Blackmagic Forum

Davinci Resolve Studio 12.5.5 won't playback or export any RED Epic-W Helium clips if Debayer Quality is greater then "half res - good". It simply exports or plays black frames. This is resolution independent (read below).

I created a test project and loaded in a whole bunch of RED Scarlet-W Dragon, Epic Dragon, and Epic-W Helium clips, at nearly every possible resolution setting. 8k, 6k, 5k, 4k, UHD, 2k, HD, no color correction nodes. They all playback smoothly at "half res - good". When I change debayer settings to "half res - premium" only the Dragon files will export or playback. Every single Helium file immediately shows black. Same at Full Quality or when checking off "Force debayer to highest quality".

Any help solving this would be tremendously appreciative. I'm trying to export my first project shot on the Epic-W!

System Specs:
Windows 10 (up to date)
Davinci Resolve Studio 12.5.5
i7-5820k CPU
32gb RAM
RX 480 8GB VRAM GPU (Driver version 17.4.1)

Do you have a red rocket x installed?
If so, can you deselect it in DaVinci preferences to see if this helps?

I do not have a RED Rocket installed. "use RED Rocket if available" is unchecked in any case.

I just tried disabling "Use GPU for compute" It fixes the issue but is much slower. Not ideal but a temporary workaround for export at least.

Peter: Any idea why the RX 480 won't debayer RED Helium footage above half-res good? Is this a driver issue, or a davinci resolve issue?

What happens if you use a couple of much more powerful GPUs? I would bet that would help. 64GB of RAM would not hurt.

R3D files in general are fairly CPU-intensive to debayer, so getting a faster CPU with more cores would probably help. The workaround would be to use transcodes in a format that's easier to work with on your system.

I did a 6K Helium music video project last year on a stock Mac Pro, and while the machine struggled a little bit, I was generally able to get it to play back at speed. The moment I had any NR or blur nodes, it got a bit flakey. It's a demanding format.

It's generally decompression that takes CPU. With GPU used for debayer. I'll ask the guys on the 8k Helium clips on that GPU but we generally test the 8k on a P6000 or Titan x Pascal.

I understand it's a demanding format.

I think something is being lost here. I'm not asking why it isn't real-time, or saying "no red footage works" on this rig. I can run Epic Dragon 6k footage completely fine with GPU debayering turned on, but can't do any resolution of Helium footage with GPU debayering turned on. Not SD, not 2k...nothing. Any clips that are from the Epic-W turn up black on the timeline when I turn on Red GPU Debayering, while any resolution of every other model of RED shows up, runs, and exports perfectly fine.

If it were a Ram or VRam / GPU issue, then loading lower resolution RED Helium clips would load fine. But they don't, so something is obviously off in how Helium files are being handled.

For now, if you want this to work, use an AMD driver version 16.11.5 or earlier.

You will need to uninstall the current AMD software using Control Panel, Programs and Features, before you can install the older versions.

Copy that. I'll give that a go tomorrow. Thank you.

Uninstalling the current version of AMD drivers, and installing 16.11.5 fixed the issue perfectly. Thank you Dwaine!

Just FYI, as of Resolve 14 beta 2, with the most up to date AMD Radeon driver (17.5.1) this issue is fixed.

This problem still exists. It doesn't show up on playback but resolve won't export anything other then black as long as "use GPU for red debayer" is checked.

Even with the 16.11.5 driver?

This is still an issue on macOS.

I recently switched from a Mac Pro to an iMac (with the Radeon Pro 580). The Mac Pro loaded the same projects with same media and could render files with the Force Debayer Resolution to Highest Quality box checked. The iMac renders black video when that is checked.

It does render correctly with Metal, but it seems dramatically slower.

The main difference is that this iMac is using High Sierra and the Mac Pro is using Sierra. The iMac came with High Sierra, should I try downgrading the OS? Is that even a thing? (I'm not long time mac user).

You jumped onto the wrong thread. You should jump onto one of the Mac threads discussing Red, and you would see that High Sierra from 10.13.2 has broken Red OpenCL debayering. This should be fixed in 10.13.4, whenever that comes out.

Switching to Metal is a workaround, that reverts to CPU debayering. Hence the slowness.