Performance Preferences
Two trade-off knobs for systems where Orbit is competing for resources — older machines, hot CPUs, big sessions, or simply a Mac that's also running a video editor and a DAW alongside. Both default to the highest-quality option; turn them down when you'd rather give something up to free up headroom.
Video playback quality
Two options for how the inline video preview is composited.
Better Quality — full-resolution decode and composite. Highest GPU cost. The video preview matches the source frame for frame. Default.
Balanced — decodes and composites at half resolution, then upscales to the display size. Roughly a quarter of the GPU cost of full quality. Visibly softer if you're looking closely, but the difference is invisible at typical preview sizes — and on integrated GPUs it can be the difference between dropping frames and not.
The setting takes effect on the next video load. Switching while a video is loaded won't change the active pipeline; reload the file (or the session) to apply.
TIP
Start on Better Quality. Drop to Balanced only if you see frame drops on the video preview during scrub or playback, or if your fans are spinning more than you'd like.
Waveform indexing speed
Three options for how aggressively Orbit indexes waveforms when an ADM file is first loaded.
Smooth — background priority with periodic yields. The slowest of the three but the most responsive: the rest of the UI never feels chopped while indexing runs. Default.
Balanced — middle ground. Faster scan completion, with brief moments where UI updates feel slightly less smooth.
Fast — aggressive scheduling, no yielding. Completes scans noticeably quicker, but you may see brief UI hiccups during the scan, especially on slower machines.
The setting applies to fresh file loads — switching mid-scan doesn't change the in-flight scan's speed. Useful when you've got a long batch of files to index and you'd rather get through them quickly than have a perfectly smooth UI in the meantime.
TIP
On modern Apple silicon Macs, Smooth and Fast are usually within a few seconds of each other for a typical Atmos master, so the default is fine. Fast pays off most when you're indexing very long content (hour-plus film masters) on older Intel machines.
See also
- Workspace Tour — where the inline video preview and the multichannel waveform appear in the layout.
- Sessions — sessions cache the indexed waveform so subsequent opens skip the indexing pass entirely.