Playback problems: stutter, buffering, black frames
Stutter, buffering or black frames in the player — what helps, and why your exports are never affected.
The web player streams proxies of your footage, so playback depends on your connection and our media hosting. Here's what usually helps.
First moves
- Give it a second pass — the first play of a fresh edit may still be warming up; a replay is usually smooth.
- Refresh the page — clears a stalled media buffer.
- Check your connection — streaming proxies need sustained bandwidth; a VPN can throttle it.
- Try another browser or an incognito window — extensions occasionally interfere with video playback.
Intermittent stutter
Brief stutters during scrubbing or dense edits (lots of b-roll and overlays) are usually the player fetching several streams at once. Pausing for a moment lets it catch up. We're actively improving media delivery — if stutter is constant rather than occasional, we want to know.
Desktop is smoother for local footage
The desktop app plays your local source files natively — no streaming involved. If your footage is on your machine, desktop playback is the most reliable option.
Remember: playback ≠ export
A stutter in the preview never appears in your output. Exports and MP4 renders are built from the source files, not the preview stream.
Still broken? Contact support with your browser and roughly when it happened.