Video sync in Cakewalk: padding at the start of MP4/MOV

[Jono J Grant]

When importing MP4/MOV files, Cakewalk  adds a frame or two of silence/black at the very beginning of playback (padding). Everything locks inside of Sonar but any audio gets exported with the added padding, so it's a frame or two late when imported into other programs.

I understand Cakewalk currently relies on Microsoft’s Media Foundation for video handling. Other DAWs (Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper, etc.) use their own video engines (often FFmpeg-based) and don’t have this issue.

Would the developers ever consider integrating a dedicated video engine (e.g. FFmpeg) instead of relying on Media Foundation? Or at least providing an option to bypass the padding behavior?

This would make Cakewalk far more reliable for composers working to picture, where frame accuracy is critical. 

I know the workarounds but it would be great to resolve this.  It hasn't been addressed in the new Sonar. 

Thanks

J 

Edited 11 hours ago by Jono J Grant

[Noel Borthwick]

We havent had the bandwidth to look at video recently. Ffmpeg is an option but it's a huge amount of work to integrate. We can take a look at your issue at some point.