Davinci: A Disappointing Symphony of Bugs and Frustration!

Dear Davinci Resolve Support Team,

I hope this message finds you well, amidst the symphony of chaos that seems to ensue whenever I dare to open Davinci Resolve on my trusty M2 Max Macbook Pro. Ah, where do I even begin?

Since embracing Davinci Resolve into my creative life back in the mystical era of October 2023, it's been a rollercoaster ride that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Bugs, glitches, and gremlins have become my closest companions, and let me tell you, they aren't the best conversationalists.

Trying to navigate through the labyrinth of issues has become my new favorite pastime, although I must admit, it's more frustrating than trying to teach a cat to do tricks. And believe me, I've tried. From random crashes to inexplicable playback delays that make me question the laws of physics, Davinci Resolve seems to have developed a mind of its own, and it's not a particularly cooperative one.

Now, I'm not one to point fingers, but I can't help but wonder if the Davinci team decided to skip quality control altogether and leave it to the whims of fate. Do you even let professionals take this software for a spin before releasing it into the wild? It feels like trying to tame a wild stallion with a toothpick.

In my 18-year career journey through the wild west of creative software, I've never felt the urge to call for a refund as strongly as I do now. And trust me, it's not a decision I take lightly. I've developed a bond with my hard-earned $300, and I'm not about to throw it into the abyss without a fight.

But let's delve into the nitty-gritty, shall we? Why does the built-in EQ decide to take a vacation whenever I try to work with retimed clips?

And don't get me started on the enigma that is the non existent rendering cache for compound and nested timeline clips (a feature requested all the way from the distant 2016 - 8 years ago!!!). It's feels like trying to squeeze water from a stone.

And let's talk about the Fairlight page. Oh, the tales I could tell! Why, oh why, does it decide to take a siesta every time I dare to use a few measly Waves plugins on my master chain? It's like a magician's disappearing act, only less impressive and infinitely more aggravating.

And speaking of playback, why does it feel like I've entered a parallel universe where real time sound effects have a delayed reaction again with compound clips on the timeline, like they're waiting for an invitation to the party after I hit play? They are called real-time for a reason. I assure you, it's not a remix I ever wanted to hear.

The UI slows down when scrolling around in the timeline if audio scrubbing is on at the same time as voice isolation.

Let's not forget the curious case of being able to optimize media from the timeline but not proxy media. One works but is almost deprecated, while the other decides to play hide-and-seek with my sanity. And speaking of hide and seek - why was the "Remove Optimized Media" Removed???

And last but certainly not least, why, in the year 2024, do I find myself performing a bizarre ritual of slider dances just to coax the stabilizer into re-enabling the stabilizer button after I roll or trim a clip? It's like trying to appease a tech-savvy deity with offerings of sliders and trimmings.

So here I am, baring my soul to you, dear Davinci Resolve Support Team. I'm not asking for the moon and stars, just a little sanity in this chaotic creative cosmos. Let's turn this and many other tales of frustration into one of triumph, shall we?

Yours in both exasperation and hope,
Nikos

This is true of most editing software to be fair. It just isn't stable. For some reason, probably due to legacy code and lack of money, all video editing software works on a knife edge between working just about okay and then falling over and crashing for no reason. As they are all very similar in my experience, its just been accepted as normal.

I've posted before about performance. Why should performance be so bad with video editing software? I can play 4K 10-bit 4.2.2 video absolutely fine on my computer at a full 60fps, one on each monitor even, but try and play that same clip in Resolve having done nothing to it, and its a stuttering mess even in a small window in the UI, so the problem is the software, nothing to do with long GOP files being hard to decode, they aren't in 2024! So called easier to edit proxy files are barely much better.

You can play a 3D flight simulator on my computer, video realistic at 60fps, yet video editing software can barely add some scrolling credits without real-time playback becoming impossible.

Because video editing software as been so flaky for years, its just become normal and peoples expectations are low. People wouldn't put up with an iPhone crashing every ten minutes, or the operating system crashing every half hour, but video editing software crashing, well it gets blamed on us and our hardware or setup being at fault.

This is true of most editing software to be fair. It just isn't stable. For some reason, probably due to legacy code and lack of money, all video editing software works on a knife edge between working just about okay and then falling over and crashing for no reason. As they are all very similar in my experience, its just been accepted as normal.

I've posted before about performance. Why should performance be so bad with video editing software? I can play 4K 10-bit 4.2.2 video absolutely fine on my computer at a full 60fps, one on each monitor even, but try and play that same clip in Resolve having done nothing to it, and its a stuttering mess even in a small window in the UI, so the problem is the software, nothing to do with long GOP files being hard to decode, they aren't in 2024! So called easier to edit proxy files are barely much better.

You can play a 3D flight simulator on my computer, video realistic at 60fps, yet video editing software can barely add some scrolling credits without real-time playback becoming impossible.

Because video editing software as been so flaky for years, its just become normal and peoples expectations are low. People wouldn't put up with an iPhone crashing every ten minutes, or the operating system crashing every half hour, but video editing software crashing, well it gets blamed on us and our hardware or setup being at fault.

One of my grievances is stability & crashing. The rest are illogical and bad UE & UI design choices. And this sort of stability & quirkiness has not been a problem with FCP for example. The only strong point for davinci is it's color abilities & perhaps a couple of mixing capabilities (such as a limited version of sidechaining audio).

When they started advertising performance being as fast as FCP etc (especially YT reviewers etc..) I doubt they have ever worked in a demanding setting ever in their lives. Sure, export times can be similar - but badly implemented UI features can slow the editing down considerably. Scrolling around the timeline for example is a linear sticky and slow experience. In FCP and apple software in general they respond in a much more desirable manner. Unfortunately blackmagic, though improved, they have a long way to go in that regard.

Still they could be more active in listening to their customers in forums and focus just on stability/UI. No new flashy features, no AI, just user experience.

I would not recommend Sonoma yet. You have the chance to go back, while buyers of M3 don't. Works much better under Ventura.
Since we have FCP-X too, we tend to edit with that and do the grading in DR. But editing with FCP-X is, well, think different
Watch out for pitfalls when roundtripping:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/26popkz9 ... m0rtp&dl=0
(I suggest DeepL for translation.)

I would not recommend Sonoma yet. You have the chance to go back, while buyers of M3 don't. Works much better under Ventura.
Since we have FCP-X too, we tend to edit with that and do the grading in DR. But editing with FCP-X is, well, think different
Watch out for pitfalls when roundtripping:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/26popkz9 ... m0rtp&dl=0
(I suggest DeepL for translation.)

Sonoma has nothing to do with bad UE/UI choices. Regarding crashing, sure. But I had it under ventura just as often. This has been going on since October 2023. FCP translation to Davinci is what I would describe as think different. Sound sometimes is out of sync. Timecode issues, compound clip reconforms work 50% of the time. I am a 5x faster/better editor in FCP than I could ever be in Davinci, because the interface choices are holding me back. This also translates to a bad client experience.

I am a 5x faster/better editor in FCP than I could ever be in Davinci, because the interface choices are holding me back. This also translates to a bad client experience.

It took me two years to get into full speed with DVR editing - after 21 years in Premiere (Pro).
Once in a while I stumble over very odd UI design choices.

But it isn't holding me back - I learned and accustomed to DVR's UI. I am very fast now, again.

I think the thing holding you back is your inability to let go what you trained yourself with FCP and re-train yourself now with DVR. That ain't easy.

But I also agree with you that there are some frustratingly silly things going on in DVR which can make me steam.

As of late, my favorite bug is the one where you can't stop playback until it reaches the end of the timeline or you close the entire program if you accidentally hover your mouse over a clip in the media pool while the timeline is playing. I'm only on the free version, and I've made a lot of money with Resolve so I feel pretty bad trashing it, but yeah it's definitely the buggiest software I'm forced to use on a regular basis. The massive frustrations I've had keep from pulling the trigger on the pro version.

The insanity that is the Media Created/Media Modified sort system leaves me with a burning hate deep inside. I've spent so much of my life trying to figure out the order of clips because Resolve's insane sort system just randomly mixes up file order, despite it being perfectly organized in Windows Explorer's sort by Date Modified view. I've resorted to using a bulk file rename program to rename my files their date/time so that I can just use sort by Filename in Resolve.

As of late, my favorite bug is the one where you can't stop playback until it reaches the end of the timeline or you close the entire program if you accidentally hover your mouse over a clip in the media pool while the timeline is playing. I'm only on the free version, and I've made a lot of money with Resolve so I feel pretty bad trashing it, but yeah it's definitely the buggiest software I'm forced to use on a regular basis. The massive frustrations I've had keep from pulling the trigger on the pro version.

The insanity that is the Media Created/Media Modified sort system leaves me with a burning hate deep inside. I've spent so much of my life trying to figure out the order of clips because Resolve's insane sort system just randomly mixes up file order, despite it being perfectly organized in Windows Explorer's sort by Date Modified view. I've resorted to using a bulk file rename program to rename my files their date/time so that I can just use sort by Filename in Resolve.

The only reason it is a frustrating experience using it (as an editor) is that I have experienced since 2011 a way to do it better and it's called FCP. However cooperation of the two apps is very time consuming and error prone, so using FCP as an editor and Davinci as a finishing tool is an even more frustrating experience. Seriously, from all the praise I thought Blackmagic had most issues corrected, however day to day use has shown this is not the case on any level - stability, experience, performance. I have never regretted a software purchase more than Davinci Studio.

I’ve been using DVR since 2016. It has been a downward spiral with no signs of relief.


Keyframing on the edit page and fusion has always been atrocious and frustrating to say the least.

I have a library of screen captures of the madness over the years. And no one cares. It’s always blamed on the specs. Send a diagnostic report. Right…

Why can’t we copy paste text attributes?

Why can’t we copy paste dynamic zoom?

Why can’t we move two different keyframes at once ?

Why are we told to use Fusion for basic animation?

Why can’t we zoom in on the cut page ?

Why is audio playback delayed?

Why is the “hit detection” with the mouse pointer so bad in the GUI? Resizing a power window is near impossible right now.

Why can’t we customize the GUI? Why do we have to work within a 2 inch window to do keyframes?

Why has power window tracking gotten worse?

Why can’t we view transitions in real time? Why is it sooo slow?

Why is there no consistency among pages? Example: magic mask works differently on the color page and fusion.

Why is audio transcription and captions a completely different unrelated process ? Why can’t we convert captions to graphics like in Premiere?

Why is my media often Offline despite nothing changing ?

Why do my libraries get corrupted out of nowhere ?

Why does cache take up a terabyte of disk space and playback is still slow ?

Why can’t we add motion blur or mirror frame edges on the Edit page?


——


I could go on and on but I have stuff to do.

Why can’t we move two different keyframes at once ?

That's possible. I just tried it. In the timeline if you slide out the keyframe editor, you can CTRL click several keyframes (even from different attributes) and drag them along.

Why can’t we view transitions in real time? Why is it sooo slow?

No issues here with real time.

Why is my media often Offline despite nothing changing ?

No issues here - not in the last 4 years, even with heavy feature film projects.
Only ever media offline issue I have is with my custom fusion templates where media-in nodes almost always need to reconnect the media. Very annoying.

Why do my libraries get corrupted out of nowhere ?

So far never happend to me. Hopefully never will.

Why does cache take up a terabyte of disk space and playback is still slow ?

Yeah - that can be an issue and it is very annoying.

I’ve been using DVR since 2016. It has been a downward spiral with no signs of relief.


Keyframing on the edit page and fusion has always been atrocious and frustrating to say the least.

I have a library of screen captures of the madness over the years. And no one cares. It’s always blamed on the specs. Send a diagnostic report. Right…

Why can’t we copy paste text attributes?

Why can’t we copy paste dynamic zoom?

Why can’t we move two different keyframes at once ?

Why are we told to use Fusion for basic animation?

Why can’t we zoom in on the cut page ?

Why is audio playback delayed?

Why is the “hit detection” with the mouse pointer so bad in the GUI? Resizing a power window is near impossible right now.

Why can’t we customize the GUI? Why do we have to work within a 2 inch window to do keyframes?

Why has power window tracking gotten worse?

Why can’t we view transitions in real time? Why is it sooo slow?

Why is there no consistency among pages? Example: magic mask works differently on the color page and fusion.

Why is audio transcription and captions a completely different unrelated process ? Why can’t we convert captions to graphics like in Premiere?

Why is my media often Offline despite nothing changing ?

Why do my libraries get corrupted out of nowhere ?

Why does cache take up a terabyte of disk space and playback is still slow ?

Why can’t we add motion blur or mirror frame edges on the Edit page?


——


I could go on and on but I have stuff to do.

I agree with almost all points you made. And I have plenty more to add. But I have bugs to go fight with to get my projects done as well! Vent over

Why can’t we move two different keyframes at once ?

That's possible. I just tried it. In the timeline if you slide out the keyframe editor, you can CTRL click several keyframes (even from different attributes) and drag them along.

What I meant to say is with the spline editor when you have bezier curves and such.

Why can’t we view transitions in real time? Why is it sooo slow?

No issues here with real time.

Really ?! How? I have Smart Cache on and it's always very slow

Why is my media often Offline despite nothing changing ?

No issues here - not in the last 4 years, even with heavy feature film projects.
Only ever media offline issue I have is with my custom fusion templates where media-in nodes almost always need to reconnect the media. Very annoying.

Why do my libraries get corrupted out of nowhere ?

So far never happend to me. Hopefully never will.

it can happen when working with different computers and different SSD drives and deleting cache. ugh.

Why does cache take up a terabyte of disk space and playback is still slow ?

Yeah - that can be an issue and it is very annoying.

Also, why can't we select multiple retime points and add bezier to more than one at a time?

I can't talk for many of your points since they are rants particular to your needs and i haven't hit those issues.. but i can stop at the Voice Isolation rant, you do realize how intensive is that effect for sound? You can enable audio cache for your clips that have Voice Isolation, otherwise expect slowdowns with our current hardware on such effects.

I can't talk for many of your points since they are rants particular to your needs and i haven't hit those issues.. but i can stop at the Voice Isolation rant, you do realize how intensive is that effect for sound? You can enable audio cache for your clips that have Voice Isolation, otherwise expect slowdowns with our current hardware on such effects.

The problem is the timeline scrolling slows down. It is not very intensive actually (i'm also a programmer and have a relevant idea). Blackmagic's implementation though is inefficient. FCP on the other hand has zero lag. The problem is when audio scrubbing is turned on for Davinci. Audio cache is a good workaround for a bad implementation.

I understand your frustration on this one, i do see the lag while working on other zones of the timeline, but since the effect itself is very heavy i do enable audio caching for those clips when i need to use it.

Hope that BMD will address this issue in the future.

And let's talk about the Fairlight page. Why, oh why, does it decide to take a siesta every time I dare to use a few measly Waves plugins on my master chain?

I just went through this same problem myself recently where I did all of the audio inside of Resolve. I used couple waves Waves plugins (MV2 and RVox), Kirchhoff EQ, SSL Native FlexVerb, Newfangled Audio Recirculate and then Sonible SmartLimit on the master, so nothing too crazy here. I was trying to save a bit of time doing everything in Resolve instead of rendering all of the audio and a video track to mix in Reaper, but I ended up spending so much more time fighting against constant bugs and crashes. I can safely say, I will not be trying this again anytime soon.

Fairlight page was very frustrating when first incorporated but...hasn't stopped being frustrating ever since

Seriously guys, if it's so bad for you why not just edit in FCP? I'm not being sarcastic and of course it's good to highlight bugs in the hope they'll be sorted, but with so many things slowing you down then doesn't it make sense to change? I've used FCP and then FCPX for years but changed a couple of years ago to DR and, now with the speed editor, I am genuinely as quick in DR as I am in FCPX. To repeat, this is not a criticism of the previous posters but I don't see how being so unhappy with your editing workflow is a good way to spend your time.

Seriously guys, if it's so bad for you why not just edit in FCP? I'm not being sarcastic and of course it's good to highlight bugs in the hope they'll be sorted, but with so many things slowing you down then doesn't it make sense to change? I've used FCP and then FCPX for years but changed a couple of years ago to DR and, now with the speed editor, I am genuinely as quick in DR as I am in FCPX. To repeat, this is not a criticism of the previous posters but I don't see how being so unhappy with your editing workflow is a good way to spend your time.

Personally I've mentioned the reasons above.
1. FCP is a superior editor 10fold for me but I cannot get the color tools and look I need in this app
2. Translation of the fcpxml is a mostly a hit and miss (audio doesn't always transfer synced, trimming is off, compound clips are created for every clip and reconform doesn't always work, etc...) making the option of editing in FCP and finishing in Davinci a really tedious process.
3. Editing and mixing is Davinci is really unstable and the user experience is quite bad (again - for myself)

But let's delve into the nitty-gritty, shall we? Why does the built-in EQ decide to take a vacation whenever I try to work with retimed clips?

And don't get me started on the enigma that is the non existent rendering cache for compound and nested timeline clips (a feature requested all the way from the distant 2016 - 8 years ago!!!). It's feels like trying to squeeze water from a stone.

And let's talk about the Fairlight page. Oh, the tales I could tell! Why, oh why, does it decide to take a siesta every time I dare to use a few measly Waves plugins on my master chain? It's like a magician's disappearing act, only less impressive and infinitely more aggravating.

And speaking of playback, why does it feel like I've entered a parallel universe where real time sound effects have a delayed reaction again with compound clips on the timeline, like they're waiting for an invitation to the party after I hit play? They are called real-time for a reason. I assure you, it's not a remix I ever wanted to hear.

The UI slows down when scrolling around in the timeline if audio scrubbing is on at the same time as voice isolation.

Let's not forget the curious case of being able to optimize media from the timeline but not proxy media. One works but is almost deprecated, while the other decides to play hide-and-seek with my sanity. And speaking of hide and seek - why was the "Remove Optimized Media" Removed???

And last but certainly not least, why, in the year 2024, do I find myself performing a bizarre ritual of slider dances just to coax the stabilizer into re-enabling the stabilizer button after I roll or trim a clip? It's like trying to appease a tech-savvy deity with offerings of sliders and trimmings.

Soo here's the thing...I can say with certainty these are not all Resolve-specific problems. Why do I say this? Because I haven't experienced all of these on either of my systems-- WITH the exception of Waves plugins. I stopped using Waves plugins long ago because their Waves central process has always been a nightmare in the back end with video software. I used to have the freezing problem in Premiere too.

Don't get me wrong, Resolve isn't perfect. There are things I'm frustrated with too. I've been begging for a simple word wrap textbox, a 'render cache from in to out' option, and a more customizable UI for the last few versions. But, I've never had a major issue like a database go missing or corrupted (though I use the backup feature regularly and have it going to a Dropbox where I have Dropbox backups of backups just in case). The live save feature has saved my butt more times than I can count whereas in the days of Premiere I'd regularly lose a ton of work if an audio plugin misbehaved and caused a crash.
But, when someone posts a list of issues they're having and I'm not seeing all the same issues...you have something else going on AND I think you're also expecting too much of your system.

But let's delve into the nitty-gritty, shall we? Why does the built-in EQ decide to take a vacation whenever I try to work with retimed clips?

Works fine on my end (on my PC at least. I'll have to test it on my Mac, but I don't recall having an issue here either.)

And don't get me started on the enigma that is the non-existent rendering cache for compound and nested timeline clips (a feature requested all the way from the distant 2016 - 8 years ago!!!). It's feels like trying to squeeze water from a stone.

Render cache color output (F5) not work for you? Works for me. However, I agree this can get needlessly complicated when there are lots of visual plugins as they won't all cache unless they're on the color page. Hey Blackmagic, this is where my 'cache in to out' suggestion would be handy -- hint hint.

And let's talk about the Fairlight page. Oh, the tales I could tell! Why, oh why, does it decide to take a siesta every time I dare to use a few measly Waves plugins on my master chain? It's like a magician's disappearing act, only less impressive and infinitely more aggravating.

Waves can be temperamental unless you're working in a proper audio DAW it likes.
I use Fabfilter, Izotope, and Slate plugins regularly with no issue.

And speaking of playback, why does it feel like I've entered a parallel universe where real time sound effects have a delayed reaction again with compound clips on the timeline, like they're waiting for an invitation to the party after I hit play? They are called real-time for a reason. I assure you, it's not a remix I ever wanted to hear.

I suspect this may be a processor limitation as I do not see it on my desktop, but I have seen more delays when working on my MMax.

The UI slows down when scrolling around in the timeline if audio scrubbing is on at the same time as voice isolation.

Hardware limitation. The native voice isolation actually works extremely well, it's much better than your average noise reduction plugin, but it can be quite intensive. Again, on my desktop I don't see that hardly, but I do on my M1 Max. You expect too much from Apple Silicon -- they're excellent, but not as excellent Apple likes to claim against a high-end desktop. Take it from someone who uses both regularly.
Don't forget Final Cut is specifically made to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of Apple chips, and it only has to worry about OSX development. It's also a very capable but much simpler program than Resolve. Of course it's going to perform better.

Let's not forget the curious case of being able to optimize media from the timeline but not proxy media. One works but is almost deprecated, while the other decides to play hide-and-seek with my sanity. And speaking of hide and seek - why was the "Remove Optimized Media" Removed???

I agree the proxy/optimized media thing can be a bit confusing and not as streamlined as I would like, but ultimately it's because they have different use cases. Optimized media is made to be quick machine-specific solution. I'd like an option for proxy from the timeline too, but I'm happy to do it from the Media pool.

And last but certainly not least, why, in the year 2024, do I find myself performing a bizarre ritual of slider dances just to coax the stabilizer into re-enabling the stabilizer button after I roll or trim a clip? It's like trying to appease a tech-savvy deity with offerings of sliders and trimmings.

So this one I have seen before -- though funny enough not on everything. I usually just adjust the smooth slider a tad so the button comes back.

Thanks for the considered reply Nikos - again, no sarcasm! Makes a pleasant change from people queuing up looking for a good virtual bust up.

DR is working fine for me and I hope soon it can for you. IMHO it could be the best post app by far with its color and audio capabilities fully sorted.