Need Help: Ableton doesn't play video.

[MattTheBat]

Hey everyone,

I am on Windows 10 and have Ableton Live 11. I want to have video clips be able to play in Ableton so that I can sync another audio clip to the video clip. However, I can't figure out how to get Ableton to play video clips. I am trying to drag .mov video clips into an empty audio track in the arrangement view. But whenever I drag it in, the audio portion of the video appears, but the video clip itself doesn't appear. I currently have the Haali Media Splitter (Matroska Splitter) demuxer installed and the ffdshow codec installed, but still nothing works. Previously, I tried using QuickTime, but that didn't work either (deleted QuickTime after it didn't work because it said it required "additional software to work").
I tried following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn0-19I ... shuaCasper, to try to get everything to work, but still nothing works. Only the audio portion of the video clip is displayed, but not the actual video clip itsself. Anyone have any ideas of how to fix this, and let me know if you need any more additional information for figuring this out.

Thank you,
-MattTheBat

[[jur]]

ctrl+alt+v is the shortcut to display the video.
You should check this article if you didn't already.

[MattTheBat]

ctrl+alt+v is the shortcut to display the video.
You should check this article if you didn't already.

Looking at the article, I do believe I have other codecs installed on my computer. I could delete everything and reinstall Haali media splitter. But I'm worried... could I mess up my computer by deleting all the codecs than having only Haali media splitter? And should I delete all the audio and video codecs, or just the video codecs? Here's a link to what I'm using to view all my codecs. https://imgur.com/a/FT5eIH7 .... I just don't want to accidentally delete what shouldn't be deleted.

[Paul Clifford]

I have exactly the same issue. I have installed Haali but am unsure what codecs to uninstall if any - in fact only default windows files show up under components. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this?

[[jur]]

I have exactly the same issue. I have installed Haali but am unsure what codecs to uninstall if any - in fact only default windows files show up under components. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this?

Is your Live version up-to-date?
Did you read the related KB articles?

[agamben]

Sorry but this KB article is useless. Live simply doesn't work with video - at least not on Windows - and unfortunately things get worse with each update.
Hope Ableton are hearing us...

[[jur]]

Sorry but this KB article is useless. Live simply doesn't work with video - at least not on Windows - and unfortunately things get worse with each update.
Hope Ableton are hearing us...

If the articles don't help, then contact Support. Live does work with video.

[agamben]

Live does work with video.

Sorry but I disagree. And installing the free-and-discontinued-since-2013-codec Haali Media Splitter to play mp4 files in 2022, as suggested in KB doesn't solve the problem.

Take a look at those thread (among others):
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=244824
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=231742
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=245608
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=242929
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=219288
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=246122

I must be very unlucky because every computer I worked on has problems with video files and Ableton.
This has NEVER happened in Studio One, Cubase, Reaper, Acid and all other DAW I use(d).
I have been on PC all my life (can't speak for Mac users) and had a lot of different computers at home and work, from cheap ones to high-end workstations, all kind of GPUs and I can tell you that Live has definitively a problem with video files. And when you happend to use a secondary monitor with a different resolution it becomes a nightmare, with constant crashes. (While, once again, other DAWs don't crash and play videos flawlessly in the same situation).
This dates back to the time when it only accepted .mov files - although video playback was more acceptable at the time, then – in my experience - things got worse.

If the articles don't help, then contact Support.

I did it already. 3 years ago. I was on Live 10 on another computer, i7 with AMD discrete GPU at the time.
We had a few exchanges and the only responses from the support were driver related (install an older/a newer driver) which of course didn’t solve the problem (switching between Intel integrated and Amd/Nvidia discrete drivers doesn't help either).
I fix computers all day at work so I know a little about them, and I’m 100% sure if I contact support today the answer will be the same because there is nothing Ableton support can do except rewriting Live’s code and change the ways it deals with video files (perhaps by licensing a new technology which doesn't rely on old engine/codec anymore ?) I don't know I'm not coder but as you guessed I'm quite pissed by the situation