Fluid/Smooth zooming in/out of the timeline. How??

I have a 90 minute sequence for a documentary Im working on. A couple other films I have are closer to 105 mins. Even the short flattened sequence is really jerky and laggy when zooming in/out of the timeline.

How do I make things more fluid? Is the bottle neck the hard drive, the GPU, CPU? Not sure how Resolve handles this function.

I've got a 2013 12-Core MacPro with 64GB RAM, Dual D700s and an eGPU (Titan X, not pascal).
Running OSX 10.12.6 and Resolve 14b6.

My Thoughts:
I've been told if I select the "Use display GPU for compute" option Resolve will throttle back my fastest GPU to the same speed as my slowest GPU. So, if I dont select "use display GPU for compute" does that mean my dual D700s will be dedicated to display or compute, and the Titan-X dedicated to the opposite task? Not sure what I need to do, but finding a way to make editing in Resolve more fluid with a large project like this would really help. Only a marginal improvement after turning off thumbnails.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/JQyIgF-fvP8

My suggestions would be to split up the 90-minute show into multiple timelines and not try to deal with a single massive timeline for editing and/or color.

I find you can handle (say) 300-400 shots in one 20-minute timeline easier than a 1500-shot 90-minute timeline. My suspicion is that the overhead required to keep track of this many frames and this many corrections (and transitions) stresses out the system quite a bit. I have a similar 64GB Trashcan, and it struggles if I have more than 500-600 shots in a timeline. Worse with 4K or higher res, regardless of playback resolution. And worse still if I have fairly intensive (20-30 nodes) node structure, particularly with NR and OFX.

I'm not convinced that the eGPUs do much for the Trashcans, but you'll get different opinions for different software. I think it does help to keep background operations to a bare minimum if possible.

At the very end of the project, when everything is locked, you can create what I call a "Super Session" to nest all the timelines in a single timeline, then string out everything as a single flattened file. That is, if you can overcome the Trashcan's tendency to glitch during renders, which has been covered here before.

My suggestions would be to split up the 90-minute show into multiple timelines and not try to deal with a single massive timeline for editing and/or color.

I find you can handle (say) 300-400 shots in one 20-minute timeline easier than a 1500-shot 90-minute timeline. My suspicion is that the overhead required to keep track of this many frames and this many corrections (and transitions) stresses out the system quite a bit. I have a similar 64GB Trashcan, and it struggles if I have more than 500-600 shots in a timeline. Worse with 4K or higher res, regardless of playback resolution. And worse still if I have fairly intensive (20-30 nodes) node structure, particularly with NR and OFX.

I'm not convinced that the eGPUs do much for the Trashcans, but you'll get different opinions for different software. I think it does help to keep background operations to a bare minimum if possible.

At the very end of the project, when everything is locked, you can create what I call a "Super Session" to nest all the timelines in a single timeline, then string out everything as a single flattened file. That is, if you can overcome the Trashcan's tendency to glitch during renders, which has been covered here before.

Thanks for the suggestion Marc. I tried cutting the sequence up into 20 min parts. Even with just those clips in the sequence, zooming in/out of the timeline was about 5% better, but not really any noticeable difference than the full 90 min sequence. Seems there is a bottle-neck somewhere and maybe its not really with the clips themselves? To get smooth zooming in/out of a sequence I have to cut the sequence down to about 2-3 minutes. Anything more and everything slows down. This is why I was wondering if there is a hardware bottleneck somewhere or if Resolve isnt configured right? Still would like to have BMD or somebody help me understand what the biggest limiting factor is with Resolve's ability to zoom in/out.

I usually use the keyboard to zoom in/out and using the scroll wheel I have to push the wheel some 4-10 rotations to get it to zoom even a little bit, and when its laggy on top of that, its just really inhibiting. Like trying to paint with your arms in a cast. Sure it can be done, but its not a fun experience.

What kind of source files are you using? What timeline resolution are you running with on the session?

I'm currently doing a 2K session with 30-minute timelines on a 64GB Trashcan Mac under OSX 10.12.8 and it's not exhibiting this kind of behavior.

I generally use ⌘- to zoom out and ⌘+ to zoom in, and the timeline jumps about as fast as I can hit the buttons in Resolve 14. (I just switched to 14b7 tonight.) I have seen this slow down incredibly if I have a very, very long timeline or if I'm using 5K or 6K (or god forbid, 8K) source material.

Massive hardware can solve most of these problems, but we don't have that option with Mac workstations at the moment.

What kind of source files are you using? What timeline resolution are you running with on the session?

I'm currently doing a 2K session with 30-minute timelines on a 64GB Trashcan Mac under OSX 10.12.8 and it's not exhibiting this kind of behavior.

I generally use ⌘- to zoom out and ⌘+ to zoom in, and the timeline jumps about as fast as I can hit the buttons in Resolve 14. (I just switched to 14b7 tonight.) I have seen this slow down incredibly if I have a very, very long timeline or if I'm using 5K or 6K (or god forbid, 8K) source material.

Massive hardware can solve most of these problems, but we don't have that option with Mac workstations at the moment.

Source files are mostly .R3D clips, some ProRes clips from the UM4.6K, and some stills and animations from after effects or Nuke. Timeline Resolution in resolve is 1920x1080.

I have also seen the slow zooming on my MBP in a short 4 minute timeline with h.264 clips from a drone. In fact, I havent ever seen a timeline longer than that be smooth in Resolve.

Mac hardware options are more limiting for sure. But if for example, this is a result a GPU throttling or just an intensive GPU task, some things can be modified, either in the software configuration or with an eGPU upgrade. Would be great if there was a way to specify which GPUs to use for computer and which for display. That would certainly give the user a lot more options when it comes to optimizing their system.

But you can specify which GPU to use in the Studio version.

But you can specify which GPU to use in the Studio version.

Not for specific tasks, such as compute vs display.

[Peter Chamberlain]

If you plug a UI monitor into a GPU, it will be used for display. Don't plug one in and it's used for compute.