John Vere]

It might not be the video. It can also be caused by a certain VST instrument. Are you seeing the little blue circle spinning when you press the space bar? 
When this happens to me I then try freezing synths until it goes away. 
I think you can also try muting them until you find the problem. 

[Andres Medina]

1 hour ago, JohnnyV said:

It might not be the video. It can also be caused by a certain VST instrument. Are you seeing the little blue circle spinning when you press the space bar? 
When this happens to me I then try freezing synths until it goes away. 
I think you can also try muting them until you find the problem. 

I agree: in addition, try inserting the video in a blank project (no VST's), and see if starts immediately.

[Marcelo Andino]

Thank you for your reply, but it happens even if I don't have any vst instrument running. And I should add that this is not happening in Studio One. Also, the moment I delete the video from the project, it runs normally.  When I open Studio One and load the video, I don't see LAV's encoder notification running in the background... I've had this same problem with two other projects that involved video, that I can recall now. I wonder if there is anything else that can be done

[Andres Medina]

Sorry to hear that. I don't have more answers, but one more question:

What type of video are you trying to run? 

I have no trouble at all working with video, but only if I use H264 video codec. Other formats were problematic inside CW. I usually re encode the video to H264 if I'm not able to ask to the video producers to export so beforehand.

[Marcelo Andino]

Hey Andres!! Thank you so much for your help. I tried converting the video to avi and now the problem is gone..... the video looks awful but to the effect of syncronization and composition I guess it will do. The video I was running has the mp4 extension, but I don't know if it was coded in H264, I'll try that with the next one. Thanks!!

[Andres Medina]

6 hours ago, Marcelo Andino said:

Hey Andres!! Thank you so much for your help. I tried converting the video to avi and now the problem is gone..... the video looks awful but to the effect of syncronization and composition I guess it will do. The video I was running has the mp4 extension, but I don't know if it was coded in H264, I'll try that with the next one. Thanks!!

Happy to help...! I had sort of a nightmare in my first attempts to run video in CW - not a CW fault by the way: video+audio is tricky at first. I troed Cubase for a while and was even worse. Never got the video to run at all.

Look, I tried a number of codecs. Mp4 is a wrapper. The actual codec is very important.

AVi is super heavy, but at least it made your video run...!

After many many trials, I found H264 is a very good choice: it produces a small file and very good video resolution, with little load in your system.

Just re-export your video file using any free video converter, and make sure you select H264 codec, keeping all other video settings the same.

If you need more info, feel free to ask.

[OutrageProductions]

95% of my current work is locked to video, and I concur with @Andres Medina on the format.

I can lock to 4k HD video in CbB with nary an issue with my playback on a 27" screen #4.

I've never run across your LAV decoder...

[Marcelo Andino]

Mmmm... I don't really know what to say... all I know is that this doesn't happen in Studio One. I even created a test project in Logic on a 2009 macbook and this doesn't happen either.  Maybe it's time for me to migrate

Thanks for your help!