Cheapest possible refurbished hardware for DaVinci resolve

I know... video editing and cheap hardware don’t match well
I want to try Da Vinci Resolve freeware. I could downgrade from v. 15 beta in order to keep the hw requirements lower. Prefer Windows but can consider Linux. Could recycle the case and some peripherals, and the screen or use TV as a screen. The PC would be used almost only for Da Vinci Resolve video editing, mostly scuba videos color correction and other editing activities of lesser importance.
Considering this or a similar one
https://m.ebay.it/itm/HP-Z400-Intel-Xeo ... noapp=true
Need to check very carefully hardware and software requirements, and buy a refurbished or second hand PC accordingly. Can also assembly the components by myself if necessary
Thanks for any suggestions

With its GPU you won't do much in Resolve.

Thanks for any suggestions

Hi.

In Resolve the CPU is used to run the app, disk I/O and compression and decompression of codecs.
Resolve does all its image processing and grading in the GPU on the graphics card. More CUDA/OpenCL Cores are better.

Suggest you have a look at the DaVinci Resolve 15 Configuration Guide

http://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/D ... _Guide.pdf

Version 12 have smaller hardware requirement.

Regards Carsten.

Ok I think I will focus on DaVinci 12 and second hand or refurbished GPU
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=42529
Here above a discussion on v 12 and GPU. Some of the models mentioned in the thread can be found for about 160 eur second hand

Forget about v12. Why would you try to run outdated version? Very bad approach. v12 is even worse in terms of resource needs, so this is definitely not right direction.
Start with you budget and then analyse what GPU+CPU you can get for this. Box can be simple. You want modern Nvidia card, like eg. GTX 1050 4GB RAM.
200Euro is not going to tak you far for sure. You need at least 500Euro or use NLE which require less resources, like Edius (but it costs money).

my wife has a z400 she uses mainly for Avid, it runs 15.b7 studio @ HD with no issues, need to use source cacheing and node cacheing to deal with higher rez sources

spec's are;
w3520
16g
256g SSD boot disk
GTX1050Ti
Decklink mini
Usb3 card + external 4 disk raid

Hi.

4K/UHD have 4 times the pixels of Full HD and require much stronger CPU and a GPU with much more CUDA/OpenCl performance and Video ram. So I wonder if You only use Full HD or if you also want it to be able to edit/grade 4K?

I don't know your budget. But if you want very cheap hardware for Resolve is there some videos on Youtube done by by Max Yuryev '$1350 8700K Video Editing BEAST! Premiere Pro & Davinci Resolve' and 'i7 8700k Step by Step Build Guide - Best 4K Video Editing PC'

He is using the Intel 6 Core i7 8700K CPU. It is not considered strong enough for 4K, but he is OverClocking it and using a water cooler. Today I will recommend to wait for the next generation i9 9900K 8 core 16 thread CPU from Intel together with the coming Z390 motherboards. It will also be able to overclock, when using a water cooler.

Regards Carsten.

But if you want to adjust to the other side, 'small' HD, i.e. 1280 x 720, might be an option for doing your creative work and for final delivery you can switch to full HD.

Thanks, very useful hints
By now I didn’t use 4k both because of the hw resources needed in the editing and because sd cards last longer if used with 1280 x 720. Anyway Go Pro 6 is 4K

That Go Pro will be a problem without pretty strong hardware.

So I will have to check the tutorials suggested above for a cheap setup with overclocking or downgrade to 1280 x 720 HD. I might search a place where I can try Da Vinci with good hardware perhaps a local college with computer graphics labs. I would like to try this extensively before purchasing expensive hardware

my wife has a z400 she uses mainly for Avid, it runs 15.b7 studio @ HD with no issues, need to use source cacheing and node cacheing to deal with higher rez sources

spec's are;
w3520
16g
256g SSD boot disk
GTX1050Ti
Decklink mini
Usb3 card + external 4 disk raid

Thank you, very interesting

Overclocking doesn't help that much. The most important points are hardware that supports decoding of H.264 in realtime and a decent GPU (graphics card). You can transcode to a lighter codec if H.264 is too heavy, but then you need more disk space.

my wife has a z400 she uses mainly for Avid, it runs 15.b7 studio @ HD with no issues, need to use source cacheing and node cacheing to deal with higher rez sources

spec's are;
w3520
16g
256g SSD boot disk
GTX1050Ti
Decklink mini
Usb3 card + external 4 disk raid

I believe that the only feasible solution provided the budget would be something like the setup above
I found a tutorial on source and node catching. Never tried anything similar and not sure anyway how it would work with 4k Go Pro videos (if it works...)
https://timeinpixels.com/2015/07/all-yo ... esolve-12/

It works with any footage. It just converts source to chosen intermediate codec.

I still prefer converting up front and then working on converted files. If you are not limited by time, you can always leave transcoding over night. With latest Resolve v15b8 you have fractional resolution decoding support for Cineform files. Files will be bigger than h264 source, but will decode easily (still single HDD should be fast enough even for UHD). In your case it means you could convert 4K GoPro footage over night (in Resolve) and then work with Cineform files with proxy set to 1/2 (so you decoding just HD data out of UHD saving massive amount go CPU and GPU resources). This will allow you to work on 4K timeline in real time even on very low CPU and GPU. When you export Resolve will use full quality decoding- of course it may be slow at this point, but yet again you can leave it over night. Key point is that editing works in realtime. There is no mess, one set of Cineform files- all simple and elegant.
With limited resources machine source format is key element, so you most likely will be forced with conversion of UHD h264 files.

I could leave the transcoding over night, so your suggestions are also very useful
There is still hope for a low cost Davinci setup!

You still looking at 500Euros I think.

More or less, 500 euros would be nice indeed. For some reason the UK ebay seems to be the best in Europe for low cost refurbished hw, perhaps they have plenty of offices there and they dismiss the workstations after the depreciation is over

i rarely use the z400 we have, i have another machine at home better suited to Resolve's needs for my playground & my wife uses the z400 for her projects when working at home... but i have used it sucessfully for light duty things, testing software etc etc

if it's all i could invest, it would be workable as an editing centric machine,

it will run reliabily at 100% cpu useage for days with decent ventlation, my wife has rendered a feature at DNxHR444 on the little thing, no burp's - took a few days with the fans at full speed tho

More or less, 500 euros would be nice indeed. For some reason the UK ebay seems to be the best in Europe for low cost refurbished hw, perhaps they have plenty of offices there and they dismiss the workstations after the depreciation is over

In terms of post industry UK accounts probably for about 50% in Europe. There is lots of old hardware here for sure.

In your case it means you could convert 4K GoPro footage over night (in Resolve) and then work with Cineform files with proxy set to 1/2 (so you decoding just HD data out of UHD saving massive amount to CPU and GPU resources)

Hi.

I wonder how good the GTX 1050 4GB RAM will be?
Will it be a better choice to buy a GTX 1060 with 6 GB Ram for around £ 100 more.

Regards Carsten.

Well, when you have 500Euro then 100Euro+ on card itself is a lot
For HD timelines 1050 4GB should work fine.