Hi I inserted a quicktime in my project. By default it places itself at mesure 1 of the project. Fact is I want it to start at measure 3 because I want 2 mesures of pre count before recording. It is clearely stated in the manual that I can adjust the video start time eather numerically or simply by clicking on the video track header and dragging it left or right. In practice, it doesn't work at all! If I try to set the start time numerically I can't because it is greyed out, and if I try to click the header of the video track, nothing happens... It is as if the video was locked in place at mesure 01:01:000.... Stupidly enough, I can crop and stretch the lenght of the video all I want (which is totally useless), but it always stays butted at the beginning of the project at mesure 01:01:000. I waited for YEARS for Sonar to make their video features to work half decently, it still is not working...  I upgraded to Sonar Platinum in expectation that they would have fixed the video bugs but it is still not working... I think I will ask for my money back... Does anyone have ideas for a work around?

Please read this: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR%20X3&language=3&help=Tutorial8.4.html
 
and this:
https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Troubleshooting.10.html
 
The Media foundation engine doesn't yet support changing the video start time due to Microsoft limitations.

Thank you! I I switched to DirectShow and things seem to work nicely now. Just one question: Why does Sonar default to Media Fondation if it is not working properly? What are the advantages?

Media foundation works properly - in face better than Directshow since it has a lot more format support including MPEG4 as well as the Gopro codec. The main issue is with setting offsets on the timeline. We have submitted this issue to MS a long time ago and are waiting for a resolution.
Most people don't need to reposition video on the timeline so we chose to provide the Media foundation engine as a default since its superior in all other ways. Directshow is actually deprecated by MS and issues in it will never be addressed.
Rest assured that we will release an update to address the timeline positioning issue in Media foundation as soon as the backing technology is available from MS. Thanks for your patience.

Thank you for your reply. Howerver I do not agree with the assomption that users do not need to move the video start point. It is essential to anybody doing serious music to picture work. For example, music doesent always start on a first beat, think a bit and you will find many  movie themes that start with a pick-up (Star Wars main Theme is a good example). How do you imagine one can cue a theme that starts on a forth beat at the beguinning of a video when the video is forced to start on the first beat? Many videos come with a preceding Two Second Beep synch lead in and production will want you to deliver a mix with a Two Beep to aling to picture.. There again, it becomes very difficult to include this in your workflow when you are stuck with the video starting ar mesure 1...  There are many other cases where it is necessary to move the video start... This said, thank God you did not drop the Direct Show format and please do not drop it untill you have resolved the Media Foundation Issues. I think you jumped the gun when making Media Foundation the default video engine and you should have at least warned users about the start point issue, and should have given the user a easier way to switch between the two video engines. You risk havin users that face the same dilema as me and instead of seeking solutions online would have just said F%$& this and switch to another DAW platform.  To finish, I would like to say rhat as much as respect Cakewalks commitment to create a great DAW, it is apparent that there doesn't seem to be any competent post production consutant on the team because anyone that is working regularly in post production would have flagged thease basic flaws right away... Sonar seems to be geared mostly towards musicians that produce music as a hobby or even professionally in the form of songs and electronica and it certainely has the power to deliver. But not catering efficiantly to musicians that work in the real post-production world is disqualifying your product to a certain portion of the artists that are amongnst  the most prolific and talented users..  

I really wish the next update for Sonar would focus on video. NOT video editing. It's not a video editing program and we don't need it to be and that's OK... But just the bare bare bare minimum video features like choosing where to put a video on the timeline... again, NOT trimming, NOT combining multiple clips, NOT editing... just starting a video at 2:01:000 instead of 1:01:000... or better yet,1:01:120 or 240 or wherever we want. And continuing to firm up video format support. I'm trying to use a 300mb mp4 video I got from a client, and Sonar just pauses for a solid 3-5 seconds every time I hit play. My computer is an i7, 32gb ram, and I've written music to films much larger in file size before and  not had this issue. It just seems like everything with video is a big crapshoot.
 
Right now I'm using Sony Vegas to convert the clients video to a low res avi to hopefully get the performance I need, while also adding 0.20 seconds of blank space to the beginning of the video which if my math was right should land everything where I need it to be (it probably wasn't... because I'm terrible at math... and that's why I want to just drag the damn video to the right a bit haha).

An Update: My "lower res" avi file ended up being ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT GIGABYTES... Haha. Yea... I'm a music guy, not a film guy... So clearly I have no clue what I'm doing with video codecs... Just let me drag the video a little left or a little right. Please. I'll be over here trying a different preset...

polarbear
An Update: My "lower res" avi file ended up being ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT GIGABYTES... Haha. Yea... I'm a music guy, not a film guy... So clearly I have no clue what I'm doing with video codecs... Just let me drag the video a little left or a little right. Please. I'll be over here trying a different preset...

Hi There is a way to slide the Video around like in other DAWs.. If you read the recomendations of Noel Borthwick  who posted on this thread you can fix it. Sonar has two Video Engines: Media Foundation (newest Windows engine) and DirectShow (Legacy Engine). Sonar decided to default to Media Foundation because it is compatible with more video formats. Sonar teem knew also that this engine had a bug about locking the video at mesure 1 but they though it was not an issue (duh...) So what you have to do is follow the link Noel Borthwick  posted in this thread and disable Media Foundation's default. Some videos will still call Media Foundation but others not. After disabling Media Foundation default, here is what I did:


I imported a Quicktime in Sonar, it still loaded in Media Foundation mode (probabbly because it wasn't compatible with DirectShow)... BUT, I proceded to export this video out of Sonar using Sonar's Export Video feature, and choosed WMV format as the output format. I then loaded this newly created WMV version of the video in Sonar and Bingo it loaded in DirectShow mode and now life is sweet! I can drag the video around, resize it, just like in every other DAW! Now, the only thing missing is the hability to load multiple videos in the same session...

I tried in in X3, and I've tried it in each update of Sonar Platinum. Adding the two lines is not hard but it never actually allows me to slide the video around like I used to be able to in much older versions of Sonar. And like I said in a previous post, some video formats end up making there be a 3-5 second lag when hitting play, which makes working very difficult.
 
HOWEVER, the suggestion to load in a video then export it as wmv and then reimport it... That I haven't tried. Maybe I'll give that a try and see if it helps matters. Thanks. :-)

polarbear
I tried in in X3, and I've tried it in each update of Sonar Platinum. Adding the two lines is not hard but it never actually allows me to slide the video around like I used to be able to in much older versions of Sonar. And like I said in a previous post, some video formats end up making there be a 3-5 second lag when hitting play, which makes working very difficult.
 
HOWEVER, the suggestion to load in a video then export it as wmv and then reimport it... That I haven't tried. Maybe I'll give that a try and see if it helps matters. Thanks. :-)

All I can say is, it works now...