Troubleshooting issues with video

If you experience problems with video performance in Ableton Live, follow the steps in this guide to troubleshoot. Select the steps for your specific issue:

macOS or Windows

Video playback is glitchy or sluggish in Live
Video screen remains black
"Video Window" option is greyed out in the menu
"Create Video" button in the export dialog box is greyed-out
"An error occurred while rendering the video" appears on export

Windows

Video cannot be imported
Live 11 or earlier: Live hangs or crashes while exporting video 

Video playback is glitchy or sluggish in Live

Using a highly compressed video with a low keyframe interval incurs a high CPU demand. This may result in glitchy or sluggish playback in Live. To resolve this, you can re-encode the video with a higher keyframe interval, following the steps below using the open source video transcoder Handbrake.fr.

1. First, check the fps of the video.

• On macOS, you can find this in Quicktime Player by pressing CMD + I to open the Video Inspector, then open Video Details.
• On Windows, in File Explorer, right-click on the video file, and select Properties, then open the Details tab.

2. Open Handbrake and select the Production Proxy preset from the Presets menu:

3. Click on the Video tab and type the desired value into the Additional Options field. In most cases, you can use the value of the video's fps. 

4. Render the video and import it into Live.​​

Video Screen remains black

If the video screen remains black after you've imported a video, but the audio plays normally, this could be happening for one of the following reasons:

macOS

iPhoto Slideshow Movies

Imported iPhoto slideshow movies play sound, but only show a black screen instead of video. To resolve this, slideshows have to be exported from iPhoto using the “Slideshow” tab instead of the “Quicktime” tab in the export window.

Windows

Follow these steps to troubleshoot a black video window in Live on Windows:

1. Switch from dedicated to integrated graphics
   Make sure that your graphic drivers are updated. If the problem persists, try switching from the dedicated graphics card (e.g. NVIDIA) to the integrated card. This can be done via the NVIDIA control panel, in "Program Settings". To do this, right-click on the Desktop and select the NVIDIA control panel from the context menu. Go to “Program Settings”, and select Ableton Live (if Live does not appear in the list, click "Add" and add it). Then select the integrated graphics card:
   
   If this still doesn't help, right-click on the Ableton icon and select the integrated card:
   
2. Disconnect secondary monitor.
   In some cases video issues occur when using two computer screens. For example, the video window may remain black if it is positioned on the secondary monitor, but plays correctly from the primary screen. In case the monitors are used for Arrangement and Session View, a possible workaround is to use TAB in order to swap Arrangement / Session view and use the primary monitor to preview the video.

"Video Window" option is greyed out in the menu

If you haven't imported a video, the Video Window menu option is not available:
​​​​
Video is only supported for files imported to Arrangement View. Video files imported into Session are treated as audio files. 

"An error occurred while rendering the video" appears on export

If the message "An error occurred while rendering the video" appears on video export, Live may not have sufficient permissions for the chosen export location. Try choosing a different export location, such as the Desktop. For how to adjust permissions, visit How to enable full read/write permissions

Also, if exporting fails, please confirm that the video file actually plays back in Live. If not, follow the tips above to re-encode the video to a supported format, or visit the guide Using Video.

"Create Video" button in the export dialog box is greyed-out

Video is exported along with an audio file. When exporting video, enable the Encode PCM button in the export dialog box, then select WAV, AIFF or FLAC. You may also enable an MP3 audio file to be created in addition to the PCM file. Then you can select Create Video and choose your export settings. 

Video cannot be imported (Windows)

Live only supports videos that can be played in Windows Media Player. If your mouse cursor turns into the “forbidden” symbol when you try to import a video file into Live, check that you are not running Live as Administrator. Running Live at a different level of permissions than Windows File Explorer can cause this Windows permissions issue, and prevent file import. Here’s how to check if Live is running as Administrator on Windows.

Live 11 and earlier:

• If you receive the error message “The file could not be read. It may be corrupt or not licensed," or if attempting to import video causes a crash, uninstall all codec packs on your computer, and install only the Haali Media Splitter, as outlined in the article Using Video.
• If the video window is black and shows the message "Could not decode video," check your video file's dimensions in the Dimensions tab of Handbrake. Haali Media Splitter cannot decode files with dimensions greater than 1080p (1920×1080).
• If Live crashes when importing a video, you can re-encode the video file to the H.264 codec using Handbrake. To do this, open Handbrake and select Production Standard from the Preset menu.
  

Live 11 or earlier: Live hangs or crashes while exporting video (Windows)

Crashes while exporting video from Live on Windows can sometimes occur when the audio export settings are set to a bit depth value other than 16. When exporting video from Live on Windows, set Bit Depth to 16 in Live's Export Audio/Video settings, as shown below: