Sluggish UI with video loaded in OSX

[nepenthe]

I just updated Reaper today and am seeing unexpectedly slow performance while working with a video. The video is pretty tame 720p... even with the video window closed the UI is very slow to update while zoomed in to the waveforms. The slowness also causes the video to appear jumpy (for example, with autoscroll enabled, when the screen refreshes to show the next section of the waveform the UI and video will stall for a fraction of a second). Commands take a while to be processed as well. Sometimes there are audio skips regardless of buffer setting.

Performance meter doesn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary.

Any ideas of what I can try to speed things up?

This is on a 2014 MBP running up-to-date Catalina.

[EpicSounds]

set the video to ignore audio

[nepenthe]

Originally Posted by EpicSounds

set the video to ignore audio

Hmmm. Thanks that does speed things up but I do often need the audio. So any other ideas?

[EpicSounds]

When you don't want the audio to be used at all, open Source Properties for the video item and check 'ignore audio'. The waveform display will disappear from the item and no audio will be read. This is also one of the best things to do for reducing cpu load and lag when editing.

When REAPER plays back a video, it actually has to read the audio and video as separate processes, or in other words the files are loaded twice. Not a big problem for a few small files, but it's not optimal, and you'll see significant lag zooming and moving around the project if you don't separate the audio.
For the best performance and flexibility in editing you want to be using WAV files for audio in your video projects.
Some ways to get wav from a video file
- in REAPER import your video, duplicate it to the track below, run the glue action on the duplicate. the second video item will be replaced with a wav version, or whatever glue format is set in the Project Settings.
- REAPER's batch file/item Converter
- FFMPEG based converter tools such as FFMPEG Batch AV Converter (Windows), or Vordio (win / mac)
- Command line FFMPEG (not recommended)
After creating WAV file versions of your video's audio track, don't forget to group the wav with the video file. Most of the time you want your edits to be linked, you can disable grouping in the main toolbar for unlinked editing.

[nepenthe]

Originally Posted by EpicSounds

When you don't want the audio to be used at all, open Source Properties for the video item and check 'ignore audio'. The waveform display will disappear from the item and no audio will be read. This is also one of the best things to do for reducing cpu load and lag when editing.

When REAPER plays back a video, it actually has to read the audio and video as separate processes, or in other words the files are loaded twice. Not a big problem for a few small files, but it's not optimal, and you'll see significant lag zooming and moving around the project if you don't separate the audio.
For the best performance and flexibility in editing you want to be using WAV files for audio in your video projects.
Some ways to get wav from a video file
- in REAPER import your video, duplicate it to the track below, run the glue action on the duplicate. the second video item will be replaced with a wav version, or whatever glue format is set in the Project Settings.
- REAPER's batch file/item Converter
- FFMPEG based converter tools such as FFMPEG Batch AV Converter (Windows), or Vordio (win / mac)
- Command line FFMPEG (not recommended)
After creating WAV file versions of your video's audio track, don't forget to group the wav with the video file. Most of the time you want your edits to be linked, you can disable grouping in the main toolbar for unlinked editing.

Hey thank you for the detailed response. That’s interesting and helpful. the thing is I’ve been doing video post in reaper for a while including some pretty high resolution stuff and haven’t run into this issue until today on a small, short 720P video. So that’s why I’m reporting this as a possible bug and am wondering if anyone else is experiencing it.

[nottooloud]

Confirming that I have just noticed this recently, despite having used Reaper on this computer to handle video for years.