OpenShot
timeline issues
when I am using the timeline and I press play for the display window it does not respond to the pause button very well and can take up to 10 secs to stop this is for both the app image and the PPA version of 3.20 -- this does not happen in the previous version. what I am doing and why i need it to be responsive. I am adding png files to the timeline that contain writing and I need them to match up with the soundtrack. so the words on the screen when thy at the end match the soundtrack I use pause and then adjust the size of the png displayed to match that time marker and then progress to the next image... System Details: linux mint 21.3
Hello @jammer699669.
- When you say previous version, do you know which version that was?
- Here are a few things to try: a. Version 3.2.1 was just released. Although it does not directly address the issue you are experiencing I would go ahead and give that a try:
- go to openshot.org and download v3.2.1 AppImage (PPA may not have v3.2.1, yet).
- make it executable and run it.
b. Change Cache settings in Edit | Preferences
Cache Pre-roll:: Min Frames = 24 <--Change this to 48 Cache Pre-roll:: Max Frames = 48 <--Change this to 96 Cache Ahead (Percent) = .70 <--Don't change this Cache Max Frames = 600 <-- Change this to 1024 (this is the max) Cache Limit (MB) = 512 <-- Change this 2048.
These are experimental at this time. Just because you have lots of RAM doesn't mean to up the "Cache Limit (MB)" value. Making this very large but not having a very high end gaming/video editing computer will really slow things down.
You can bump the "Cache Limit (MB)" to 4096 if you have a powerful computer.
c. Make your preview window smaller.
d. Ultimately, when you Export, the exported file should not exhibit those symptoms.
Note: I have found that as my project gets larger and/or more complex, changing the "Cache Limit (MB)" to 1024-2048 helps while editing (better response) and then 2048-4096 while reviewing (plays smoother). The nice part is you do not have to restart OpenShot when you make this change.
Hello @jammer699669 Did you get a chance to make the changes I suggested? If yes, what are your results?
Bit of a story I got sick and had to leave australia and back in canada. So just out of the hospital now. I am waiting on monitors so I can set me system up again and after that I will definitely try what you suggested. This crappy old laptop I am using right now lacks the power to use openshot in any real way. But I do thank you for your relies. James
Hope you are doing better. I look forward to seeing your results based on the changes I suggested.
I downloaded the new appimage and tried the suggestions but it remains the same. it lags when pressing the pause button on the timeline
Hello @jammer699669 Since those changes did not help with v3.2.1. You can try one more thing whiles editing and that is to change the Profile to something of a lower resolution (this is in conjunction to all the other changes suggested in this thread). You can still change the profile to preview and/or Export using the profile you want to export to.
Next we need to focus on the following:
- What are your computer specs: CPU, GPU/RAM, RAM, hard disk type, and how much free space)?
- Is your computer a laptop or desktop?
- The size and complexity of your project: a. What is the duration of your project? b. Are you using transitions, effects, etc? c. How large are you video/audio files you are importing?
I have been doing the same thing for a long time and do not have the issue in 3.11. All I m trying to do is sync the png image which contains words with the sound track. This has worked for all previous upgrades to get to 3.11. There is an issue or bug with 3.21 that causes the lack of response with with the timeline. It should just stop playing when you press the pause button and it does not. I have no idea as to why but it does the same thing on the laptop as my desktop both running linux mint 21.3
Hello @jammer699669 I have a Linux Mint running in a virtualbox environment. I just created a new project with small video clip that has adio as well. I then created two image files with a single text line in them (a .SVG and a .PNG). I puth the video/audio file onto Track 4 & both the .svg & .png text onto Track 5 overlaying the audio/video clip. The two image files are snapped together.
I am able to preview and stop the preview without any issues.
Which Theme are you using in OpenShot?
It would also help if you provide the information I asked in my previous response.
- What are your computer specs: CPU, GPU/RAM, RAM, hard disk type, and how much free space)?
- Is your computer a laptop or desktop?
- The size and complexity of your project: a. What is the duration of your project? b. Are you using transitions, effects, etc? c. How large are you video/audio files you are importing?
I think you have missed the point version 3.11 works with out any issues at all. I am doing the same things I have been doing for years. I have tried it on both my laptop and computer. The laptop is really old and barely works so not sure if that counts. Average project size is 15 minutes. Not using transitions etc. audio files ave a max of say 5 minutes vid files ( no audio )a max of 6.5 minutes. CPU AMD BlacK no GPU just a regular vid card 32 GIG memory total of 6 terra space. Theme is Humanity dark. The basic issue is simple why does 3.11 work no problem with the preview start and stop and the newest version does not respond well. I can take a saved project and that is working flawlessly in 3.11 and when I run it on 3.21 I have major issues with the preview stopping when I press the button.
Hello @jammer699669 Not missing the point. Just trying to gather information and trying to replicate your environment. Like I mentioned, I am unable to replicate your issue in the Linux Mint environment that I have (running as a virtual guest on my Windows 11 host).
I am going to assign this to the lead developer so he can chime in and see what else can be done to troubleshoot.
One last thing to try is this:
- Close OpenShot if running.
- Make a backup of /home/username/.openshot_qt folder. Keep this around for a bit.
- Delete /home/username/.openshot_qt folder.
- Run the AppImage, open your project and try again.
ok I will give that a whirl. Still makes no sense to me why it is doing what it is doing. I may also try setting up a virtual OS to test as well
I'm also facing this bug. The current version from the PPA has the problem, but the version natively available from apt (2.5.1) runs fine. I'm on a variant of Ubuntu 22.04 with an NVidia GPU. Happy to give further system details if you tell me what you need.
Hello @cohnt
- What is the current version from the PPA?
- You should not be running v2.x.x & v3.x.x together. The openshot.settings file in /home/username/.openshot_qt folder should not be shared between the 2.x.x & 3.x.x versions. You will definitely experience issues. Additionally, projects created in v2.x.x may not transfer gracefully to v3.x.x. This is all dependent on what features/functionality you are leveraging.
Here is what you should do:
- Close OpenShot if running.
- Make a backup of /home/username/.openshot_qt folder. You needed to make a backup before you ran v.3.x.x but how would you have known that????
- got to openshot.org/download/#daily and download the latest dev daily build available AppImage.
- Make the AppImage executable and run it. Note: If OpenShot does not start it is because it needs libfuse2 which can be installed via by running this: sudo apt install libfuse2
Let us know if running the AppImage resolved your issue. If you have old projects that you created using v2.x.x you may want to recreate those projects instead of opening the existing ones.
I tried installing from the stable PPA, the daily PPA, the daily appimage, and the stable appimage, removing my ~/.openshot_qt folder each time. In all three cases, the timeline was extremely laggy to the point of being unusable, as described in the original issue.
For now, I'm going to freshly install the version I get by default from apt, since that's the only one that's usable on my machine. But I'm happy to help debug the issues with the current version.
Thank you @cohnt for all that information.
As a reminder, do not mix the .../.openshot_qt folder between the 2.x.x and 3.x.x. Depending on the complexity of your project(s) and your customization, have separate back ups for 2.x.x & 3.x.x.
Since you are having issues with the 3.x.x and you will be running 2.5.1 it will be safe to let 3.x.x create a new copy of .../.openshot_qt folder.
With that said, please do this:
-
Provide details of your computer. This will help troubleshooting as well. Video editors require lots of resources to run well. a. Is your computer a laptop or desktop? b. What is the CPU, RAM, GPU/RAM, and hard disk drive type? c. Is the GPU integrated or stand alone?
-
Using the v3.2.1 AppImage please try these Cache settings (I am not sure if you tried these or not):
a. Change Cache settings in Edit | Preferences | Cache tab
Cache Pre-roll:: Min Frames = 24 <--Change this to 48 Cache Pre-roll:: Max Frames = 48 <--Change this to 96 Cache Ahead (Percent) = .70 <--Don't change this Cache Max Frames = 600 <-- Change this to 1024 (this is the max) Cache Limit (MB) = 512 <-- Change this 2048.
These are experimental at this time. Just because you have lots of RAM doesn't mean to up the "Cache Limit (MB)" value. Making this very large but not having a very high end gaming/video editing computer will really slow things down.
You can bump the "Cache Limit (MB)" to 4096 if you have a powerful computer otherwise 2048 should suffice.
Note: What works for me (I have an intermediate gaming desktop and still experience performance issues at times) for the "Cache Limit (MB)" is to set it to 2048 when I am editing. The Cache rebuild happens faster. You might even try 1024 if your project is small and not that complex. And then, when I am ready to preview, I change the value to 2048 or a bit higher, when you are previewing. The good news is that changing the value does NOT require a restart of OpenShot.
c. Make your preview window smaller.
d. Ultimately, when you Export, the exported file should not exhibit those symptoms.
I have a laptop computer with an i9-12900 CPU, 64GB RAM, a 3080 TI GPU (discrete, 16GB VRAM), and an SSD.
Using these cache settings did not help, nor did making the preview window smaller. I can confirm that the exported video does not have these issues, but it's still very hard to edit with how laggy the timeline is.
Thank you @cohnt for all that. You definitely have a capable computer so yeah, performance improvements is much needed in OpenShot.
I should say that I do think this is a bug rather than a performance issue. The preview window renders just fine -- it's the timeline itself that seizes up.
Any movement on the issue? Anything I can do to help identify the cause of the bug?
The app remains borderline unusable for me, which is very sad.
I've pinged the lead developer to see what can be done to better troubleshoot this.
The issue is still unresolved for 3.2.1 however it seems top work under version 3.30
@jammer699669 do you mean that it's working for you on 3.3.0? Because that's the version I'm having the issue on.
@cohnt I have 2 computers now and the one is running Linux Mint 22 and a AMD Ryzen 7 2700 cpu and Nvidia 4060 and it has no issues running 3.21 or 3.30 appimage. the other one is older.. CPU AMD BlacK no GPU just a regular vid card linuxMint 21.3 and it failed with the timeline issue on PPA and or the appimage of 2.31 but now the problem is gone using the appimage of 3.30. What my thoughts are is that there maybe something in the system and what other software and libraries I am using that may cause the problem. I don't know. I have no tried a clean install of LinuxMint 21.3 so not sure where the issue lies. what I can say is that everything that was suggested did not solve the issue and why 3.30 works for me now , also uncertain
Thank you @jammer699669 for the FYI. Without having similar system setup it is difficult to troubleshoot. Unless the lead developer gets involved in troubleshooting (challenging at best not having similar environments) I'd say feel free to close this posting.
@Colorjet3 way back in my old tech days for one company we had to install glider cards to be used for a specific CAD package, so it took very specific drivers not juts for the video card but other things in the system as well. If everything did not perfectly match problems happened in the weirdest ways. Having a software package like OpenShot running on many different systems is tough enough so the answer to this issue is not straight forward like fixing an error in the code. I would close this because it is resolved more or less for me but not for @cohnt who still has the issue so maybe someone will come up with a solution for him
I'm also facing this bug. The current version from the PPA has the problem, but the version natively available from apt (2.5.1) runs fine. I'm on a variant of Ubuntu 22.04 with an NVidia GPU. Happy to give further system details if you tell me what you need.
Hello @cohnt Please give v3.3.0 AppImage a try and let us know if this resolves your issue.
Please give v3.3.0 AppImage a try and let us know if this resolves your issue.
Just tested it -- no luck, the issue is still present.
A follow up question. Does this happen with any project or just a specific project?
- If it happens with most simplest project then there has to be something else going on with your build.
- If it happens with only this project the we need to do a deep dive into this project to see what might be the root cause.
Happens on even the simplest projects. I've been testing by just dropping a single video clip onto the timeline and pressing "play". (This includes after clearing my ~/.openshot_qt folder and doing a fresh install.)
@cohnt what OS are you using? a separate idea.. can you try running virtualbox and setting up a new OS install and see if you have the same issue