Poor Performance on Retina iMac

I'm just getting started with Resolve 11 Lite, version 11.3.1, and something appears to be wrong. My iMac is the top of the line version with 4GHz i7 and R9 M295X, so a fast machine. But Resolve is having a hard time playing clips. I have imported some 1080 clips into one project and some UHD clips into another. The 1080 clips play fairly smoothly, but there are some hiccups in the audio. The UHD clips don't play at all, or rather at such a slow stuttering pace as to be totally unusable. I must have something set wrong, but I don't see anything in preferences that would make any difference. Can anyone help me with this?

[Peter Chamberlain]

I recommend updating to v12 when it's released, which will be soon.

Dude, you shoulda bought a Dell!

What kind of UHD clips as that can alter how well they can be played

What CODEC are the source files? If they are compressed consumer delivery codecs (MP4, AVCHD, XAVC) then you will probably get better performance by transcoding them to a frame based codec like ProRes.

You also don't say what drive your footage is on. Generally speaking you want your system and Resolve on the internal SSD. Your footage on a fast RAID (especially for 4K) and then another drive to render to.

Are you trying to playback with your scopes open ?

I have the same issues... horizontal screen tearing, Audio stuttering, poor frame rates. All on simple prores footage, on fast raid drives, with no scopes or grading. This footage runs fine in every other editor I've used. The solution seems to be better optimization for Resolve or the ability to de-link the color and editing pages because the edit page seems to run through the color page and cause extra processing that is unneeded when cutting.

My question is... will Resolve 12 address optimization?

Yes. A post recently talked about the audio portion being completely rewritten and improved in terms of functionality and performance. A post yesterday mention other performance improvements so Resolve 12 will use less resources than 11. I think the beta is out if you want to see, but the final release may vary from the current beta.


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I'd love to try a Beta!... But where is it?

Rick, I believe there's an Alpha version that everyone is using to Demo V12 at conferences and such, but there's no readily available beta version (that i'm aware of)

Thank you, Will, sorry about that slip up.


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Thank you for all of the replies (with the exception of the one suggesting a Dell ). I'm new to all of this so it took me some time to work through understanding what kind of files I had and how to do some testing.

All of the files that I'm testing are H.264. The HD files are from my iPhone and the UHD ones from a test of the Sony RX100 IV at Cinema5D. All of them play perfectly in FCPX, none play perfectly in DaVinci Resolve. I transcoded one of the UHD clip to Apple ProRes, and that file plays perfectly in DaVinci Resolve!

So, do I need to transcode everything to ProRes for DaVinci resolve? If so, how does one manage large projects that way? The files are huge! Also, what is the best way to transcode outside of FCPX?

5DtoRGB is a very good, fast transcoder.

You can also transcode everything in Resolve. It's set up now so folks can use it for on-set DIT.

You can also finish the edit in fcp with the camera originals, and export the whole timeline as one movie to a better codec, then open that in resolve and use the xml to find the cuts. This is a pre-conform -workflow.

Not that it's relevant, but I thought I'd elaborate on why I think he suggested buying a Dell. He probably suggested a Dell because on the PC side you can get much faster machines than the iMac or Mac Pro and then just turn them into a Hackintosh. The Mac Pro tops out on a single V2 12 core Xeon CPU, whereas on the PC side you can have Dual V3 18 core Xeon CPU's these days. Even the CPU that you have in your iMac can be overclocked to around 4.7 on the PC side.
Unfortunately Apple don't really seem all that bothered about people who need real power in their systems as they have access to the same hardware but just don't implement it.

All of the files that I'm testing are H.264. The HD files are from my iPhone and the UHD ones from a test of the Sony RX100 IV at Cinema5D. All of them play perfectly in FCPX, none play perfectly in DaVinci Resolve. I transcoded one of the UHD clip to Apple ProRes, and that file plays perfectly in DaVinci Resolve!

So, do I need to transcode everything to ProRes for DaVinci resolve? If so, how does one manage large projects that way? The files are huge! Also, what is the best way to transcode outside of FCPX?

FCPX actually transcodes the footage to ProRes Proxy in the background. This is how it's able to play and edit that footage so smoothly. If you open an FCPX Library in the finder you'll find that it contains Proxies and High Quality ProRes copies of the H264 files.

You'll actually notice image quality drops slightly on playback in FCPX. This is fine for editing.

Resolve needs to work with the highest quality file as you are making colour critical decisions. So Resolve decode and convert the 8bit H264 file to 32bit float on the fly. It's much easier to decide and convert 10bit ProRes (or any other frame based codec).

5DtoRGB works well to transcode. As does ClipWrap.

"FCPX actually transcodes the footage to ProRes Proxy in the background. This is how it's able to play and edit that footage so smoothly. If you open an FCPX Library in the finder you'll find that it contains Proxies and High Quality ProRes copies of the H264 files.

You'll actually notice image quality drops slightly on playback in FCPX. This is fine for editing."

That's actually not true. There are some codecs like AVCHD that won't playback natively, but h.264 does. As a matter of fact I can play back multiple streams of h.264 in real time in FCPX. The same is true in Premiere. I think that's why the blackmagic guy advised waiting for the new version. I imagine that since they are going after the low end of the editing market, that they are addressing this in the update. FCPX only transcodes to Proxy if you want it to. You can uncheck the box in the Preferences menu.

He probably suggested a Dell because on the PC side you can get much faster machines than the iMac or Mac Pro and then just turn them into a Hackintosh.

Yeah, this. An HP would have been a much better purchase

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/work ... -to-z.html

Also, you don't remember those old TV ads? This is why I thought it was funny and appropriate.

Actually building your own Xeon is much cheaper than buying an HP.

I wouldn't have seen those ads as I'm in the UK

The only thing I've found is that h264 runs really slow on DAW. A couple of clips are fine, but once you start including more and more, the system seems to get bogged down. I believe it's to do with the Intra-Frame and Inter-Frame of the codecs. I can run DNxHD and ProRES at 4K fine [in Resolve, and Premiere Pro CC], but when I start including a lot of H264, it slows down.

Hopefully I can post this - handy little video explaining the Inter-frame and Intra-Frame
EDIT - I can't post URL nor videos - so Youtube search the following.

Q&A : What's the difference between inter-frame and intra-frame? [by videomaker]

Hope this helps.

In general, you can get a pc equal to or better than the top mac for 1/3 the price.
And Win 7 is a much better os IMO.
My first computer was a powermac for use as an editing workstation that cost $8K and lasted 2 years before being obsolete.
I left apple behind 15 years ago.
No closed hardware/software ecosystem for me.
It's a myth that apple is better for video.
I'm no fan of Microsoft corp but ironically windows is a more open os.
In the early days, software/hardware conflicts and incompatability plagued Windows desktop NLE's but not for a long time now.

All of the files that I'm testing are H.264. The HD files are from my iPhone and the UHD ones from a test of the Sony RX100 IV at Cinema5D. All of them play perfectly in FCPX, none play perfectly in DaVinci Resolve. I transcoded one of the UHD clip to Apple ProRes, and that file plays perfectly in DaVinci Resolve!

Virtually all H.264 are heavily-compressed Long-GOP formats. To me, none of them are suitable for post at all. I believe H.264 is only useful as a delivery format. Transcode them all to ProRes or DNxHD, and you'll have a much easier time in post. Convert to H.264 only at the very end for delivery, and make sure the levels match.

I downloaded DaVinci Resolve 12 this morning, and the original h.264 files now play perfectly. This is a big change from version 11.