Video in Ableton Live

[Stromkraft]

I think everyone understood what was being discussed, there’s no real need to get into semantics.

Understanding what we are discussing is not a question of mere semantics!
While Live's video support is quite limited, that not an excuse to claim it's even more limited. And if that claim is made, which is was what happened, then how can you suggest that "everyone understood"?

[Stromkraft]

As things are what they are now with video support in Live I really feel a productive approach for people interested in this could be sharing ideas for work flows for video that do work in practice.

I don't understand how we as a community can be satisfied watching new people running up against the same old limitations and buggy problems in the video department without having some examples of ways to work, which we can suggest as being good approaches. That we don't seem to have any is perhaps indicative of that very few people using Live for video frequent these forums? Or that those that do are satisfied still and the posts about problems from some users that we see are just normal deviations from excellent performance meeting all expectations?

[102455]

Strommy my dear chap, the Ableton Live manual states (and I quote) "Live can import movies in Apple QuickTime format (.mov)"

That's all it says. Nothing about containers, platforms, frameworks, technology.... it just says .mov

Based on that info (which I assume is correct as it's written by Ableton) I have only ever tried to import video with .mov extensions. Why would I try anything else when the manual effectively says it's .mov only?

If it does support other containers, platforms, frameworks, whatever you like to call them, then IWBNI that was stated in the manual.

[[jur]]

More info here.

[Stromkraft]

Strommy my dear chap, the Ableton Live manual states (and I quote) "Live can import movies in Apple QuickTime format (.mov)"

That's all it says. Nothing about containers, platforms, frameworks, technology.... it just says .mov

Based on that info (which I assume is correct as it's written by Ableton) I have only ever tried to import video with .mov extensions. Why would I try anything else when the manual effectively says it's .mov only?

If it does support other containers, platforms, frameworks, whatever you like to call them, then IWBNI that was stated in the manual.

Good points all of them. I didn't read this section obviously and have only used Quicktime since it arrived, not necessarily always liking the experience, but it used to be kinda important in order to get things done.

However, I've just reported another fatal error in the manual, so despite being well-written it appears we can't rely on it fully for yet some time. Whether the video support section has errors or not I leave to Ableton to decide.

[Stromkraft]

More info here.

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately the content kinda illustrates my point that we are living with the effects of very old choices made in the past. The info feels extremely dated and non-pro oriented. Video is a non-serious feature in Live. To claim now that "Live is the perfect choice for scoring to video" is bordering on false advertisement. There's currently nothing perfect about it.

[evolvetek]

has this been addressed to any extent in the most recent versions of live suite? are we still stuck w/ exclusivity to .mov?

as my scoring business grows, my plans for expansion have not included the need for other daw's. i don't want to move to NI's solutions, or bitwig, (or something else that does a better job w/ video support) for the majority of scoring use cases, but i may. i will not go back to the mac platform for logic or digital performer (which is fantastic for scoring).

fully agreed, stromkraft, that if ableton wants to claim their software as the perfect choice for scoring, they need to step up their supported use cases and flesh out quality-of-life improvements for scoring professionals.

/e

More info here.

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately the content kinda illustrates my point that we are living with the effects of very old choices made in the past. The info feels extremely dated and non-pro oriented. Video is a non-serious feature in Live. To claim now that "Live is the perfect choice for scoring to video" is bordering on false advertisement. There's currently nothing perfect about it.

[pottering]

MP4 and MOV work fine here. (edit: Win 10)

Those are container formats though, they may contain codecs that are not compatible wit Live.

[evolvetek]

MP4 and MOV work fine here. (edit: Win 10)

Those are container formats though, they may contain codecs that are not compatible wit Live.

excellent. i was hoping mp4 was going to be functional given mov. understood regarding codecs. i have the ability to convert video to compatible codecs in other applications, but did not want to have to ff with mov solely. windows and mov have not been an ideal equation in the past.