Fusion, computer spec.

Using more time at home to better understand DaVinci Resolve and Fusion in particular. I’ve gone through the excellent DaVinci Training videos on Fusion but i found after completing the Fusion VFX in 3D my computer is really slow and even using Playback at Quarter Resolution, it will not run smoothly in real time. The program doesn’t crash, just very slow. My configuration is a one year old iMac, Retina 5k 27 in’s plus an old Cinema Display, 3T Fusion internal drive. 24 GB 2400 MHz DDR4, 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7. Radeon Pro 580 8 GB graphics processor. I’m running Mojave 10.14.6. I use the internal drives for working files and the source clips are stored on an external 6TB Western MyBook drive. Is there any optimizing in the setup that might help the performance? Are there any upgrades that might help.

Hi,

Do you use Fusion standalone or integrated Fusion in Resolve?

Basically for my first guess it doesn't matter. Do you have a green line along your frame ruler? Fusion has to do a lot of rendering, and if you have a complex scene, it can't be displayed in realtime. But Fusion does a lot of caching and you can see the process with the green line. Everything in there should be cached and play fine.

If that is not the problem, then disregard.

I’m using Resolve 16 with fusion integrated. In the edit tab, it takes a long while for the red line to disappear, but when it turns green it still runs very slowly. If I run it from fusion I see in one fusion node, a green line running across the node and then repeating. It’s a render node so guess it’s busily rendering each updated frame.

Hi,
I marked the places where you can see the cached status of fusion renders.
Picture 1 is within the fusion page, picture 2 is in the edit page.
After right clicking the clip you will get the shown menu.

Is this information of any help?

Ok thanks, I’ll check that. Funny that in Edit rendering in process is a red line but in Fusion it’s a green line

I recently used Puget System’s fusion benchmark to test a couple of different machines on both free and studio.

You can see the results

What this doesn’t cover well is the “usability” of Fusion on different hardware. That is something I hope to tackle soon.

Another thought - have you checked the speed of the mybook drive as it’s attached to the computer with the Blackmagic disk speed test? I’m curious if initial disk reads are hurting you as well. Maybe put some of the clips on your fusion drive and see if that helps?

Sorry John delayed response. Thanks for this App.
I downloaded the app. but not sure how to interpret the result.
Do u have to run the App from the drive, ie from MyBook? I ran it from the iMac and then copied it to MyBook and the results are similar. I've attached the run from My Book. My project is 4k UHD 60 p, all BRAW. MY interpretation is that my drives can't even handle 2k Raw.

I found the button above the start and was able to test My Book. Results are awful. I need to rethink my storage. You hit the nail on the head John.