Issues might arise if you are using Ableton under Windows when loading the LESSON version of the Sound Packs in Vol.5. The main problem being the video file not displaying correctly or showing a error message similar to this one: "This sample contains no data". As far as we know this only applies when working under Windows and the videos should show up just fine on OSX.
Video files
A digital video file (e.g. .mov, .mp4 or .avi) is basically a container that encapsulates one or more video and audio streams. Each of these streams again is encoded using an industry standard codec (e.g. mp3 or aac for audio, H.264/AVC or MPEG-2 for video).
To be able to play back such a video file on a computer, both a suitable demuxer for reading the container file and a matching decoder for each audio and video stream must be installed.
The most frequently used codec with acceptable performance and good quality is H.264 (also called AVC). As container file format, the best choice is .mov (Quicktime) or .mp4.
Recommended codecs
The 64-bit version of Live can use any DirectShow compatible demuxers and decoders that are available on the computer, but on a fresh Windows system, only a limited number of video codecs is installed by default. That's why you might need to install additional codecs.
In practice, some decoders are more suitable than others. Live is tested with the following two solutions that you can install on your machine to enable proper video support with the 64-bit version of Live.
A free solution, with good performance and a wide range of supported codecs and file formats (please install both components):
- Demuxer: Haali Media Splitter (also known as MatroskaSplitter, download directly)
- Codec: ffdshow 1.3.4531 (H.264, DV)
Lowest resource usage and high responsiveness, needs to be purchased:
- CoreAVC 3.0.1 from CoreCodec (H.264)
Encoding video
Only with properly encoded video footage, fluent high quality playback is possible.
When it comes to encoding uncompressed video, it is recommended to use as many Keyframes as possible (optimally encoding with Keyframes exclusively), which will noticeably enhance responsiveness and lower CPU usage.
This can be enabled in the settings of the video encoder when rendering the video. If you do this with Live, you'll find these settings in the "Export Audio/Video" dialog accessible after enabling "Create Video".
Administrative Privileges
Running Live as Administrator will make sure than any Media File import access rights are correctly designated, so please follow this guide to run Live as Administrator.
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