Dropped Frames in Mixed Framerate Timeline

Hello! The majority of the footage in my timeline is 4K, 25fps, and I have created a timeline that matches those settings. However I have some drone footage that includes 29,97 fps and 24 fps. The playback is super choppy. Any advice on project settings or anything else that might help with smoother playback and export for mixed framerate timelines? In clip attributes, I clicked on Dropped Frames but doesn't seen to help.

I would appreciate any advice!

For drone shots (which don't need synced sound), change the FPS to 25 in Clip Attributes.

It depends on whether you want to maintain the original real-time motion characteristics of the drone footage. If so, you'd need to investigate which motion interpolation method available in Resolve will produce the best results. The manual discusses the matter at some length. Relevant terms to search for include "optical flow".

That said, the 24fps clips can be changed to 25fps in clip attributes without any noticeable motion oddities, but not so for the 29.97 material, which will appear to be running in slow motion. This might or might not be acceptable, only you can decide.

Being a pretty mild slo-mo, it’ll normally benefit drone footage. But that’s an aesthetic decision, not a technical issue. All advanced methods of retiming will put quite some load on your machine and may need caching or Render in place to play smoothly.
If you need further advice it would be helpful to tell us about your hardware.
Finally, which codec and resolution are the drone shots?