"The avid video engine was unable to stop" error

[hbadger30]

Hi there,

I'm working with a 640 × 360, 23.98 FPS Quicktime .mov file, viewing natively in ProTools 12.4 on an HDX / HD Omni system. System spec is a Macbook Pro running OSX 10.8.5, 16Gb RAM, 2.6 i7 processor.

I don't work with video a lot but I'm running into a re-occuring crash/problem and I wondered if anyone had a solution?

All I seem to be doing is starting and stopping audio and opening and closing the video window, just working, until evenutally I get the error message "The avid video engine was unable to stop". The video then hangs on a frame and the session becomes unresponsive and I can't seem to get the video going again. At the moment I'm quitting Tools and then opening it again and that seems to sort it out. Anyone had the same issue?

Thanks in advance!

[Meads]

What codec has the video? PT doesn't like h264 very much.
You should try using ProRes, DNxHD or Photo-JPEG. Those are proven to work pretty well.
The "new" video engine is still buggy, though.

[MIKEROPHONICS]

I think it's the video satellite link connecting the AVE to PT.
It is often related to drives. People who put the video on an SSD seem to have less issues. Is your video on your MBP internal drive?
I get this occasionally even with my super reliable AJA IOXT with PT 12.4 HDX.
Sometimes, disabling the video track blue button (or shift apple J) can help. Let the AVE gets its knickers out of a twist, then carry on.

ps Photojpeg is actively discouraged by Avid (read the docs)
H264 actually works well but can lag the processor, depends on how many frames are key frames and how fast your processor is etc.

[TVPostSound]

Originally Posted by MIKEROPHONICS

I think it's the video satellite link connecting the AVE to PT.
It is often related to drives. People who put the video on an SSD seem to have

I run 2 systems that are mirrored, literally.
I cloned the hard drive.

One Mac drives a Media Composer PC machine.
That one has the video engine warnings all the time.

The other MAC just plays DNXHD36 mxf video from a separate internal drive, and get no issues.

Hmmm!!!!

[hbadger30]

Thanks for replying to this thread!

The Codec is H264 and is being read from an internal rotational HD (7200rpm) on the MBP. I'll try putting it on my system drive as that's a SSD to see if it makes a difference. The video file is quite short - is there anyway to put it in RAM……….kind of like audio in the disk playback cache in PT's playback engine?

Mike, I tried toggling the blue button, but once I've had the error message once PT doesn't want to know. It just waits a while and then flags the same error message.

So judging by the other responses I'm not the only one out there experiencing issues? I just wanted to check it wasn't user error really!

Thanks all for sheading a bit of light on the subject for me.

[TVPostSound]

Originally Posted by hbadger30

Thanks for replying to this thread!

The Codec is H264 .

Thats an issue right there.

Takes too much resources to decompress H264.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...r-Pro-Tools-11

[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.