Ableton Forum

I am trying to use video in Live11 for scoring purposes, and I have followed all steps (and then some) specifically outlined by Ableton in order to playback Mp4s in an audio track in Ableton. I have removed all necessary codecs, installed fddshow+Haali, and the following happens:

1.) it works if I pull it into a brand new project, however
2.) Ableton crashes when I pull in an mp4 into an existing project, but
3.) I have replicated every step onto my personal laptop (also Windows 11) and it does not have this problem AKA I can drag mp4s to existing projects with no crashes/issues

Obviously, this is a problem if I'm trying to pull in an mp4 after scoring something to line things up, or don't already have the footage on hand prior to writing music. I thought it might be a plug-in compatibility issue, but I've tried it with absolutely no plugins and still seems to crash when the mp4 is pulled into different existing projects. The only possible solution I can think of is my laptop is using an older Live 11 version? Any help would be much appreciated.

PC Ableton version: 11.3.4
Laptop Ableton version: 11.0.12

I'd rather not roll-back versions if possible.

First rule: don't use mp4 video format in Live.
I know, it contradicts what you might have read in the manual or the Knowledge Base, but those are wrong and need to be corrected.
I've been doing music and sound to picture since Live8, so trust me on this one.
Use .mov, if needed convert to photojpeg (it's makes quite large files but it's the lightest on the cpu and is frame accurate). H264 is ok but is not always frame accurate (which doesn't matter much if you're not doing foley/sound editing).

2nd "rule": using video in Live on Windows has always been a pita. I can't help much on this though.

Hello, I'm afraid there might not be a solution to your problem. I've had the same issue for years, and it's simply impossible to use Live for working with video. Why does it work with your laptop, though? To me it doesn't have to do with Live version (I tried them all). It's probably the exception that proves the 2nd rule
I'm afraid neither the instructions in the manual, nor those from Ableton's support, nor - sorry to say - Jur's advice will help you. The only solution would be for Ableton's developers to address the issue, but they clearly don't seem interested (this video problem on PC has been ongoing for years). I recommend starting to look for an alternative solution for scoring. For example, Reaper works very well.