How do I enable video engine in Pro Tools?

If you use Pro Tools 12 then you may not be aware that when the Avid Video Engine is turned on in your Playback Settings, that it immediately allocates nearly 3GB of memory before you open a Session. We show you how to deal with this.

The Pro Tools Expert team have tested this on both Mac and Windows computers and the current version of Pro Tools does seem to use nearly 3GB of valuable memory resources.

Pro Tools 12 and Avid Video Engine memory usage examples for Mac and Windows

In their compatibility charts for Mac and Windows for both Pro Tools 12 HD and Pro Tools 12 Avid say that the minimum recommended specification for using Pro Tools is 8GB, so if you use a computer that has just 8GB of memory, with Pro Tools running as well as the Avid Video Engine only around 4GB will be available for everything else when using Pro Tools. This may not such an issue if you are just editing audio and not using any other applications at the same time, but if you are using virtual instruments as well as other background applications that take up memory then it may be an issue.

What Should You Do?

If you don't need to use video then turn it off, this is how.

Go to Settings/Playback Engine and uncheck the Enable option.

If you do need to use Avid Video Engine in Pro Tools then we suggest you turn it on and off on a per-project basis. 

If you have memory constraints then you may also want to consider turning off any other apps that take up memory when using Pro Tools.

Other Options For Video Power Users

We have spoken at length about the excellent Video Slave 3 from Non-Lethal Applications, which has a host of great features and also takes up a tiny 64MB of RAM when its and using its optimised video engine.

Even with its optimised video engine and great feature set, the option to take the video load away from the DAW either on the same machine or another one must be very appealing for those wanting to use video with Pro Tools.

Read our review of Video Slave 3