Massive Slowdown When Rendering (Resolve 14)

I am rendering a video, with not a lot going on, just a recorded debate. The rendering was quick enough at first, and then slows-down considerably. There are other videos I did, just as long, with more graphics and such going on that rendered faster. I tried twice now and am not sure why this video rendering has slowed-down so much...

There is not enough information in your post for anyone to help you. Without knowing more, my best guess is that you're rendering on a laptop and are running into overheating causing throttling.
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=69837

Hi, I am running from a desktop, actually. SSD drives, 16 gigs of RAM, quad core CPU, graphics card with 4 gigs of ddr4 ram. The video itself is compressed, low res. The other footage from the same session rendered fast, not this one. Perplexing, really.

I had a very similar problem. It was just one particular clip that was the culprit. Funny thing is, when I switched to a different output format (I think it was TIFF) the render was blazing fast. Maybe you can try that.

Which version of Resolve? What OS? What hardware (CPU, GPU, RAM, I/O)? What type of camera source files?

Working from compressed video files is generally very bad for post, because the system has to decompress the images, then process them, then output them... which takes time and a lot of system power. Figuring out the most efficient workflow often starts with using the most efficient codec that will put the least amount of stress on the computer doing the playback. H.264 in particular is a bad codec for post, since it was really intended only for final delivery.

I can tell you that -- in general -- I get the best results with rendering if I reboot just prior to the render, have absolutely nothing running in the background, and then launch Resolve and go right to rendering. And I stay away from the computer until it's done. And I'm using dual GPUs, 64GB of RAM, and fairly fast RAIDs. In a perfect world, I'd have duplicate systems and just offload the render job to the second system and let it render in the background while I do other things on the main system.

I just lost a week's worth of work as now all projects I get the message, 'DaVinci Resolve failed to save project." There seems to be no hope here and I am stuck. I don't know what to do anymore except give up trying to shoot/edit video.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Hi Scott, your issues are not typical so lets drill down to detail.

Marcs questions are valid. Which version of Resolve? What OS? What exact hardware (CPU, GPU, RAM, I/O)?

What type of camera source files?

You say you now can not save a project. This sounds like a issue with your drive or database. I'm assuming you are using the standard disk database and that its on your system drive and you didnt try to put it on an external drive.

Some more detail will help others review how to assist you.