Pro Tools local Slave lagging behind...

[Tonus]

Hi there,

I'm on a Mac Studio M1 Ultra and running Cubase 12 with PT's Studio 2022.7 on the same machine. Pro Tools has a QT video and slaves via MTC over the IAC Bus. I sequence in C12 and write to the picture that PTs plays back.

Everything would be great accept for the 2 seconds that it takes PT's transport to start playing/playing the video. I can see in Session Setup that PTs receives TC almost immediately as you would expect with an internal and non-physical midi connection. I just don't know why there is a lag to play and wondered if I was missing something?!

I've been doing this for years and I swear it was faster back with Pro Tools 10 HD and a midi cable...!!

PS - when I try to run the video in Cubase 11 as an MTC slave alongside Cubase 12 the playback starts in about 0.5 sec - even when it's on another machine. I would switch to doing things this way all the time but I love PTs for editing audio. Also pls don't say that I should have the picture in my Cubase session! I do so much moving about of the timeline that it's not viable!


Many thanks

[smurfyou]

I was going to say run the video in Cubase . Don't understand why that's not viable but nevermind on to PT.

I've never tried to slave with IAC. But from an external midi port mine plays with maybe a 1 sec delay. It's been a while since I've done that but it was never instant. Running as a PT Satellite works well but obviously that's only with another PT system. PT has a pretty poor video engine. If this is part of your every day routine I'd look into Video Sync https://non-lethal-applications.com/...5/video-sync-5

[smurfyou]

Also have you tried taking the video track offline to see if the lag is still there?

(BTW you're not crazy, it was definitely better in PT10 before they changed video engines. Sync is better now but latency is much worse)

[Tonus]

Smurf thanks for taking time to reply...

IAC is solid and really quick -

I tried deleting the Video track (so that Window > Video is greyed out) and it seems to take the same amount of time to sync. I'm exaggerating when I say 2 seconds - it's actually 1.5 ish secs but still long enough to be a bit annoying.

A friend of mine uses a video sync app called 'Video Slave' for the same purpose and when I search it on Google I get the same app that you've kindly linked - Video Sync. Perhaps 'Slave' is now called 'Sync'.

I might well try it as I can get it for a month and demo it - thanks!

Interesting that the video engine is worse now than it used to be...

Also the reason I don't put the picture in Cubase is because I write many cues to a constantly updating picture, across different 'reels' of picture. If I start writing say 5 minutes into the middle of the picture that I'd have to cut it, or worse start at bar 500 or something... if you see what I mean!

[its2loud]

Originally Posted by Tonus

Smurf thanks for taking time to reply...

IAC is solid and really quick -

I tried deleting the Video track (so that Window > Video is greyed out) and it seems to take the same amount of time to sync. I'm exaggerating when I say 2 seconds - it's actually 1.5 ish secs but still long enough to be a bit annoying.

A friend of mine uses a video sync app called 'Video Slave' for the same purpose and when I search it on Google I get the same app that you've kindly linked - Video Sync. Perhaps 'Slave' is now called 'Sync'.

I might well try it as I can get it for a month and demo it - thanks!

Interesting that the video engine is worse now than it used to be...

Also the reason I don't put the picture in Cubase is because I write many cues to a constantly updating picture, across different 'reels' of picture. If I start writing say 5 minutes into the middle of the picture that I'd have to cut it, or worse start at bar 500 or something... if you see what I mean!

Go into your MIDI Controls in Pro Tools and make sure you have Count Off turned off as well as Conductor and Metronome

[Tonus]

Just bumping this thread - I'm still getting the same problem - with or without a video track in Pro Tools it's very slow to sync over MTC (PT as a slave).
Seems to have got a little worse in the latest few versions of Pro Tools Ultimate... takes about 2 seconds to playback with sync online.
Cubase or Logic as a slave will pick up/scrub almost immediately.

Is there a faster way to sync Pro Tools - am I missing something?

I have conductor track/metronome/count off disabled.

Thanks

[Tonus]

As I said, if I have Session Setup window open in PTs I can see the incoming Timecode start up really quickly - it's just that Pro Tools takes a second and a half to start playing!

[original_min]

You've checked the Minimum Sync Delay Setting on Prefs/Sync tab?
It's 60 frames by default.

[Tonus]

No
! I didn't see that, wow that worked really well... thank you!

It was set to 30 by default actually but still took more than a second off of the pickup time - great stuff, thanks!