Audio Waveform Generation got so much worse in Latest 2025 versions

This would be a game changer. I was recently assistant editing on a documentary and deleting interactive audio tracks in a stringout (some Sony cameras shoot eight tracks of audio, most of which are empty). I mistakenly deleted some audio clips that had sound on them because the waveforms took 20 to 30 minutes to generate. I also often have to manually sync things, which is impossible to do without audio waveforms.

This one goes in the category of “this is absolutely 100% essential” rather than “this would be an interesting bonus feature but isn’t absolutely essential”. 

I can’t explain how frustrated I am with this change. Not only do I have to wait forever for the waveform to generate, but it also doesn’t save the peak files forever either. I opened an earlier project from a few months ago because i needed to add more footage. Now it’s spending 8 minutes to generate a waveform that I don’t even need (I ended up changing settings to it saves the peak file in the same folder as the file). After this, if it even starts generating the waveform I need, I’m going to be wasting 25 minutes to generate all these files. And I NEED to have the waveform generated ASAP because i need to sync 4 different cameras before I even start editing.

This used to take a fraction of the time, I don’t understand why it’s taking so long now. It’s a real hinderance on my workflow. If it’s going to take this long, we should at least be able to stop a certian file from being “prepared” and prioritize the files we need. 

I really can’t stand how long I am trapped by this endless waiting for the waveform. This has been happening for way too long.  It used to work fine and we could get to editing almost right away so it should be technically possible to revert it or fix it somehow . I’ve probably wasted at least 10-15 minutes today across 3 projects waiting for the (lack of) “progress” to complete and show my waveform.

Please improve this feature, it’s really time consuming and frustrating especially when the edit is ready. Why reload stuff that has been saved already?

Can confirm this behavior is still happening in the current 26.02 version--extremely slow generation of the visual waveform with no access to it until it reaches 100% completion.  If I want to know how it is progressing, I still have to open the now relatively massive “Progress” panel which needs to be about 17 times larger than the old lower right .25” by x 1.25”  temporary progress gauge. It can’t be viewed any narrower than 1.5” and can’t be shrunk any shorter than 5 inches tall in any case. 

Hi @ratzo_

Would you mind sharing a video of what you are seeing on your end? We have done internal testing with the new multithreading feature and are seeing faster results, so it would be really helpful to understand what you are experiencing so we can investigate and fix it.

Thanks so much!

I agree. For longer videos, such as livestreams that have sometimes upwards of 10 hours of footage, having to wait for the whole waveform to be generated adds so much dead time to the editing sessions...and having multithread doesn't seem to help much since the time it take to actually show the waveform seems to be considerably longer than on previous versions. I hope they manage a fix to this or at least make it so that we're able to see the waveform as they generate.

Thanks. I ended up reverting to an earlier version and will plan on stay there for the forseeable future.

Thanks for sharing the video, it was very helpful for understanding what you’re seeing.

Waveform generation itself has not become slower between recent versions. When comparing an older release and the current one using the same media and settings, waveform generation completed in the same amount of time, and waveforms appeared progressively as each clip finished processing.

What can impact the total time is when waveform generation runs at the same time as other background analysis tasks. If multiple analyses are happening in parallel, waveform generation may take longer to complete, which can make it feel slower overall.

If you prefer to prioritize waveform generation, you can reduce background processing by turning off Media Intelligence analysis and Audio Tagging in Preferences. This can help waveforms generate more quickly, especially on large or complex projects.

We know this can affect perceived performance, and improving how background analysis tasks is something we’re are looking at. Thanks again for taking the time to report this.

To me it definitely feels slower than before because of this delay showing it.   Here is the screen capture I started partway through the import process--dragged two .wavs totaling 2.5 hours into the 2nd audio track to sync with the original video 's audio, but can't start aligning them (I do it manually because the autosync matching is also slow). The preparing audio sits there at 12% for a long time, then several minutes later the waveform finally draws--you can see I am at 0/00 on the timeline and nothing is there until it finishes. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C00mXcY5xo-8y_ZNmNXF-lhL77eQMKmv/view?usp=drive_link