Old 07-19-2015, 05:08 PM   #1
Bezmotivnik
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Default Media Item Won't Insert in New Install

.MP4 "media item" strangely won't go into new Reaper 4.78 installation on the new box via drag-and-drop or otherwise. Just shows error message in Reaper. Worked fine in previous install and the .MP4 file itself is fine.

Any thoughts? Does recognition of this file type have to be preconfigured somewhere I've missed? I imported my exported Reaper config file from the old box, which looks like it may have worked, but the .MP4 doesn't show up in the saved/loaded project, nor can it be successfully imported into a new one.

Any thoughts on this?

Oh, and how do you toggle the media view screen?

Many thanks!
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Old 07-19-2015, 06:13 PM   #2
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This will happen if you run Reaper as admin...did you change that?
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Old 07-19-2015, 06:15 PM   #3
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See which "Decoding engine" is selected in Options > Preferences > Media > Video
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Old 07-19-2015, 10:06 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by richie43 View Post
This will happen if you run Reaper as admin...did you change that?
No, not if it required me to choose that option to do so.
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Old 07-19-2015, 10:08 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
See which "Decoding engine" is selected in Options > Preferences > Media > Video
Will do.

However, I never (knowingly) changed this from default in either installation.

Do I need to install LAME (or something like it) for .MP4 files?
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Old 07-20-2015, 12:14 AM   #6
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Originally Posted by Bezmotivnik View Post
Will do.

However, I never (knowingly) changed this from default in either installation.

Do I need to install LAME (or something like it) for .MP4 files?
MP4 is usually video format. Are you trying to load a video?
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Old 07-20-2015, 11:48 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
MP4 is usually video format. Are you trying to load a video?
Yes, and it worked perfectly in the previous installation on the old box on the first try. Little viewing window came up and everything. Saved project, reopened it, everything fine.
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Old 07-20-2015, 11:53 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by Bezmotivnik View Post
Yes, and it worked perfectly in the previous installation on the old box on the first try. Little viewing window came up and everything. Saved project, reopened it, everything fine.
Thanks, what was the decoding engine set to? I know you didn't change it but I'm more concerned as to what it actually is than how it got to be whatever it is. Airon also has a video playback thread (somewhere). And to be faithful to richie43s idea, does it work when using "insert media item" instead of drag and drop?
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Old 07-20-2015, 12:12 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
See which "Decoding engine" is selected in Options > Preferences > Media > Video
Ah! The light maybe begins to dawn...

"Use Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR)" is checked and it shows VLC as the selected "preferred video decoding engine" instead of the other two options, FFmpeg and OS native.

I was concerned that installing VLC on this box might force settings in Reaper that were incorrect, but I had VLC on the earlier box with no problem.
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Old 07-20-2015, 12:20 PM   #10
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So, which decoding engine should be selected?
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Old 07-20-2015, 12:23 PM   #11
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Originally Posted by Bezmotivnik View Post
So, which decoding engine should be selected?
The one that works. I have VLC installed and that is the one I have selected otherwise I'd try the FFMpeg engine if it is there but I'm not versed in getting video to playback in Reaper. Just mentioning the first couple places I know to look.
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Old 07-20-2015, 12:37 PM   #12
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I uninstalled everything, VLC, Reaper...

Starting from scratch with a new Reaper install and no VLC, using the default ffmpg decoder, I get the identical results an error when I try to import the item.
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Old 07-20-2015, 01:11 PM   #13
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Here is the thread I referred to earlier. It was updated a recently as mid-May 2015 so maybe worth a look.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=82459

PS: I don't remember seeing if you had tried "Insert > Media" and also didn't work using that method.
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Old 07-20-2015, 01:19 PM   #14
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I even did a new download of the item to see if it might be somehow be corrupted. No dice.

This is absolutely killing me. Someone help me get this crap figured out. PLEASE!
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Old 07-20-2015, 01:29 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bezmotivnik View Post
I imported my exported Reaper config file from the old box, which looks like it may have worked, but the .MP4 doesn't show up in the saved/loaded project, nor can it be successfully imported into a new one.
So you have never been able to load this specific file into Reaper?

IFUC, mp4 is a container format, the contents of which can be combinations of lots of different video, audio, subtitle etc formats. Maybe this specific mp4 file includes something that lacks a codec on your system.
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Old 07-20-2015, 02:09 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabian View Post
So you have never been able to load this specific file into Reaper?
Oh, yes! Perfectly on the first try!

[This was such an incredibly rare event that when exiting the studio in my excitement, I thoughtlessly bumped the door shut on the computer isolation cabinet and thus overheated the C: drive, destroying everything and starting the three-month quest to rebuild Studio of Death v3.0 with an entirely new box and system. The joy of this we are now experiencing, just trying to get where I was when Studio of Death v2.8 melted down.]

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IFUC, mp4 is a container format, the contents of which can be combinations of lots of different video, audio, subtitle etc formats. Maybe this specific mp4 file includes something that lacks a codec on your system.
That was my thought all along. I am wondering now if I should reinstall VLC [again], which was in place in the old system when all this was working.

In the meantime, I've been pulling all extraneous hardware from the new box that could conceivably cause weirdness.
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Old 07-20-2015, 02:40 PM   #17
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Installing VLC hasn't helped, though the error message isn't popping up.

The file name is in the track, but there's nothing there and there's nothing in the little video window. Reloading the original project shows the name of the video in the track and the track is of the original length, but it's empty, as is the little video window.

Should I start rolling back Reaper versions?
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Old 07-20-2015, 03:03 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
I don't remember seeing if you had tried "Insert > Media" and also didn't work using that method.
"Insert>Media file" is how I'm doing it.

I just checked on my laptop, which has an older test install of Reaper, and I'm getting the identical (non-) response.

Is there a different way to insert media?
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Old 07-20-2015, 04:02 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bezmotivnik View Post
"Insert>Media file" is how I'm doing it.

I just checked on my laptop, which has an older test install of Reaper, and I'm getting the identical (non-) response.

Is there a different way to insert media?
I've been able now to insert it in the laptop's dummy install of Reaper (How? I have no idea. It just started working), but still not here.

I either get the "Could not import..." error, or it loads a blank track with the right name.

I'm going by page 403 in the manual, and this should work.
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Old 07-20-2015, 04:34 PM   #20
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Originally Posted by richie43 View Post
This will happen if you run Reaper as admin...did you change that?
I did, no difference. Thought it might be the problem because the laptop was running as a regular user.

I also thought that in the regular user profile I had some system sound mess I had to undo because there was an intermittent popping noise. After screwing around with that for a while I discovered it was this joker smacking the back of the shelf with his tail.

I tell you, the fun just never stops around here.
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Old 07-20-2015, 06:37 PM   #21
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I did, no difference. Thought it might be the problem because the laptop was running as a regular user.
Just to be clear, what Richie is saying is that right-clicking Reaper.exe and choosing "Run as admin" is NOT what you want to do. That will break any drag and drop of media files into Reaper. However, it would not affect Insert > Media Item, nor would it throw an error, it just wouldn't do anything when dragging/dropping.

I also don't think ^that is your problem based on your description. If it is giving an error that it can't open the video file then that is a codec problem most likely. Can you double click this MP4 and it play on it's own outside of Reaper? And where did it come from? How was it exported, saved, created etc. by which software and was that done on this machine?
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Old 07-20-2015, 07:17 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Just to be clear, what Richie is saying is that right-clicking Reaper.exe and choosing "Run as admin" is NOT what you want to do. That will break any drag and drop of media files into Reaper. However, it would not affect Insert > Media Item, nor would it throw an error, it just wouldn't do anything when dragging/dropping.
It would never occur to me to do something like that. I always try to go the simplest, default way. In the Studio of Death, all the breaks go the wrong way, so I can't go getting fancy with stuff.

Quote:
I also don't think ^that is your problem based on your description. If it is giving an error that it can't open the video file then that is a codec problem most likely. Can you double click this MP4 and it play on it's own outside of Reaper?
Oh yeah, no prob. Plays anywhere, on anything. Just not in this install of Reaper. Just played it on the Reaper box. Just not IN this installation of Reaper.
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And where did it come from?
It's a Youtube download. You don't get any more generic than that.
Quote:
How was it exported, saved, created etc. by which software and was that done on this machine?
It was just pulled down with a media download plugin in Firefox.

My suspicion was that the codec was off, too -- but I can't see how. I have VLC installed and I think it's the 32b version the same as Reaper (for some reason, they seem to discourage downloading 64b Reaper on the site). What little I gathered from that link seemed to indicate that 32/64 conflict could cause problems, but that's not the case here. I just installed VLC yet again and the .MP4 file runs perfectly on it.

Just ran through the whole rigmarole again, reinstalling everything.

No dice on loading this into Reaper.
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Old 07-20-2015, 08:47 PM   #23
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I asked another experienced Reaper guy who said that he (as I did) had no trouble inserting media items with v4.78 on an XP box, but...

"As a matter of curiosity, I installed Reaper 4.78 on a Win7 machine, and tried to do the same. This time I could drop an MP4 into Reaper, but Reaper wasn't recognising it. It gave me a 1 sec file with nothing in it."

This is exactly what's happening on my box, when the file isn't rejected outright.

So, I'm obviously not alone in this weirdness!
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Old 07-21-2015, 02:20 PM   #24
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After poking around some more, I can still find nothing anywhere that would account for this. More "must be a codec problem" advice from stumped people this morning, but nobody can imagine where or how, as there's no problem except in Reaper.

Is it possible that this is actually a Reaper *BUG*?

[The way this studio seems to expensively curse every simple recording endeavor -- year after year -- is absolutely uncanny.]
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Old 07-24-2015, 10:54 PM   #25
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Default Well, it's Fixed...I Guess.

After driving everyone nuts about this to no avail, I encountered a Chinese guy in the UK who said it would work if I essentially just started randomly shoveling various strange codecs into the Win7 install on the shotgun theory that one would fix the problem.

Incredibly, it worked...but it still makes no sense. All the other Reaper installs ran it without these codecs. Why did this install need some obscure codec that the others didn't?

Like they say, though, "if it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid."

This kind of spooky stuff drives me nuts. Recording tomorrow, though!
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Old 07-25-2015, 01:00 AM   #26
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Quote:
guy in the UK who said it would work if I essentially just started randomly shoveling various strange codecs into the Win7 install
Not always a good way to proceed

Anyway, which codec(s) did you add?
Which one(s) made it work?

You must have done something similar on the old box (and which version of Reaper were you running there?)
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Old 07-25-2015, 01:06 PM   #27
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Not always a good way to proceed
It worked.

Nothing else did.

Quote:
Anyway, which codec(s) did you add?
Which one(s) made it work?
Haali Media Splitter was the particular one that actually cleared the problem. Instantly.

Removing this, my correspondent replicated my identical problem on his machine.

Quote:
You must have done something similar on the old box
I positively did not, on either box. All I had was VLC, which will normally do the job almost all the time -- just not on this box.
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(and which version of Reaper were you running there?)
An earlier version, v4.6-something, which is why I regard this as a later bug. I have my own ideas about the root source of the problem, but these are merely deductive, so I'll pass on discussing them.
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