Blackmagic Forum

For timelines with multiple parallel audio tracks Resolve almost never manages to play back all tracks at the same time. During every playback one or more of the tracks drops out randomly for a few seconds, sometimes pops in again just for another to drop out. Sometimes playing the same part repeatedly makes it marginally more consistent.

BUT: On the Fairlight page, this issue disappears. The timeline will take a second to begin playing, but at least consistently plays all tracks in sync. Clearly the playback and caching process there is handled differently than on other pages.

My rig is decent and barely gets tickled on any core/gpu/disk during playback so I doubt it's a hardware bottleneck, I've toggled through all variations of (non)cached playback, monitoring settings and other audio related options I could find and I'm entirely out of ideas. Even converted parts of my library from AAC to PCM to reduce decoding load during playback.

I'm aware of a few other reports of similar issues on here. But by my thinking this software is in widespread use among professionals with FAR more complex audio track demands than mine. Hence I'll assume user/configuration/compatibility issues. Most don't seem to have this issue, for me it's debilitating to the point it makes editing video+audio+music in sync near impossible.

This has been bugging me for ages, and I'd be absolutely delighted if anyone here has solved a similar issue or has any ideas on this!

Davinci Resolve Studio, V19.1.4 as well as prior versions have all been affected for me.

#################
PC SPECS --------
Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Vermeer 7nm Technology
RAM
32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR4 @ 1787MHz (18-22-22-42)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. B450M DS3H-CF (AM4)
Graphics
G27q-20 (2560x1440@120Hz)
S24F350 (1080x1920@72Hz)
16368MB ATI AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT (Gigabyte)
Storage
3726GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO 4TB (SATA (SSD))
1788GB Force MP510 (Unknown (SSD))

#################
MEDIA INFO --------
USUAL CLIP (3 identical audio tracks, 1 shown) ---
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 580 MiB
Duration : 1 min 59 s
Overall bit rate : 40.6 Mb/s
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
encoder : Lavf60.3.100

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L5
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=125
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1 min 59 s
Bit rate : 40.0 Mb/s
Width : 2 560 pixels
Height : 1 440 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.181
Stream size : 571 MiB (99%)
Codec configuration box : avcC

Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 1 min 59 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 2.75 MiB (0%)
Title : Game
Default : Yes
Alternate group : 1

#################
PCM CONVERTED CLIP (3 identical audio tracks, 1 shown) ---
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 781 MiB
Duration : 1 min 59 s
Overall bit rate : 54.8 Mb/s
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
Writing application : Lavf61.1.100

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L5
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=125
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1 min 59 s
Bit rate : 50.2 Mb/s
Width : 2 560 pixels
Height : 1 440 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.227
Stream size : 717 MiB (92%)
Codec configuration box : avcC

Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : ipcm
Duration : 1 min 57 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 21.5 MiB (3%)
Default : Yes
Alternate group : 1

The Edit page prioritizes picture playback. In the 3 dot menu next to the Timeline viewer de-select Show All Video Frames. Now the audio will be the priority.
Does this help?

Thanks for the reply! Yes, "Show All Video Frames" is a feature I regularly use, toggling it on or off has never made a difference for the audio drop out issue.

And it would makes sense that the Fairlight page prioritizes audio processing, but it is also playing the full resolution video without frame drops on it. Neither page's playback is particularly taxing to the PC, so I'm stumped why the Edit page is giving me such a bad experience, when Resolve is clearly easily capable of better.

Hence I'm wondering if it's another misconfiguration that I've somehow overlooked...