When a clip is added to the playlist and is selected as queued to be played next, Cinegy Air starts filling in the internal buffer by reading the file. This buffer allows caching some amount of material in memory to be able to handle short-term reading performance issues during the playback - i.e. the playback is made from the pre-read buffer. When it has been consumed from the buffer, the next one is read from the file.

In case the next frame reading is slower than real time, the buffer allows to compensate this by providing pre-read frames. Only in case the reading performance issues last longer than the buffered frames time, the payout will be affected.

This means that when a new item is started on-air, there exist two reading processes from the disk:
- on-air item starts to fill in its buffer while frames are played out;
- cued item starts to fill in its buffer until it is filled in.

In case the storage is not able to provide enough read performance or on-air item is started immediately after being added to the playlist, there is no buffer to compensate drive performance issues and output will be affected.

Please, refer to https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/21.2/playout/user-manual/configuration/playback/#queue-size for additional information.