Can someone help me figure out

Why DaVinci is constantly trash with dealing with media. Never have these problems with Media Composer.

I'm editing with 4k video footage from an iPhone 8 Plus, so I figured perhaps a codec issue.

It's a 2017 MacBook Pro 15" 2.9 GHz. I've tried network based editing for storage and since I gave up on that I'm trying with an external disk. It's a USB3 4TB G-Tech Drive I've wasted yet another 3 hours having it go through and optimize the media and yet the damn thing still won't playback properly if at all.

My timeline resolution is 3840x2160 ultra HD and video monitoring is 1080p 60 frames.

It's the latest release of Davinci 15

I'm just starting to get really annoyed with what's suppose to be a top notch editing program and a top notch laptop unable to edit some basic video footage when Avid Media Composer has zero issues with this same footage

I also now have 384 GB of wasted space by Danvincis wonderful "optimized media" from files that were 32GB in total to start.

So clearly there's something wrong with my workflow here vs. Avid

Maybe Avid is a better fit for you. Why mess with what works?

Also see page 13 of the Resolve Configuration Guide at http://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/D ... _Guide.pdf

You didn't say anything about the GPU memory on your machine...DaVinci Resolve relies heavily on the GPU and if you don't have enough GPU memory you're going to have trouble editing 4K video.

Also see the top of page 4, where it explains that Resolve is much more GPU-intensive than other non-linear editors.

The 2017 MacBook Pro has a Radeon Pro 560 4GB RAM and Intel HD Graphics 630 1.5GB It's a $3,000 machine almost it should be able to support some iPhone video footage

Also as to the person that said "why not just stick with Avid then". Why should I stick with Avid when Davinci Should work? So this is why I'm trying to figure out what the issue is with the workflow.

Your machine isn't adequate for good performance in Resolve. That aside, if the iphone footage is variable frame frame, it probably won't be editable in Resolve.

You say you created optimized media, but don't indicate the format you chose. If you optimized to 4K 60fps, that external hard disk probably can't keep up with playback requirements.

iPhone footage is variable framerate and will not work in Resolve. It's a professional tool designed for use with professional media formats created with other professional tools.

Your laptop may be $3000, but that includes both the laptop tax and the Apple tax, so it is woefully underpowered compared to a desktop of the same price

Can I support the OP in this. I have just dropped a considerable amount of money on a laptop, having struggled to edit 4K footage from a Mavic Pro drone on a 2013 i7 MacBook. The headline spec is:

Intel® CoreTM i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700k (3.7GHz) 12MB Cache
32GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 - 8.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1

Basic editing, with zero colour grading and simple fade transitions, with a 1080 timeline results in stuttering on timeline playback, particularly at the video clip transition points.

I am using the free version, but laptops don’t come much higher spec’d than the one I’ve bought and for basic editing it should surely be fine.

Can I support the OP in this. I have just dropped a considerable amount of money on a laptop, having struggled to edit 4K footage from a Mavic Pro drone on a 2013 i7 MacBook. The headline spec is:

Intel® CoreTM i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700k (3.7GHz) 12MB Cache
32GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 - 8.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1

Basic editing, with zero colour grading and simple fade transitions, with a 1080 timeline results in stuttering on timeline playback, particularly at the video clip transition points.

Resolve is better with some h.264 variants than others, and complaints about drone footage aren't uncommon. But note that h.264 GPU acceleration is only available in the Studio version. It's also possible your playback and monitoring preferences are in conflict.

You might want to transcode or create optimized media, and see what happens. On its face, your system should be performing well, and certainly for straight playback.

Give this a shot.

In Davinci Resolve > Preferences > Media Storage, make sure your local hard drive is listed first. This is against the recommendations, but do it anyway just to test.

In a new project:
In your Project Settings > Master Settings > Optimized Media and Render Cache, set the resolution to half and the format to Prores LT.

Save the project. Close Resolve. Open it back up and load 5 or so iPhone/drone clips into the project. Select all and generate optimized media. Make a timeline with the clips and check for smooth playback.

If that works, then you have a bottleneck in your machine - probably the external hard disk. I'd first change the optimized media setting to full resolution and the HQ codec. Delete optimized media - and generate it again. If your timeline plays smooth it's almost definitely the usb connection slowing you down.

Thanks John and Lance. I’ll give it all a go. For info, I don’t have an external hard drive. I have 500GB of SSD and 1TB of HDD.

I'll give these suggestions a shot tonight thanks