what do you use for viewing the rendered product?

I am just finishing up my first youtube video using davinci resolve 14.2.0.012. It's 4.2 gb. I use the AVI gopro cineform YUV-10 bit for rendering because I love the quality. When I try to preview it in any video player I have, windows media player, VLC, KM player or All player, there are ones that can play the video but play it choppy, others can't because of the video codec. But I know they are not choppy because when I upload it it to YT, it's smooth. It takes several hours to upload a 4 gb video to YT, so doing that just to check to see if everything is ok with the video's content before I publish it is not practical.

What video players do you use to play back and test out your rendered video? Here are my laptop's specs btw;



OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.15063 Build 15063
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name
System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
System Model HP EliteBook 8470p
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU D3L44UC#ABA
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3360M CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard 68ICF Ver. F.43, 7/16/2013
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Embedded Controller Version 66.54
BIOS Mode Legacy
BaseBoard Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
BaseBoard Model Not Available
BaseBoard Name Base Board
Platform Role Mobile
Secure Boot State Unsupported
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.15063.502"
User Name
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 12.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 11.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 9.01 GB
Total Virtual Memory 13.7 GB
Available Virtual Memory 10.5 GB
Page File Space 1.81 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, Disabled by policy
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware No
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

I use Resolve it self.

Just go to the Media tab, click on the video, and hit Ctrl+F to jump to Cinema Viewer mode.

haha, sorry I should have said this before, but I can get 7 to 8 frames a second on a good day, so there's no way to view it in the cinema viewer without extreme lag and stuttering. And I have done everything to make it smoother; this computer is just not cut out for that.

Try PotPlayer :
https://potplayer.daum.net/

- reading a lot of format,
- hardware acceleration,
- knows how to use PC surround sound
- 3D
- 360
- HDR
- transcoding (+ hardware)
- etc ...

LG_Chess_HDR_potplayer.jpg

I am just finishing up my first youtube video using davinci resolve 14.2.0.012. It's 4.2 gb. I use the AVI gopro cineform YUV-10 bit for rendering because I love the quality. When I try to preview it in any video player I have, windows media player, VLC, KM player or All player, there are ones that can play the video but play it choppy, others can't because of the video codec. But I know they are not choppy because when I upload it it to YT, it's smooth. It takes several hours to upload a 4 gb video to YT, so doing that just to check to see if everything is ok with the video's content before I publish it is not practical.

YT works because it's h264 which gets decoded by your GPU (well, special part of it made just to decode some video formats).

Is it HD or UHD?

HD should work perfectly with Cineform for your CPU. It's matter of proper player and decoding chain.

You need to have installed Cineform codec (http://cineform.com/gopro-cineform-decoder) as it's the fastest decoder (maybe you have it already installed). Anything based on ffmpeg inside, like VLC is not good as their decoder is not very fast.
You can use e.g. MPC-HC 64bit player (https://mpc-hc.org). Go to View/Options, "External Filters", Add Filter and find GoPro-Cineform Decoder-2. Once added set "Prefer" to make sure this decoder is used as default one for Cineform decoding. If you double click on Cineform decoder then you can set Full/Half/Quarter Resolution decoding (don't forget to click Set Us Default).
For UHD you most likely will need half resolution and then you will be watching HD version of your UHD file at few x less CPU power needed. This is the beauty of Cineform codec which is wavelet based, so can be decode at fractional resolutions at fractional CPU needs. No need for any low resolution proxy files etc- it's all down to simple setting in the decoder. Premiere supports it also, so you can edit UHD files at 1/2, 1/4 resolution just after single click on a laptop like yours.

I am just finishing up my first youtube video using davinci resolve 14.2.0.012. It's 4.2 gb. I use the AVI gopro cineform YUV-10 bit for rendering because I love the quality.

There is really no point in doing that, you will not get that quality on YouTube and neither is it neccesary for a delivery codec, also any all-intra will effectively waste bandwidth during your upload.

For 4K SDR I would maximize the upload bit rate between 40-60Mbps for H.264 and about 30-40% less for H.265 both codes using long GOP. Alternatively you could use VP9.

HD should work perfectly with Cineform for your CPU. It's matter of proper player and decoding chain.

You need to have installed Cineform codec (http://cineform.com/gopro-cineform-decoder) as it's the fastest decoder (maybe you have it already installed). Anything based on ffmpeg inside, like VLC is not good as their decoder is not very fast.
You can use e.g. MPC-HC 64bit player (https://mpc-hc.org). .

So, the winner is MPC-HC 64 bit player! I tried the potplayer but it still is choppy, though it was a little better than All Player and other media players. But MPC-HC played it back perfectly, thank you for the suggestion! I wish I had asked earlier.

For 4K SDR I would maximize the upload bit rate between 40-60Mbps for H.264 and about 30-40% less for H.265 both codes using long GOP. Alternatively you could use VP9.

so you are saying the quality wouldn't make a difference since I'm uploading to youtube? what render formats could I pick to get use the parameters you are talking about? I did quite a bit of experimenting in Davinci with rendering but don't remember seeing being able to specifically limit the upload bit rate.

Export Cineform or DNxHR as before then use anything x264 based (ffmpeg, VdubMod, Handbrake, Hybrid) to do upload master. Use CRF=15 and this should be good enough to give you final youtube look indistinguishable from Cineform upload at much smaller file size.

Don't use Resolve for h264 encoding- it's bit crap with it.

HD should work perfectly with Cineform for your CPU. It's matter of proper player and decoding chain.

You need to have installed Cineform codec (http://cineform.com/gopro-cineform-decoder) as it's the fastest decoder (maybe you have it already installed). Anything based on ffmpeg inside, like VLC is not good as their decoder is not very fast.
You can use e.g. MPC-HC 64bit player (https://mpc-hc.org). .

So, the winner is MPC-HC 64 bit player! I tried the potplayer but it still is choppy, though it was a little better than All Player and other media players. But MPC-HC played it back perfectly, thank you for the suggestion! I wish I had asked earlier.

If you have modern GPU and 10bit screen you can even make your monitoring 10bit with MPC-HC+madVR renderer (if you really want).

For 4K SDR I would maximize the upload bit rate between 40-60Mbps for H.264 and about 30-40% less for H.265 both codes using long GOP. Alternatively you could use VP9.

so you are saying the quality wouldn't make a difference since I'm uploading to youtube? what render formats could I pick to get use the parameters you are talking about? I did quite a bit of experimenting in Davinci with rendering but don't remember seeing being able to specifically limit the upload bit rate.

Like Andrew said, the best workflow is to render to a good quality intermediate like ProRes, DNxHx or Cineform and from this intermediate generate an H.264 or H.265 delivery format.

Using CRF is a good starting point (note that the CRF values are different under H.264 and H.265) or just use a fixed bitrate.

For me, getting the finished video off the computer is the first step. The OS, GPU and even software player all affect the image, so reviewing it on a computer doesn't make any sense.

I take it to a calibrated plasma for review.

For 4K SDR I would maximize the upload bit rate between 40-60Mbps for H.264 and about 30-40% less for H.265 both codes using long GOP. Alternatively you could use VP9.

so you are saying the quality wouldn't make a difference since I'm uploading to youtube? what render formats could I pick to get use the parameters you are talking about? I did quite a bit of experimenting in Davinci with rendering but don't remember seeing being able to specifically limit the upload bit rate.

Like Andrew said, the best workflow is to render to a good quality intermediate like ProRes, DNxHx or Cineform and from this intermediate generate an H.264 or H.265 delivery format.

Using CRF is a good starting point (note that the CRF values are different under H.264 and H.265) or just use a fixed bitrate.

CRF is better than fixed bitrate as it will adapt to your master encoding complexity (we are not doing BD so we are not directly limited by file size). For 1 HD file 20Mbit is plenty, for another you may need 50Mbit+ to get same relative quality. CRF does it automatically.
Maybe if you have very slow internet and really trying to do file as small as possible then you may not want CRF.

Export Cineform or DNxHR as before then use anything x264 based (ffmpeg, VdubMod, Handbrake, Hybrid) to do upload master. Use CRF=15 and this should be good enough to give you final youtube look indistinguishable from Cineform upload at much smaller file size.

Don't use Resolve for h264 encoding- it's bit crap with it.

Well, what do you know...I thought for sure this wasn't going to produce similar quality but I was wrong.

I uploaded a portion of the original AVI go pro encoded 4 gb file to YT and then took that same portion, but it in VD and use some kind of 264 10-bit something or another codec. Then I uploaded that as well. I went to the same frame in both videos on YT, paused it, took a snapshot of each, downloaded them, and then went back and forth between the two pictures comparing and I pretty much could not tell them apart! This will save me a lot of time in the future since I won't have to upload a 4 or 5 gb file! thank you!