Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

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Jeff Smart

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  • Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:12 am
  • Location: Malaysia

Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

PostTue Mar 13, 2018 7:54 am

I recently and "happily" changed from Premiere Pro to Resolve for acceptable system stability - PR crashed 20x/day for large projects.. couldn't take it anymore. Resolve rarely crashes on the same system and projects :)
I'm use Resolve Studio v14.3.0.014 on a powerful mac High Sierra 10.13.3

I really love the new Resolve but I have a serious problem with poor Optical Flow quality in Resolve compared to PR and FCPX quality for the same source clips at 50% slow down and same process/timeline settings. I have correctly selected DR "Optical Flow" in clip Retime Inspector, and tried all combinations of global retime motion estimation combos with no improvement. I agree the clips are more than just someone jumping up and down against a wide static background, but PR & FCPX handle them well, producing acceptable quality.

What I see is:
1. Resolve Optical Flow creates blurred (looks like frame-blended ?) new frames at 50% speed slow down - played back, I see a pulsating sequence of normal sharp frames flashing with blurred newly generated frames. If I select Frame-Blended Retime Process than the resulting flickering is much more noticeable. Using PR & FCPX the new frames sharpness is similar to the original frames, so something in DR Optical Flow is not working properly ?
2. Resolve regularly creates artefacts - additional ragged trailing streaks on objects if the scene has both different speed background and foreground motion.

I tested these same clips with Last Nov 2017 PR and FCPX 10.4 where both "do not" have these errors.

Without resolving DR Optical Flow quality, I can only think to round trip to FCPX cause I really do not want PR anywhere on my machine :) I'd even fork out for Twixtor but no DR OFX support. Any suggestions ? A fix pre NAB would make many people happy :)

Again - love Resolve !
DR Studio 18.1.4 on 16GB M1 MacMini macOS v3.3.1
34" 5K Ultrawide MSI PS341WU P3 GUI monitor
TB3 -> SW RAID 4 x NVMe @ 5,700MBs
TB3 -> DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K -> 43" Philips HDR1000 wg monitor.
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Jeff Smart

  • Posts: 26
  • Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:12 am
  • Location: Malaysia

Re: Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

PostFri Jun 22, 2018 4:21 pm

BMD DR Team,

UPDATE Optical Flow update in DR15B5 (Mac) adds a new problem.

Thank You for updating the Optical Flow feature in DR15B5 !

Overall the Optical Flow image quality is noticeably better than DR14 for more difficult clips ie: retimed (50% slowed down) from stabilised panned/walk thru shots, "however" the Enhanced Faster and Enhanced Better options now introduce some noticeable edge artifacts blobs that do not appear in the Standard Fast and Standard Better modes - ultimately the final result is not yet usable. This is the same error I get while patiently trying to use Optical Flow in Fusion as a workaround for re-timed /slowed down moving clips.

To test this problem, use a reasonably stable walking (gimbal) or panned shot - normally I will DR stabilise first, than retime to 50% speed for slower motion and use Optical Flow to smooth out the retimed motion estimation frames. I export (Deliver) the OF retimed clip to be sure it is properly rendered. The DR15beta5 monitors seem not 100% reliable to see these artifacts all times.
I tested the same clip multiple times with 50% retiming and I "always" get the artifacts with Enhanced motion Estimation, even if I select small, med or large motion.
Overall the improved DR Optical Flow quality is now similar to PR and FCP X but needs this fix to be usable.

I trust this helps. Love the DR progress ! Thank you.
DR Studio 18.1.4 on 16GB M1 MacMini macOS v3.3.1
34" 5K Ultrawide MSI PS341WU P3 GUI monitor
TB3 -> SW RAID 4 x NVMe @ 5,700MBs
TB3 -> DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K -> 43" Philips HDR1000 wg monitor.
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Uli Plank

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Re: Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

PostSat Jun 23, 2018 1:35 am

I’ve seen that too in b15.
Unfortunately I was wrong, it's ReelSmart Motion Blur that works in Resolve, not Twixtor.
Now that the cat #19 is out of the bag, test it as much as you can and use the subforum.

Studio 18.6.6, MacOS 13.6.6, 2017 iMac, 32 GB, Radeon Pro 580
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G

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