"The avid video engine was unable to stop" error

[CygnusX-1Bk2]

I have issues with codecs that are not h264. Authoring plays a part. Not all h264 files are created equal. I work in games and Thursday I did 26 animation h264 captures for scoring, but I had to capture at a res and bit rate that wouldn't choke ProTools. I think it ended up being 1280 x 720 60 fps 35 Mbps (I'm not sitting in front of it now). All 26 videos are in one session on one video track. No issues. The first few captures I did were chuggy so I rezzed down until I got a usable setting. This is an HDX system. I did a game in October with over 260 captures and the best codec we found to use was h264. This was done on my personal HDN system. Both are Mac 4,1 dual procs (HDX is 2.28, mine is 2.66) with 16 GB RAM.

[paulo m]

Working with DNxHD120 from ISIS server and getting the same error all the time.

PT12 with El Capitan, but it happened with PT11 and Mavericks as well.

Also the video gets garbled often when playing and recording audio at the same time.

It happens with either Blackmagic or Aja cards.

The AVID video engine has major problems, using either AVID´s own products or officially supported components and codecs.

[MIKEROPHONICS]

I think that's 2 issues in one.
The ISIS thing about recording audio and seeing garbled picture, I have never seen that in a my non ISIS system. Will ask my chums at AETN UK who have an ISIS

[hbadger30]

Thanks for your replies.

Well as far as I can see the codec and video file res are two things I can try altering to improve performance / reduce crashes. Can anyone recommend a good tool for converting my video file resolution and codec? Is Mpeg Streamclip any good?

Also, and sorry this is a slight tangent, what Mac version of ProTools are most people using to work with video in a professional context? I know opinion might well be divided but for example does anyone have experiences of large post houses with multiple rigs and what version they rely on? I still have PT10 and I'm wondering whether if I should be using that instead of PT12?

As always thank you for any info!

[simonchase]

Mpeg Streamclip is good

[paulo m]

Originally Posted by MIKEROPHONICS

I think that's 2 issues in one.
The ISIS thing about recording audio and seeing garbled picture, I have never seen that in a my non ISIS system. Will ask my chums at AETN UK who have an ISIS

Indeed Mike, it´s one of those cases where an AVID proposed solution has it´s own pitfalls.

We have an ISIS system connected by gigabit lan to each PT client (as typical on Isis). If we´re printing stem tracks inDPE we get frequent stops with error (AAE 9171), as well as the "Protools transport or AVID video wasn´t able to stop" messages.

So we now use quick punch instead, but get frequent garbled video ramdomly. So we need to keep stoping and punching in, end up with a lot of printed files that in the end need to be consolidated.

We have now switched from a Blackmagic PCIe card (Intensity Pro) to an AJA XT I/O desktop unit. It´s the same. The major diference here is that the AJA has less latency.

Personally I think it´s a bandwidth issue on the network between PT and Isis.
And as we use DNxHD at 120 bitrate, it doesn´t help, but it was sold as a workable solution by AVID. Why should we spend time converting or transcoding video to lower bitrates to be used as reference in post, if we´re using an oficial supported codec?

Looking forward to hear what your colleagues experiences are when you have the time. Thanks.

[orchetect]

Originally Posted by Meads

What codec has the video? PT doesn't like h264 very much.

This may be true, but Avid re-wrote the Video Engine not long ago, at a time when H.264 was a well-established and common video format. You'd think that they would have put a bit more elbow grease into making it perform better, despite its higher decompression requirements. I get a ton of "video engine unable to stop" messages in heavy sessions, which makes the format pretty much unusable.

[Meads]

Originally Posted by orchetect

This may be true, but Avid re-wrote the Video Engine not long ago, at a time when H.264 was a well-established and common video format. You'd think that they would have put a bit more elbow grease into making it perform better, despite its higher decompression requirements. I get a ton of "video engine unable to stop" messages in heavy sessions, which makes the format pretty much unusable.

While that is true, working to h264 is not a good idea to begin with. It's not a frame based codec, meaning it doesn't work on a discrete frame by frame basis, but looks for changes in picture. That can become a huge problem. I've been working on several animated features, where a lot of times the whole picture is static for 20+ frames and only the lips are animated. The h264 codec we used for client approval of the mix didn't catch those lip animations sometimes and messed the whole animation up, so audio seemed out of sync in many places.
That plus the codec eating up CPU resources just for playback which could impact the performance of plugin heavy sessions makes for a poor choice as a working copy format. The codec sure has its place but imho it shouldn't be used in a professional environment while working on something.
I always ask my clients to resend the video if they only provided a h264. Some say they can't or they won't. In those cases I tell them I won't take any responsibility regarding sync to the real video master, only to the h264 copy. And I always convert those h264 files to ProRes (Proxy) bevore I import them to ProTools, just because I need buttery smooth playback. I can't stand the stuttery scrolling or the playback latency that's always present when you feed ProTools this codec.

[wolfhound]

I'm still having this problem all the time. A force-quit of PT is the only solution. Anyone else?

I'm on PT Ultimate 2018.12.0

[jul.bonvi]

Hi!
I'm having the same issue here since few days.
It happen only on my laptop.
My desktop computer doesn't have this issue.
There are no major changes on this laptop since months. Only 2 Fabfilter plugin updates.
The video is a DNxHD LB, so not too ungry with bandwith and CPU.
The video is on a 2To SSD, not the same as the system, but with audio and session files. But I think a SSD has enought bandwith.
Running on an ASUS ROG G751 i7, 32Go, Protools HD 12 Native, Audient USB sound card.