Ever since Cubase 9.5, the video frame accuracy has been inconsistent. I am going to show ways in which this problem exists, and another where it does not happen.
No issues:
make a new project
leave tempo at 120bpm
import video at the beginning of the project
the video window should show the first frame of the video without a problem
move the video around and place the playback bar at the beginning of video. The first frame of video should appear without problem in the video window
splice the video anywhere and remove the chunk on the left. Place the playback bar at the beginning of the remaining chunk. The first frame of that chunk should show up without problem in the video window
Issues:
make a new project
change tempo to anything that is not 120bpm. Letās say 95bpm for example.
import video at the beginning of the project
the video window should show the first frame of the video without a problem if the video is placed at the beginning of the project
move the video around (letās say to bar 3 for example), and place the playback bar at the beginning of the video. The first frame of the video DOESNāT appear in the video window.
move the the video around some more and try again, the first frame of the video will not appear.
Move the video back to the beginning of the project. The first frame of video will show up again at the beginning.
Move the playback bar to bar 4 for example, you should see the video skipping to a new position (as expected).
Make a cut to the video at bar 4 and delete the left chunk. The video will again disappear.
Cubaseās video engine seems to be operating at some absolute frame system that always begins at the beginning of the project file. Therefore if you move the video anywhere in the project (at a bpm other than 120bpm - and probably 60/240/etc), the video will not display at the beginning of its region because where Cubase places video frames is quantized to an invisible grid that begins at the beginning of the project no matter what. This is problematic and makes frame accuracy impossible unless the project runs at 120bpm.
All my colleagues have had this problem (running on Windows; havenāt tried on Mac), which has forced most of them to stay with Cubase 9.0.
I would like to +1 this to help raise visibility. I would love to be able to use Cubase 9.5 and later because there are many great new features, but until this is resolved I am forced to use Cubase 9. It is absolutely necessary (and a bare minimum) to have frame accuracy when working to picture, whether as a composer or a sound designer.
FWIW - in your example number 1 above, I DONāT get the first frame displaying when I move the video file along, to anywhere other than 1.1.1.0 (I am using the shortcut āLā to locate the playhead to the start of the video event, to make sure its at the very beginning).
I have used āGet Frame Rate from Videoā in Project Setup to make sure the video file is being correctly read (29.97).
Changing the tempo in a new project, and trying again, produces the same results.
Am attaching the video file Iām using, so you (anyone else) can try too. Cars Passing.zip (497 KB)
The plot thickensā¦
(Off topic - notice how that video plays with a slightly glitching, āstutteringā effect on the cars exiting the right-hand side of the frame. Play the video outside of Cubase, in VLC or Win MediaPlayer, or inside StudioOne v4.5.1 and its perfectly rock-solid smooth. Interesting.)
Thatās very interesting. Perhaps weāre getting different behavior as the video I was using was at 24fps. Either way, not seeing the first frame of a video region when not at the beginning of the project isnāt good.
Iāll try out your video file soon.
I wonder if Nuendo handles video the same.
I just checked if Nuendo behaved the same way and it does.
For sound designers this is not an issue as, working with the timecode ruler, wherever anyone might move their video file would always snap to a frame on the timecode grid.
This is not the case when working on the bars and beats ruler as those bars and beats sometimes fall in between frames.
Bump, if only to raise visibility. Another Cubase update has come out, and we still donāt have a resolution to this issue after well over a year. Iāve submitted multiple support tickets on this subject. This is a devastating issue for anyone trying to work with video and be frame-accurate, and Steinbergās lack of a fix is maddening.
Bumping yet again. I recently updated to 10.5 in the hopes that this would be resolved, as being able to finally export video is so huge for us. But itās not. Trying to compose to video and knowing that we canāt trust the video weāre seeing in Cubase to be frame-accurate is incredibly frustrating.
I see this complaint repeated quite a lot in many forms, and itās a common misconception.
The video playback is extremely accurate when used with proper video formats.
H264 (AVC) is indeed a supported video format. Still, itās the most dangerous one for DAW playback as it lets you compress the video so much that real-time decoding becomes almost impossible without dropping frames, not to mention stuttering playback, and a huge waste of system resources just to present the video.
It may sound ridiculous to you, but the smaller the file size, the harder it is to playback it properly. Just like you wouldnāt use highly compressed mp3 or aac audio and should always convert it into uncompressed PCM Audio (.Wav) when you bring it into your project, you should prepare/convert your videos for the best performance in your DAW (any DAW).
Experienced Post-Production users who professionally produce audio-for-video always convert their videos into something that will work properly before importing it and starting to work.
Many pros use a tool I wrote, ER Media ToolKit, when they want to save time and still make sure the video they create will be optimized for DAW work. It is the only video converting tool that was designed especially for pro playback needs.
If youād like to read more about why h264 is bad for playback, I explained it in more details here:
Hi Sagi,
The issue here is not about playback smoothness but that the start of a videoās region in Cubase/Nuendo doesnāt always line up with an actual frame.
Letās say that you move the playback bar exactly on a frame somewhere in the middle of the video (with the condition that 1. youāre not at 120 bpm and 2. that the position of the playback bar is exactly on a frame and not a sub-frame) , weāll call this frame āxā. Make a cut on the video at frame āxā, which then creates a new region starting at that frame āxā. Now move this new region around (on the bars and beats grid so it snaps so the grid), youāll see that often times what is displayed at the beginning of that video region is no longer frame āxā but somewhere a sub-frame after or before frame āxā.
This also happens when not making cuts to a video. Letās say (at a tempo thatās not 120bpm) that the first frame of your video is frame āaā. If you place your video at the start of the project, moving the playback bar to the beginning of the video region equals frame āaā. But if you then move the video around (on the bars and beats grid) so that the beginning of the video region is no longer at the start of the project, placing the playback bar at the beginning of the video will often times not equal frame āaā anymore, and what is displayed instead is either a sub-frame before or after frame āaā.