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innovative_project4896
innovative_project4896
Participant
October 1, 2026
Answered

Problems viewing masked clips on playback

  • October 1, 2026
  • 5 replies
  • 30 views

Anybody else having problems seeing a masked clip when you press play on the timeline? I have a few clips with a simple pen mask on each and, for some reason, every time I press play to watch a section I don't see the clips at all. Once I pause they're there, though. The clips are enabled, and they show up when rendered so as far as I can tell there's no reason they shouldn't be visible on playback. Thanks!

 

Edit: Okay, seconds after I posted this I figured it out. If you have your timeline anywhere below full resolution that clip is gone on playback. Why this happens, though, I’ve got no clue.

    Correct answer Kevin-Monahan

    HI ​@innovative_project4896,

    Glad you discovered that. Thank you for sharing. As for the anomaly, it might depend on the video codec, frame rate, frame size, and your hardware, or a combination of both. it also might be a known issue. Let us know further details, I can pass those along to the team for testing. 

    Cheers,
    Kevin

    5 replies

    innovative_project4896
    innovative_project4896Author
    Participant
    October 2, 2026

    Codec is h.264 for every clip on the timeline, frame sizes are 720x480 for the affected footage and 2880x2160 for everything else. As far as hardware I’m on a Mac mini with a 10 core M4 chip and 24 gigs of memory, it’s been able to handle basically everything I’ve thrown at it so far. There’s a framerate mismatch that’s probably causing this, the footage that’s been masked (that 720x480 clip) is 30fps whereas the timeline is 24fps. I do wonder why it works with the full resolution playback though, I’ve been editing all day and since it’s been on full there have been no problems.

    Community Manager
    Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    October 2, 2026

    Cool.

    Yeah, the old SD clips might be the culprit. Are these old miniDV or DVCAM files? If so, you've got not only scaling but deinterlacing going on, so that does take quite a load on any computer. Conforming the clips to a common codec or creating proxies might help. Let us know if any of these ideas might work for you. I'd be interested.


    Thanks,
    Kevin

    innovative_project4896
    innovative_project4896Author
    Participant
    October 2, 2026

    They’re miniDV, I tried using a proxy but that hasn’t worked. Also attempted to do Replace Footage with no success.

    Community Manager
    Kevin-MonahanCommunity ManagerCorrect answer
    Community Manager
    October 1, 2026

    HI ​@innovative_project4896,

    Glad you discovered that. Thank you for sharing. As for the anomaly, it might depend on the video codec, frame rate, frame size, and your hardware, or a combination of both. it also might be a known issue. Let us know further details, I can pass those along to the team for testing. 

    Cheers,
    Kevin

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