Media Source not showing in Preview until cut to Program

[Richard Fendelman]

Adding a media source MP4 file to sources, does not show the video until I cut to Program window. When I go back to the Preview window select another scene and then back to the original scene, some of the media files show and some do not until I cut to the Program window again.
I have tried a bunch of solutions, but cannot figure out how to fix this .
Thank you for any help.

Windows 10 latest update.
Nvidia 1080 for laptop
64gb ram

 

[FerretBomb]

This is because OBS treats the scene and sources in the Preview window as 'inactive', unless it is nested inside the scene currently in the Program window (using a Scene as a Source). Playback is suspended for inactive media sources. This is operating as-intended.

 

[dustball]

> This is operating as-intended.

This seems like bad design, though. The entire point of the "preview" window is to preview the content that is about to be broadcast.

• it makes it difficult to layout a scene if media sources are hidden
• it's counter to user expectations and is likely to cause great confusion, such as OPs question

At the very least, seems like there should be an option, "[ ] Treat Preview sources as active".

The workaround is to click into the Source, change the setting to "always visible", setup the scene, then click back into the source and choose "hide when inactive".

This was also really hard to track down and figure out. Obvious in hindsight, but ...