So I have a project with a bunch of video clips in it. It works fine when its open and running but whenever I open it Ableton locks up. Seems to be like its trying to buffer everything at once. I can move the video clips, open it fine, then put the video clips back in batches and reconnect the media and its able to work through the buffering without issue. I’m on a new M2 Mac Mini. Anyone else have an issue. I’ve looked into Ableton buffering settings and it doesn’t seem to be maxing out the RAM or CPU. Not really sure what’s going on.
Hey Curtis, thanks for writing in! Do you have Videosync open already at the point you’re opening the Live Set? Does it make a difference if you start Videosync after you’ve already loaded your Live Set? Or does Live still freeze up then as well?
It makes no difference if Videosync is open or not. The project loads. It starts to buffer and then freezes. Just now it got to 15% buffered. You can see the video clips buffering progress bars on each clip in session view. Then I get the spinning rainbow wheel and it just stops. I left it overnight at one point and it was still stuck. The activity monitor shows I think a varying amount of CPU usage but nothing happens.
If Videosync running or not does not make a difference, and it’s purely Live that is freezing when loading this Live Set, it’s probably better to get in touch with Ableton Support about this as well. Providing them with Crash Reports and a Status Report could help shed light on what process Live is actually freezing at.
That being said, I’d be curious to know where the video files of this Live Set are stored exactly. Are they perhaps on an external drive or in a cloud storage folder? Or in either the Desktop or Downloads folders?
I was thinking because it specifically seems like the video is what is causing the issue and Ableton isn’t really designed for video (at least not in Session view hence needing Videosync) that this might be an error specific to video. Do others with Videosync have a gig or more of video in a Session and have Ableton try to buffer everything every time they open the project without issue?
I had my projects in a Google Drive folder but that seemed to be causing issue with the project so I moved it out of there and just in Documents. Is there a specific place that is best to store the files?
While Live does not support showing video playback in the Session View, Live does load the clips the same as audio clips, specifically for their audio content. All Videosync is doing from that point is receive the file name/location, and then play the video in its own window.
In other words, Videosync plays no part in how Live loads the video clips. Videosync does that independently and only for itself once it knows where to find the file(s).
I can’t exactly point to a specific topic or ticket at the moment, but I do recall Google Drive being able to cause trouble with these kind of things. I like to assume that cloud storage applications handle files stored in their folders their own way, and can therefor be a bit unpredictable sometimes. They’re great for file storage/backup and sharing files between systems, but if it’s for live performances for example, it’s probably best to move those crucial files into a permanent folder on the built in hard drive, just to be sure.