Resolve Lite, on Macbook Pro 17 i7 2.3G ATI6750M 1G playback

Hello everyone,

I'm facing playback problem with Davinci Resolve 9 Lite, while playing back my MOV file (1080p, 25) straight from my Canon 5Dm3. I got like 1-2fps playback only. The software, and footage, are located on my SSD drive, which hold the OS X 10.8.2 itself.

My questions are:

1. What should I do to improve the playback speed, not to mention, when placing some nods and tracking points, can I get the realtime 25fps playback? Do I need any specific hardwares from BMD?

2. I'm planning to get a Mac Pro with Nvidia GTX570 tweaked [Link here] Will there be any other hardwares needed, for Resolve 9 to work flawlessly with 2.5K Raw files from BMD Camera?

Expecting your inputs soon, thank you.

Hi,

Are you playing back h264 footage? In my experience this doesn't work to well, you'd be better with a frame based codec like ProRes or an image sequence such as DPX or TIFF, this should make a huge difference.

MacPro is a good shout if you are looking seriously at grading, however bare in mind that you will need ultra fast storage for RT playback, RAID-ed SAS or SATA storage. Maybe hang on for apple to do something with the MP as the logic boracd on the current 12c model is essentially the same as 2009/10 releases and starting to show it's age.

I have no experience with GT X 570 cards, The Nvidia Quadro 4000 is officially recommended, we use these in outr MP's and they work really well.

Doug

[Dwaine Maggart]

I think you are expecting too much from the MBP. This is from the Resolve V9 Config Guide:

The MacBook Pro is ideal for on-set, pre-grade,
preview and training. It can provide a preview of
material in SD and apply shot by shot ‘look’ grades
on HD images so the project file can be exported to
a Mac Pro or Linux system.

What Doug said is also true, h.264 files are very resource intensive to play back. You should probably be able to playback ProRes422 files on your system in HD at real time with a few nodes of correction.

A MacPro certainly has the ability to be a much higher performance system. You could start with just the GTX570 card, but you will get better performance if you add a second GUI display graphics card to the system. Since the GTX570 must go in slot 1, you need a single width card to go in slot 2. A GT120 card would be good for this, and is also available from MacVidCards.

Wonderful.

Thanks, you two have enlightened me pretty much. And yes, I'll give it a shot to try with converted H.264 files as ProRes422 or Tiff images sequence.
One last question regarding this issue of H.264 files. Will BMD has any product to help decoding H.264 on the fly? We deal with lots of this type of files, I was just figuring what should be the best workflow. And please bear with me, I'm outside the US and as the result, laying my hands on new products is quite tough.

Thank you.