Hi! I recently found this program and am interested in purchasing so I downloaded the trial to see if it would work for what I am trying to do which is primary short form audio visual content for my music. So far everything is working great and looking to be exactly what I am looking for but I am struggling with the video recorder/export part.
I want to make sure that my computer is strong enough to export the videos at a decent quality, and I am currently getting some studders/frame drops in my test exports. I am in a fresh project to prevent any CPU issues for the test and when using just a video and the effects, I am seeing no frame drops or stuttering in the video sync application main video viewer at 60FPS but when I use the video recorder to test exporting, I am getting studders/frame drops throughout the exported videos. I tried auto FPS at 30 which results in my export being around 22 FPS and stuttering and I am still seeing frame drops in the exported videos when I do custom at 30 FPS.
With all the being said, I am trying to figure out if this is user error on my end or if my computer is simply not strong enough to handle the exports. I have included the specs for my computer below and please let me know if any additional information is needed.
Current Specs
- Windows 11 desktop
- Ableton 12 suite
- Both hard drives in use are SSD
- Intel(R) Core™ i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz (3.60 GHz)
- 128GB RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 - 24gb RAM
Hey Sam, welcome to the forum!
I have a few questions:
- What is the resolution that Videosync is drawing at? You can see and configure this in the Settings window.
- Is the Target FPS for Videosync set to 60? If you want to try recording at 30 FPS, it’s probably best to set this in the Settings window as well, as opposed to setting it only in the Video Recorder device. Setting the Recording FPS to Auto will follow the Target FPS of Videosync. By setting the Target FPS in Videosync to 30 FPS, you are not wasting resources on drawing frames that won’t be recorded anyway.
- What motherboard are you using?
Hi Jean-Paul,
Thank you for the quick response! I have included answers to your questions below.
- I am drawing at 1080x1920 - standard social media video size
- I just attempted that at 30 fps and while live playback shows no problems, the rendered export video is still showing frame drops and periodic stuttering. Its strange because I do not see anything stuttering at all in the videosync viewer when I hit record, but I do see it on the little preview in the video recorder M4L device and then in the exported file as well.
- I am using a MSI Z390-A PRO motherboard.
Please let me know if any more detail is needed for any of these and thank you for the assistance! 
Thanks for the extra details! I think what you’re seeing makes sense. Videosync’s Main Out window stays smooth because it runs entirely on your graphics card, which is extremely fast. The preview in the Video Recorder device works differently: to show that preview and to record the file, the video frames have to be transferred from the GPU to the CPU, and then compressed on the CPU. In this setup, Max doesn’t use GPU-accelerated video encoding, so the CPU ends up doing all the heavy lifting.
At 1080×1920 and 30 or 60 FPS, that becomes quite taxing for the processor you’re using. That’s why the Recorder preview can look less smooth than the Videosync window, and why the final recorded video shows the same stuttering. Nothing suggests you’re doing anything wrong: your GPU is very strong, but the CPU becomes the bottleneck during real-time encoding.
One thing you can try is switching the Recorder to the JPEG codec instead of H.264. JPEG uses much less complex compression and is therefore much lighter on the CPU, so it’s a good way to check whether the performance improves.
Another thing you can try is using OBS Studio to record Videosync’s Spout output directly. OBS supports GPU-accelerated encoding (e.g. NVENC on your graphics card), so this can make a big difference. The Video Recorder device in Live is mostly added for convenience, but it relies on Max’s built-in recording engine, which is more CPU-dependent.
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Hi Jean-Paul,
Thank you for the insight here! I tried the OBS to Spout input and was able to get a much cleaner results with the exported test video. I appreciate your help!
2 last questions here.
- Would a hardware HDMI recorder give me the closest results to a pseudo-offline render, or would I likely see the same results as the OBS to Spout? My though it that the Videosync Main out and OBS are both running via the graphics card and the hardware recorder seems like a potential way to split the load between the Ableton project, Videosync application, and export process via CPU, GPU, and hardware recorder if I am understanding correctly. Additionally, are there any other concerns or considerations when using a hardware recorder with the videosync software?
- In early testing so far, it looks like the main bottleneck I am going to run into if I try to dive into more complex projects/designs is CPU as I am seeing some relatively large usage in the task manager with a fairly small project. Is there a suggested base line Motherboard & CPU for this program? This is likely my next system upgrade focus as Ableton is CPU demanding in general and so I am wondering if there is a specific type or level that would give the best performance with the Videosync software.
All in all, I am loving this program you guys have built and the ability to do both the audio & visuals in Ableton without having to constantly jump back and forth between design software has definitely pushed this up to the top of my black Friday list!
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- No, a hardware HDMI recorder would not give any benefits here, as your graphics card already has a dedicated video-encoding block (NVENC). So in other words, it’s a physical chip that is a part of your graphics card, and its separate from the the actual GPU on that same graphics card. Using an external HDMI recorder would therefore not give any extra headroom for the GPU, as the recording was already handled by a separate, dedicated chip.
- We don’t have a specific recommended setup, but in general at this point I’d recommend either an AMD Ryzen 7000-series (AM5) system or an Intel 13th/14th-gen processor. Both are big steps up from what you have now. They offer much better single- and multi-core performance, and the newer platforms (DDR5 memory and faster system bandwidth) help with larger and more complex Live projects. So yes — upgrading to a modern CPU + motherboard is the right move if you’re running into CPU limits.
And thank you for the kind words, it means a lot to us!