Why are empty audio waveforms still a thing?

I've been a loyal Resolve user since 2016.

Back then, when the audio waveforms would be blank, yet the audio still played fine, I chalked it up to one of the quirks that needed to be ironed out.

Fast forward to 2023, and this still happens.

What gives?

Am I missing something, or does this happen with others too?

In my still, you can see some of the compounds do not show waveforms. I've toggled buttons to no avail.

If I decompose them in place, they will show the correct waveforms.
Also, not all of the comps do this, just some. And all of them have two audio sources.

There have been suggestions (including me chiming in) on the Feature Request section that we have a way to select a clip and force the Visible Waveform to rebuild on command on the Edit page. No luck so far.

DaVinci Resolve Feature Requests
viewforum.php?f=33

[Rohit Gupta]

I've been a loyal Resolve user since 2016.

Back then, when the audio waveforms would be blank, yet the audio still played fine, I chalked it up to one of the quirks that needed to be ironed out.

Fast forward to 2023, and this still happens.

What gives?

Am I missing something, or does this happen with others too?

In my still, you can see some of the compounds do not show waveforms. I've toggled buttons to no avail.

If I decompose them in place, they will show the correct waveforms.
Also, not all of the comps do this, just some. And all of them have two audio sources.

Do you see the missing waveforms only with the compound clips?

There have been suggestions (including me chiming in) on the Feature Request section that we have a way to select a clip and force the Visible Waveform to rebuild on command on the Edit page. No luck so far.

DaVinci Resolve Feature Requests
viewforum.php?f=33

Damn, if Marc requests it and it doesn't get done, then it might be a very difficult issue to fix!

Do you see the missing waveforms only with the compound clips?

No, I see them in various manifestations from time to time. I'm so used to it, I don't even think about it anymore. Only now it's really being a pain.

Hopefully they find and fix the bug rather than adding a feature that lets you more easily live with the bug.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, the same thing happens from time to time.
And this has been going on for over a year now. As well as other problems that I described here in other topics.
This is modern marketing - the main thing here is new raw functions and not bug fixes

Hopefully they find and fix the bug rather than adding a feature that lets you more easily live with the bug.

I could not have said it better myself.

This is the kind of issue that actually hurts them more than they realize.

I preach Resolve and convert many people but this kind of thing just looks unprofessional and doesn't put new users at ease.

Well, this problem can arise from a full cache disk so being able to regenerate the waveforms once the cache is cleaned-up would be useful. Honestly, I haven't noticed this but I will keep my eye out for it. Hopefully BMD will look into this and specifically the code that generates these waveforms to postulate as to why and when the waveform caching could be interrupted.

I've seen it too - with plenty of space left on the disk.
Speaking of disk - I hope BMD makes a general disk space watchdog to make you clean up when you're almost out rather than having strange things happen when totally out of space. And I hope it tells you which disk is full in the message!

Guess I'll make a feature request for this.

Hopefully they find and fix the bug rather than adding a feature that lets you more easily live with the bug.

I'll take a utilitarian fix now vs a utopian fix never any day of the week.

Hopefully they find and fix the bug rather than adding a feature that lets you more easily live with the bug.

I'll take a utilitarian fix now vs a utopian fix never any day of the week.

Exactly! (Though I do love all their crazy features)

Different strokes! I like things to be as clean as possible. Perhaps a character defect!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is such a rule - if it is not fixed within a year, it will never be fixed

There is such a rule - if it is not fixed within a year, it will never be fixed

I dunno about that. The BMD Dev Team often sneaks in an amazing number of fixes and new features with this release. I don't think there's an editing or color program on Earth that has as many new versions per year as Resolve -- they work very, very hard to stay on top of things. But I suspect it's a question of finding the best way to use the resources they can to fix what's necessary "at the moment."

There is such a rule - if it is not fixed within a year, it will never be fixed

I dunno about that. The BMD Dev Team often sneaks in an amazing number of fixes and new features with this release. I don't think there's an editing or color program on Earth that has as many new versions per year as Resolve -- they work very, very hard to stay on top of things. But I suspect it's a question of finding the best way to use the resources they can to fix what's necessary "at the moment."

Yes, you're right - decoding 4K H265 without bugs on regular GPUs and displaying audio waveforms normally on the edit page - it doesn't really have a priority to fix it in a year or more. Of course, there are much more important tasks

Has anyone managed to force audio waveforms to show in the edit panel? This devilish and stupid problem brings a lot of inconvenience!!!

I assume the cached waveforms are located on your cache drive. Is it possible to locate them and delete them to force Resolve to regenerate the audio waveforms for a specific source clip? Have you tried to locate them? The next time I see this issue, I will make an attempt to locate the offending waveform cache files. As it stands, I'm not seeing this issue.

I assume the cached waveforms are located on your cache drive. Is it possible to locate them and delete them to force Resolve to regenerate the audio waveforms for a specific source clip? Have you tried to locate them? The next time I see this issue, I will make an attempt to locate the offending waveform cache files. As it stands, I'm not seeing this issue.

the fact is that in the firelight tab no problem showing waveform, there are no waveform, only in the edit tab

What does this mean? Is it possible that the clip in the edit tab loses contact with the waveform files while the Fairlight tab does not? I suppose (or they use independent means to 'cache' waveforms - this would be bad). What are you suggesting?

Sounds like they're just adding the information that they see the waveforms in the Fairlight tab.
Useful info in any case.

Given that Fairlight used to be a separate program I wouldn't be surprised if there are still two caching methods for waveforms.

Given that Fairlight used to be a separate program I wouldn't be surprised if there are still two caching methods for waveforms.

I was thinking something similar, Joe. I didn't realize that the waveform issue described here does not necessarily affect the Fairlight page (I didn't read the issue detail closely enough, I guess).

Yeah I didn't know that either. So this was very useful info imho.

But what if there is a way to force waveforms to show on the edit tab? While they are there to fix something, another year will pass, if not two And the problem must be solved now

But what if there is a way to force waveforms to show on the edit tab? While they are there to fix something, another year will pass, if not two And the problem must be solved now

I don't see this happening at the moment. Since you do, did you try looking into the audio cache to see if you could either delete the existing cached files for the offending clip or at least determine that the cached files are corrupt in some way? Just spitballing but it seems there should be some way to force Resolve to regenerate these files and maybe that's a short-term workaround (or at least will give us more info - maybe BMD can create a mechanism for forcing regeneration based on this same idea). Please try and let us know the results. Thx.

But what if there is a way to force waveforms to show on the edit tab? While they are there to fix something, another year will pass, if not two And the problem must be solved now

I don't see this happening at the moment. Since you do, did you try looking into the audio cache to see if you could either delete the existing cached files for the offending clip or at least determine that the cached files are corrupt in some way? Just spitballing but it seems there should be some way to force Resolve to regenerate these files and maybe that's a short-term workaround (or at least will give us more info - maybe BMD can create a mechanism for forcing regeneration based on this same idea). Please try and let us know the results. Thx.

Ok - where can I look into this audio cache?
Which panel or tab or menu?

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Evgenij

Since you say it works in Fairlight, there's couple of things you can check before removing any cache folders.
a. If the clip/track height in the edit timeline is very small, waveforms are automatically hidden to avoid visual clutter. You can drag the track border in the track header section to enlarge the height (or use the audio slider in the timeline view settings popup) to see if that's the case.
b. You can check in timeline settings if the waveforms are enabled for the edit timeline.

Regards
Shrinivas

Evgenij

Since you say it works in Fairlight, there's couple of things you can check before removing any cache folders.
a. If the clip/track height in the edit timeline is very small, waveforms are automatically hidden to avoid visual clutter. You can drag the track border in the track header section to enlarge the height (or use the audio slider in the timeline view settings popup) to see if that's the case.
b. You can check in timeline settings if the waveforms are enabled for the edit timeline.

Regards
Shrinivas

It turned out to be option b I was stupid ...
I could not even imagine that I turned it off !!!
Maybe it could be automatically disabled after the update? The update was 2 weeks ago and I have been working all this time with files without sound and just now started a project with sound!
Thank you!
Can you please advise on this matter as well?:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=184329

I guess it's solved -
You go into Preferences/ System/ Media Storage and update the cache location so the path is valid.
It seems the one at the top is the one that works: I had like 4 different cache locations - including valid paths - , but they just didn't work until I took away the ones at the top that weren't attached to the computer for the time being - The cache location didn't switch to no2 or no3 on the list when the one at the top wasn't valid.
That's a weird one...
But when I deleted the cache locations at the top of the list that weren't attached to the computer, Resolve started showing the audio waveform.

That first location should be an internal storage location, IMO, rather than a detachable storage or remote location. This is also the recommendation of BMD.

I'm still having missing waveform issue sometimes — tried all the fixes advised in the Internet... Annoying thing is that the same project can have waveforms visible on Windows and miss them on Mac.
+100 for a direct command to force Resolveto rebuild / regenerate waveforms