Video Playback in Fairlight choppy

Hi,

I'm just getting started using Resolve, and have been spending the last few hours trying to get acquainted with it and how it all works. While using the main edit tab, video playback works great and tracks exactly where I want it to. However, when I tried doing a voice over and using the fairlight tab to record some audio, the video playback that shows in the upper right when meters is turned on runs horribly, to the point that it is impossible to use it at all for the purpose I imagine it was intended for, to sync voice over/audio with the video clips. I'll list my specs below, but I really can't imagine it's a hardware issue, I've got fairly high-end stuff in my system, plus playback works flawlessly in the edit tab, any ideas as to how I could fix the video playback in fairlight?

windows 10
AMD R7 1700
GTX 1080Ti
16 gigs corsair ram
1TB western digital HDD
120gb ssd
resolve 14.3.0.014

Jake Miller

Hi,

I'm just getting started using Resolve...
... I'll list my specs below, but I really can't imagine it's a hardware issue, I've got fairly high-end stuff in my system, plus playback works flawlessly in the edit tab, any ideas as to how I could fix the video playback in fairlight?

windows 10
AMD R7 1700
GTX 1080Ti
16 gigs corsair ram
1TB western digital HDD
120gb ssd
resolve 14.3.0.014

Jake Miller

Nice machine, there, Jake!

At the risk of reminding you of things you intellectually already know, just a reminder checklist of a sort for you, just in case your gutsy PC is at fault, being not fully optimized:

• 'Gone into Task Manager and clicked "DISABLE" on any of your undesirably-running programs and apps on the StartUp tab?

• Have you assigned your media to be housed on a genuinely capable drive? (Try testing with BMD's SpeedTest (or whatever it's called), to verify.

• (Of course you've avoided use of your OS i.e., "System" drive, for also storing and playing media during Resolve sessions, I trust).

• Has your machine been ion the Internet and not been "cleaned"?

• Are any drives in need of "Optimizing" defragmenting if disks and trimming of SSDs?

• Have you ensured you have no anti-virus or similar programs tasking in the background? If not, disable them.

• #OohWait! FmFid I mention that you might consider the bottleneck is caused by a pesky audio plug-in installed and running in Resolve?

That's what I'd do for starters, barring the possibility you have some audio Plug-ins in the Fairlight pipeline, that's where I'd start to flesh out your staggering video performance in Fairlight page of Resolve.

By the way...
• Have you google searched:
"How to optimize your computer for editing with an NLE (or with Davinci Resolve)"? I personally have not, but now I believe I *should.*

RS 14.3 | MiniMonitor | Samsung U28D590 via Spyder5 Pro | DTV 10.9.7 | Win64 8.1 | ASUS ROG G751JL, i7-4720HQ, 24GB, 1TB HDD, 500GB SSD, GTX965M | Mackie MCU Pro | Softube Console 1 | Shuttle Pro 2

Is your audio card's sample rate clocked the same as your video footage audio, possibly 48khz and not 44.1khz?

Hi,

I'm just getting started using Resolve, and have been spending the last few hours trying to get acquainted with it and how it all works. While using the main edit tab, video playback works great and tracks exactly where I want it to. However, when I tried doing a voice over and using the fairlight tab to record some audio, the video playback that shows in the upper right when meters is turned on runs horribly, to the point that it is impossible to use it at all for the purpose I imagine it was intended for, to sync voice over/audio with the video clips. I'll list my specs below, but I really can't imagine it's a hardware issue, I've got fairly high-end stuff in my system, plus playback works flawlessly in the edit tab, any ideas as to how I could fix the video playback in fairlight?

windows 10
AMD R7 1700
GTX 1080Ti
16 gigs corsair ram
1TB western digital HDD
120gb ssd
resolve 14.3.0.014

Jake Miller

I'm running into this same issue. Edit and media tab playback is perfect, but Fairlight is very choppy. System is pretty quiet during playback, CPU, GPU, and disk performance barely budge. Setting optimized media makes no difference. Asking for limited display updates during playback makes no difference.

Oh, and I've already bypassed all effects.

Actually, something weird I've noticed: playback is perfect in 1x reverse.

Anyways, I'm on Davinci Resolve 15.0.1.003, editing SD footage on Windows 10 with AMD Ryzen 5 quad-cord hyperthreaded and an ASUS R7 250X video card. According to Task Manager, I use about 4% more overall CPU power during playback, and that's it. Disk and GPU activity is barely noticeable.

Hi,

I think I figured it out. I have a Focusrite RED 4PRE thunderbolt 2 audio card which has a maximum buffer size of 1024. Davinci Resolve recognized and set the buffer size automatically to 2048.

When I set it manually to 1028 or less the video is no longer choppy in the Fairilght.

Hope this helps.


O

I have exactly the same problem with resolve on my macbook. How do you set the buffer size?

In a stange way, it depends on the monitors connected as well.
I have two monitors, one is UHD and one is 1260x1440.

When I have both connected I can edit very fast in the Edit-Tab with 25p (DNxHD in HD).
When I switch to fairlight it gets VERY slow (maybe one frame per second).
When I plug out the UHD Monitor fairlight speed is OK again..

Its very dependent on the resoluton of the monitor, but its very strange thats its a difference from fluent playback to almost no playback at all.
Seems like a bad design of the fairlight panel..

I dont even have to plug one monitor out.
I just deactivate the dual display mode and its fast again - even with all meters activated.
On only the smaller monitor its very fast, on only the UHD monitor its okay.. on both monitors at the same time its terrible... strange behaviour..

For some very very strange reason, I just discovered that popping out the window (bottom right of video preview box there's an icon), changing the size on the popout by dragging the bottom right corner a bit, and then putting it back, seems to fix the problem. Tested it on a couple different projects I had on my desktop and it seemed to fix it for them. Even changed the buffer size back to what it was before to confirm it wasn't just a buffer size fix.

Interesting....

I had the same issue.
I solved it by going to Preferences > System > General > Audio Processing Block Size to 'Auto'.
Then the playback was smooth again.