Concepts & signal flow
Video formats & codecs help
The Video formats & codecs questions live-event techs bring to Ask Roadie most (also called codec, EDID, frame rate, H.264). Pick your symptom, or describe your own in plain words, and get the likeliest fix first, with the manual page when there is one.
Common Video formats & codecs questions
What techs run into most, and what's usually behind it. The step-by-step fix for your exact topic is in Ask Roadie.
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.mov or .mp4 file still won't play even after checking format
Short answer: Playback support is determined by the codec, not the file extension.
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Best DXV settings for Resolume, and why DXV only runs fast in Resolume
Short answer: DXV is Resolume's own GPU codec; its decompressor is built into Resolume, so hardware acceleration doesn't carry to other apps.
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Clip stutters, hitches, or drifts out of sync over its length
Short answer: Show servers assume a fixed frame duration to schedule frames against the genlock/output clock.
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Editor/operator can't scrub or jump around a clip smoothly
Short answer: Long-GOP stores most frames as differences from a keyframe, so random access requires decoding a whole GOP; intra-frame stores each frame whole, enabling instant seek — essential for scrubbing and jumping to arbitrary cue points.
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Embedded audio in the video file won't play or drifts out of sync on the server
Short answer: Playback servers are built to schedule video frames against the output clock; embedded audio is often a second-class citizen and some intra-frame codecs have no audio stream at all.
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Green/pink/magenta tint or odd colors, usually on SD or up/down-converted content
Short answer: Rec.601 and Rec.709 use different luma coefficients to derive Y from RGB.
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Playback looks washed-out / milky (grey blacks) or crushed blacks & clipped whites
Short answer: Y'CbCr video is graded to a 16-235 range; if any stage in the chain assumes 0-255 (or the reverse) it stretches or compresses the levels, lifting or crushing black.
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Text, logos, or sharp graphics look soft, fuzzy, or have colored fringing on edges
Short answer: Luma is stored full-res but 4:2:0 shares one chroma sample across a 2x2 block, so colored edges lose spatial detail and bleed.
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Too many H.264/H.265 layers choke the server even though the GPU has headroom
Short answer: H.264/H.265 are inter-frame (long-GOP): each frame depends on others, forcing serialized decode on a dedicated hardware block with limited parallel sessions.
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Visible banding / posterization on gradients and skies
Short answer: Smooth gradients need enough bit depth and bitrate to represent adjacent tones distinctly; 8-bit / heavy compression quantizes them into visible steps.
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When should I use NotchLC vs HAP?
Short answer: All three are GPU-decoded intra-frame codecs, so they scale to many simultaneous layers where H.264 chokes.
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Which ProRes flavor should I export, and how big will it be?
Short answer: ProRes is an intra-frame (all-I) codec, so every frame is independently compressed — it scrubs and edits instantly and survives multiple generations.
Not on the list? Describe it your way, or paste the error code off the display. Ask Roadie works the problem with you until it's fixed or you have a clear next move.
How Ask Roadie helps with Video formats & codecs
- 1. Pick Video formats & codecs. It's already in the list.
- 2. Describe what you're seeing. In your own words, or the error code off the screen.
- 3. Get the likeliest fix first. Steps in order, the manual page when there is one, and a note when other techs have confirmed it.
- 4. Still broken? Tap 👎 and it keeps going from where you left off.