Load a Movie in Ableton Live Tutorial - by Emile Menasché

When Ableton’s music-creation program Live first hit the scene, it really showed how “hands-on” recording and playback could really be. Despite the power of random access hard disk recording, most music software was still relatively linear, with track structures that evolved from the days of tape. Ironically, as Live has matured, Ableton has added some more traditional linear features, and version 6 goes a long way to make this a standalone program that can serve most, if not all, of a professional producer’s needs, while still retaining the fingerpaining style that makes it such a creative ice breaker.

Live’s ability to instantly trigger clips—and collections of clips—is especially handy for film composers, and post producers. But, until now, the program has not been able to load video directly. That’s rectified in version 6.
Loading video in Live is a little different from doing it in other programs. There’s no “import video” or ‘load movie” menu item. Instead, Live lets you drag a movie into its Arrange view as you would an audio file.

Step 1: Switch to the Arrangement View: You can’t load a video in the session view. (Well, you can, but Live will treat the video as an audio clip, so you won’t be able to see a picture.)



Step 2: Navigate to a Video File: Use Live’s browser to find a video file. As with audio, you can audition the audio on these video files by selecting them in the browser. You won’t see a picture, but you will hear the soundtrack.



Step 3: Drag the Video into the Arrangement: You can place he video anywhere in your arrangement. A filmstrip graphic shows that it’s a video file. Video can be dragged in the arrangement like any other clip, so instead of having to manually set an offset to line the video to your music, you can just drag it where you want.



Step 4: Expand the Track to Reveal the Audio: The video’s audio appears like any audio file in your mix, though by default, “warping’ is turned off. You can edit this audio, and trim and copy the video as well, though the picture on your video edits will not be exported.



Step 5: View the Video Window: The video window appears automatically, but if you don’t see it, double click on the video in the arrangement. The window can be expanded, and moved freely.



Step 6: Switch back to session View: Once the video is loaded, you can switch back to session view if that’s your preferred workspace. If the video is set to launch at the beginning of the arrangement, it will start as soon as you launch a clip.

Notes: Live is unusual in that it can load more than one video at a time. However, it is not a video editing program, and you can’t use it to assemble video images.