Ableton Forum

I use Live to score to picture on a daily basis, music and sound design. I love how fluent and creative the software makes me be, despite several major flaws when syncing to video.

Please , pretty please, with a cherry on top Ableton, can we have the following two features ASAP? Really hard to sync to picture without them:

1. LATENCY COMPENSATION FOR VIDEO. Pretty self explanatory, once you add plugins that have latency the video playback will be out of sync, making it impossible to work. The workaround is to add latency dependent plugins after the syncing is done. This is not a real workaround right? It is version 12. Video has been around forever, I think this is a major flaw and should be addressed urgently.

2.LOCKING CLIPS IN ARRANGEMENT VIEW TO ABSOLUTE SMPTE TIME. Also self explanatory, when you are working with video some clips need to be independent from the project's tempo (BPM). If you change the BPM, there should be an option to keep desired clips at an absolute SMPTE time. For example, you have an explosion sound syncing to a specific frame, if you need to try tempo changes in the music, that sound needs to stay in sync with the picture despite tempo changing.


Thanks a lot for your help and understanding, best.

diegux wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 21, 2023 10:45 pm

2.LOCKING CLIPS IN ARRANGEMENT VIEW TO ABSOLUTE SMPTE TIME. Also self explanatory, when you are working with video some clips need to be independent from the project's tempo (BPM). If you change the BPM, there should be an option to keep desired clips at an absolute SMPTE time. For example, you have an explosion sound syncing to a specific frame, if you need to try tempo changes in the music, that sound needs to stay in sync with the picture despite tempo changing.

This is related to something that's very much needed: a frame-based grid (and a way to switch between this and the regular beat grid).

:Bump:

Both features are essential to approach Ableton more professionally and I hope to finally have them featured on Ableton 12.

I got mine fixed!
Large sessions with lots of plugins meant video was about half a second out. Was KILLING ME.

Fix:
Settings > Audio > Drive Error Compensation - set to zero
and
my video was 48k but my session was running in 44100 so I changed
Settings> Audio > In/Out Sample Rate to 48000

Everything is in sync now. So happy!
Good luck!

I ran into the same frustration and ended up building something for it — FrameSync is a standalone app that syncs video to Ableton's transport via AbletonOSC. Frame-accurate on play, stop, and scrub, with drift correction over long cues. Runs outside Live so it can't crash your session.

macOS and Windows. https://all-the-machines.com/products/framesync

crunch wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 21, 2026 12:15 pm

I ran into the same frustration and ended up building something for it — FrameSync is a standalone app that syncs video to Ableton's transport via AbletonOSC. Frame-accurate on play, stop, and scrub, with drift correction over long cues. Runs outside Live so it can't crash your session.

Hey Crunch,

Thanks for the helpful info! I took a look at FrameSync and saw it syncs with the DAW transport. Does it have a video offset function?

Also, I wanted to ask if FrameSync stays perfectly in sync even in high-latency projects?
From what I understand, transport doesn't usually apply audio PDC, so I'm wondering how it handles latency compensation?